That’s not sarcasm, and it’s only a little snarky. It actually pleased me to park my bike among the concrete Duplo blocks slapped down by mismanaged ’60s architects to form the University of Illinois at Chicago.

It pleased me to watch the cosplay the pretty girls and pretty boys played in, knowing that within a few years, deep, committed women and men would put their selfies and fashion aside. It pleased me to watch lovelorn boys sulk and scowl, pleased me to see groups of friends who looked like grownups joke and tease each other the way kids do.

(It did not please me that the Jane Addams museum I had come to see was closed for renovation, particularly since I had just come from an ill-fated side jaunt to the closed-on-Mondays Chinese American Museum of Chicago. I really should have checked the hours first.)

I had come from a coffee shop in the Bridgeport Art Center, where I downed an iced latte with coconut milk and as much junk food as my body craved to keep up the calories. I was starting to flag in my massive bike ride, which if you’re just joining us started last Monday at the city’s southernmost tip and will wrap up on Halloween, when I reach the city’s northernmost.

If you’re just joining, I traveled the length of the city one day in July, and I’m still on the South Side. I’m not yet watching the awful, wonderful, awful college kids, and I’m not yet standing outside a locked museum in Chinatown. I’m still in the Bridgeport coffee shop.

One wall is lined with a DJ station and turntables, another has a drum set and a third has a massive screen set up to play 1990s console games. I play a few rounds of Nintendo’s StarTropics, which I loved as a child but now realize has boring, repetitive gameplay and no interesting characters.

Nostalgia lied, as it does.

The Art Center is a magnificent place, a former catalog warehouse now filled up with event space, artists lofts, a museum dedicated to maritime history and, I find, a funky coffee shop where dance music plays for two men set up on Mac laptops.

This isn’t the Bridgeport people think of, the self-imposed, self-imprisoning nostalgia of working men chopping hogs and climbing up ladders of Irish politics. That’s a wonderful nostalgia and staring at the former Bubbly Creek, I find myself longing for the mass employment we used to have. I long for jobs.

But it’s a false nostalgia. Bridgeport was racist, conformist, confining. The waters roiled with pollution — “bubbly” is not a good adjective for a creek — and those jobs vanished as the world changed. We don’t butcher hogs for the world, don’t stack wheat or play with railroads. Our shoulders aren’t big; they’re hunched over Mac laptops while dance music plays.

I turned off StarTropics, having my fill of repetitive gameplay, coconut milk latte and nostalgia’s lies. I rode off to closed museums, and found myself among concrete Duplo blocks and memories that, if not nice, were pleasing in their accuracy.

It pleased me that college students are still frivolous, irresponsible, brilliant, self-involved, fearful, charming and just awful, wonderful, awful human beings. It pleased me that UIC students are still as horrible as I was.

UIC was where my Chicago began, in a way. I wasn’t a UIC student, but sublet an apartment from a high school friend who had been.

We were both recent grads, thrust out into a world and told we were men. We were given an instruction book. We were given hundreds of instruction books, each with the exact opposite advice from the last one. Do this, do that, go here, go there, go to church, find a girl, find atheism, stay single. The world was our oyster, with our age turning everyone within earshot into a kibbitzing auntie giving us unsolicited advice and opinion on the exact proper way to shuck it.

I really needed to get out of my parents’ house, and Jeff had a sublet. So I came to Chicago.

Nostalgia lies and you grow out of the things of youth. I was pleased to discover college students are still like me when I was awful, but it was time to leave. I pointed my bike north.

It’s time for story #1,000 of 1,001. It’s time to head home.

Across Clark from the modernist federal prison shaped like a triangle, on a block of 1800s buildings that somehow survived the skyscrapering and Mies van der Rohe-ing of the Chicago Loop, next to a sign that blares HOTEL MEN ONLY into the atmosphere, there’s a soul food joint that’s been alluring me.

My main attraction to the place was also my main source of reluctance: the awning that declared it the home of Coco’s Famous Deep Fried Lobster.

I’ve been staring at that awning for more than two years.

Either the lobster joint or the pawn shop next to it was once the home of the Workingman’s Exchange, the bar from which late 1800s/early 1900s aldermen Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna and John “Bathhouse” Coughlin ran their empire of corruption. That was where you paid your protection money to keep the cops away from your whorehouse another week. That’s where a properly (i.e., Kenna-approved) ballot on Election Day would earn you a free schooner of beer, “The Largest and Coolest in the City” as they advertised.

From this perch in a neighborhood then called the Little Cheyenne, Bathhouse and the Hink lorded over the vice district known as the Levee, a massive red-light strip of sex, booze and political oppression running from the Loop down to Chinatown.

So since I started my Corruption Walking Tour Company in 2016, I’ve used the little perch across from the former Exchange as gathering spot for my political tourists. From across the way, I’ve pointed at Coco’s seemingly hundreds of times, told the tales of the site’s former former however-many-formers-it-is former owners as example prime of the meeting point between politics and crime.

But I never got their lobster.

I mean, “deep fried lobster.” Is it gross? Is it the most delicious treat I’ve never had? Is it heartburn and a heart attack or a delightful soul food delicacy I’ve simply spent my life unaware of.

Tucked between a liquor store and a pawn shop and below what in less-polite times would be called a transient hotel, the place looks sketchy from the outside. Through those doors, it was clean, airy and comfortable. There was light, deliberately inoffensive music playing overhead and inspirational posters about God’s role in our lives scattered about the place. Flatscreen TVs lining the top walls of the place displayed the menu items and prices.

An old man in a shirt, apron and ball cap, shrunken in that way the muscular elderly sometimes get, looked at me for my order.

“Small lob and a Jarrito!” the man called to the back when I gave it.

Then I waited among light pop and flatscreens in the room where Bathhouse John and the Hink sold Chicago. Unless the bar was in the pawn shop.

So what does deep-fried lobster served across from a federal prison possibly in the former home of one of the deeper dens of political corruption the city has ever known taste like?

Pretty good.

More like popcorn shrimp than the oil-plunged crustacea-wad I had been picturing/fearing/lusting after for a fifth-decade, Coco’s Famous Deep Fried Lobster is, at $15.50, slightly spendy but pretty good.

While I think batter dipping might better serve shrimp, scallops or other more self-contained seameat, the little balls of lobster and crust were tender, juicy and expertly prepared. It’s easy to overcook in a deep fryer and they didn’t. The flavor was good, if light. The fries were near perfect and when I bit into that last piece, I wanted more.

I think next time I’ll go for some shrimp (they’re much cheaper and come highly recommended), but all in all I’m glad I walked through that door I had spent more than two years just staring at.

A journalist documents a night in the transient hotel above

A talk to the hotel manager about the community

Meet the great-great-niece of Bathhouse John

Buy your tickets now at Dabble.co.

The corruption tour, for those of you who don’t know, is my yearly wander through downtown Chicago taking tourists through the spots where corruption happened in the city.

Bribes, shady land deals, kickbacks, bad-faith contracts, systemic racism and just plain being a jerk in office have done more damage to this city than any Valentine’s Massacre or thrill-killing U of C grads, so why let the Capone tours have all the fun? I lure the punters in with promises of Blago wackiness and leave ‘em with a hefty dose of civics. It’s fun.

Each year, the tour gives half the tips to a local nonprofit journalism group. In part it’s a way to give back to this city, in part it’s to allay my guilt at making a personal profit off Chicago’s legacy of corruption, in part it’s a way to casually mention I do accept tips.

The first year, the money went to City Bureau. Please donate to them.

The second year, ProPublica Illinois. Please donate to them too.

This year the money will go to The TRiiBE, helping them provide a voice for and change the narrative of black Chicago. Donate to them, donate to them, donate to them and save some money for Injustice Watch, which I’m planning on giving the share of 2019 tour gratuities to.

I like The TRiiBE because they’re writing stories no one else is, and giving a community historically underrepresented in Chicago journalism its own voice and platform. But I’m not the best person to talk about the work they do. They are.

So hopefully, you’ll join me and wander among the exhibits that make up the museum of corruption we call Chicago. I’ll keep a spot for you.

He was in the McDonald’s where Western meets Milwaukee, a spot at the exact confluence of urban poverty and rich kids playing poor through their 20s. He was clearly amid the latter, but not above a quick burger no one has ever referred to as “artisanal,” “gourmet,” or “gastro-”

Despite his choice of meatstuff, he was a perfect physical specimen. Glamor muscles toned, tanned and tatted, he wore a tight black T-shirt to show off the same.

He looked the perfect median between salon and saloon, like he could either be heading to a stylist or a bar brawl. Fashionable yet tough. Coiffed yet ready to throw down.

Untouchable. Unstoppable. Like I assume his arm tattoos bragged.

Or, since he was wearing a T-shirt with sleeves just long enough to take three letters off, OUCHABLE and TOPPABLE.

That’s a funny thing I saw.

There’s always some humor in walking the streets. A muscleman bragging by error that he could be topped and would say “ouch.” Some sharp graffiti. A downtown store advertising that Vladimir Putin hacked their system to give out incredible savings.

A friend framed a photo she took of a chicken darting across a road in Pilsen. “Why?” she asked. “Why?”

It’s nice that life doles out the silly alongside the grim. It’s always pleasant when something takes your mind for the moment off tasks and trends and the news outside.

Even if it’s just to laugh at a muscleman.

A sadder tale of McDonald’s

But it does.

I don’t think the Chicago Musical College intended to become the home of a college bookstore with windows stacked with alumni hoodies, Harry Potter play scripts and zen-themed coloring books for adults.

But it has.

The stone facades of Michigan Avenue seem like tombstones on a wet, gray morning. A mile of granite slabs declare “I was here!” “I mattered!” “I was!” as car tires squeal on wet pavement and a man with glassy eyes shakes a paper coffee cup of change.

To the other side, a park. Mud and brown, dead grass still flocked with the remains of a late winter snow. A Metra stop cleverly decked like a Parisian Metro station. A statue of a Native American warrior in a flowing feathered headdress, meant at the time as a tribute, but looking pretty racist in 2017.

The grim, gray scene warmed me. I trod smiling to the 1920s luxury hotel where I’m attending a conference on cloud-based technological solutions for 21st-century legal practices.

I smiled because we’re dancing among graves.

The hotel in 1927 never intended for technology conferences, nor did Florenz Ziegfield Sr. in 1908 intend his musical college to become a spare Columbia building. The Studebaker corporation never meant its Michigan Avenue offices to become lofts, offices and a zombie escape back in 1885.

But all these buildings did become those things and a hundred things before and a thousand things after. This buildings are graves of the past, of the dreams of Follies founder Flo’s father and of defunct wagonmakers turned defunct maker of roadsters and sedans.

We filled these buildings with life, with people, with excited college kids getting their first education-appropriate hoodie and work associates collaborating on puzzles faster and faster because — holy crap the undead!

We could have torn down these buildings. We could have discarded this history. We could have build gleaming glass towers on Michigan Ave. and, yeah, a few have started to peek in.

For the moment, at least, past and present collude on snowmelt wet streets. It seems natural and right that the modern world looks so much like the old one.

Are you a scientist? If so, we need your story.

I was sitting in a leafy spot by the federal prison parking garage, waiting for a tour group for the walking tours I run.

Across the street, a lady walked by with a Dick Tracy-style yellow fedora. She had a milk crate slung in front of her. When she passed a beggar, she pulled a plastic-wrapped sandwich out of the crate. He looked at her, she looked at him, and he took the sandwich.

She kept walking south and I lost her behind an SUV at the stoplight.

That’s it. That’s all. And wow.

Wow.

I say wow because I don’t know what was going on, why the woman had a Dick Tracy hat and a milk crate full of plastic-wrapped meals.

It could have been a Chicago Marathon thing. The run had just ended an hour or so before, so maybe she was unloading some unwanted racer fare on a hobo.

Or maybe it was a charity thing, like she was playing comics page grandstander for an afternoon, trading sammiches for moral superiority around South Loop.

Or maybe she was just a lady with odd fashion sense who happened to have a sandwich and a beggar at the same time and did the math as I watched from a leafy spot by a prison parking deck.

No matter the reason, here’s the why behind the wow: No one was watching.

Sure, I was, but she didn’t see me. There were no furtive glances across the street or even recognition that I was a thing that was.

There were a few late marathoners hobbling by wrapped in those post-race tin foil blankets, the yearly Limping of the Skinny that plagues this sacred day. But they weren’t watching anything other than their limps and growing corns.

No, this appeared from all indices to be a real and rare genuine example of unwatched generosity. The kind act captured in the wild, a real-life human offering a real-life human a bit of human kindness without any thought of social reward.

Whatever her reasons, the woman in the Dick Tracy fedora did a good thing, not even realizing anyone was there to chart her good deed. She did something nice, then moved on.

Wow.

That’s my Chicago story for the day. That should be my story for the month, week, year, but I don’t know if it will happen again.

I don’t know how many people are kind when no one’s watching.

Talk politics with me at “How to Steal an Election,” a booze-fueled tutorial I’m running with Atlas Obscura and the Room 13 speakeasy a week before the election. Swill craft cocktails while I take you through decades of COMPLETELY LEGAL voter manipulation in Chicago and elsewhere. Fun, civics and the best damn Old Fashioned I’ve had in years. Tickets are going fast.

I’ve received several interesting letters since starting the corruption walking tour. Some are old friends letting me know they heard me on the radio and “Miss yer face.” One man wrote about his fears the demolition of his childhood home was a land scam.

And then there was Bathhouse Coughlin’s great-great niece, letting me know what the family had been up to.

Bathhouse John and his cohort Hinky Dink Kenna ran vice in the First Ward in the first bits of the 20th century. You ran a brothel, bar or illegal gambling house in the vice district, you paid them protection. 25 bucks a week ($700 in today’s cash) for a small whorehouse, like a massage parlor or assignation house room where people could “meet.” $100 ($2,800 today) a week for a large brothel, up to $125 ($3,500) if it served booze.

Big Jim Colosimo — pimp, extortionist, murderer and sainted forebear of the Chicago mafia — got his start as a precinct captain for Hinky Dink and Bathhouse.

For Alderman Michael Kenna (D-First Ward) and Ald. John Coughlin (D-First Ward).

Because in addition to being vice kingpins, Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse Coughlin were elected public officials of the city of Chicago.

There’s no new information I can give that couldn’t be arranged through a good Google search or a library checkout of 1943’s “Lords of the Levee” by Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan. You can also run to the Chicago History Museum to see the jewel-clad badge a grateful or fearful public gave Kenna for his service to the city.

The woman who sent me the email confessing to her lineage was young, pretty. The little photo of her that showed up in the corner of the Gmail showed her in a moment of goofy repose with someone I assumed was her boyfriend or husband.

Bathhouse’s niece looked happy and healthy and normal.

I won’t share too much more of her letter. I wasn’t sworn to confidence, but I’m pretty sure on the spectrum between silence and publishing sections of her note on a semi-popular journo blog with an email blast, she was expecting a lean toward the former.

I will say that I found the story of her grandfather’s path from Irish immigrant “at the age of 19 and alone” to WWI veteran Chicago cop more fascinating.

I’ll say this to the pretty lady who said her uncle a few greats back is nothing to be proud of: You’re right.

But you’re also wrong.

The options for a poor person in this era, a boozer or scumbag or just a joe who came from the wrong country, were not piety or sin. The two options were to get ignored or to have a pal like Bathhouse John.

Kenna and Coughlin were scumbags, but they were scumbags for the people. They cared about their constituents, loved them in a way the hoity-toit millionaires in city hall never would. The social system was broken; a Dickensian town ruled by professional heirs and new-money robber barons. Any attempts by the huddled masses to improve their lots were met with violent, Haymarket Massacre-style resistance.

Your grandfather rose above those struggles; your great-great morally succumbed.

Your great-great uncle lined his pockets and opened the door for a near-century of mob control of the old First Ward. His scams, both in his role as alderman and as vice lord, remain legendary in this crooked city. But he helped people who had no other friends.

I’m not you and make no claim to insight. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. And I haven’t been asked.

But I see no need for either shame or pride when thinking on your dirty, sainted ancestor.

From a broken city, from a broken world, from a broken time of vice and sin and a buck to be had, “fascinating and complicated” isn’t a bad legacy to leave.

Support 1,001 Chicago Afternoons on Patreon (the $1 a story level will get you tickets to the sold-out corruption tour)

Read about one of the biggest fads of Bathhouse’s era

The purpose, aside from the fact I’ve been all coughing and bronchial and wanted a story I could write from my sickbed, was to get people to explore certain sites I like, including this one, Atlas Obscura, the Chicago Collections Consortium, the Chicago History Museum, Mysterious Chicago and Curious City.

So I made the quiz goldanged impossible. (And Curious City, that thing we talked about? It’s handled.)

From the Fool Killer submarine to park bats to Iroquois Theater Assistant Chief Usher Archie Guerin, here are the answers you didn’t get to the 1,001 Chicago Afternoons Really Difficult Trivia Quiz.

The Answers

1. Assistant chief usher of the Iroquois Theater, seen in news photos following the fire.

Archie Guerin, as seen in this Chicago Collections Consortium photo.

A brief word about the Collections Consortium: It’s awesome.

It’s an online home for the combined collections of 18 local institutions, from universities to libraries to museums to the frickin’ Brookfield Zoo. A big reason for this quiz was for an excuse to tell more people about the site.

…

2. The first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, located underneath the University of Chicago’s football field, was in a room originally constructed for this sport.

Squash. As in “that sport that’s not quite racquetball but no one can really explain how it isn’t.” As outlined in this Curious City story, Enrico Fermi and his team turned a squash court into the home of the first self-sustained nuclear reaction in 1942.

…

3. Her husband signed away her objections to the Art Institute.

For this we turn to, well, me. Her name was Sarah Daggett and you can find out more about her in #566: The Gray of the Lions.

…

4. A mysterious submarine found in the river, maybe.

The Fool Killer. Maybe.

Adam Selzer of Mysterious Chicago has put in a yeoman’s effort on separating truth from lie in the story of the Fool Killer, which was possibly a scam, possibly a hidden submarine complete with dog skeleton. Check out his whole fascinating site.

…

5. The only newspaper to make deadline after the Great Chicago Fire.

A little blurb in an 1888 listing of newspapers I got as a gift once led me to the story of Myra Bradwell and the Chicago Legal News. It’s one of my favorite stories about the Great Fire. A little girl rescued the mailing list from the legal newspaper created by her mother, who was kinda sorta the nation’s first female attorney, oh you know what? Just read #555: Myra Bradwell and the Fireproof Newspaper.

…

6. This obscure library at the Leather Archives and Museum has a flowery name.

The Teri Rose Memorial Library. See what I did with the hint there? Obscure? Like Atlas Obscura? Like this Atlas Obscura listing of Chicago’s secret libraries?

I’m very clever. The “mysterious submarine” was a hint too.

…

7. The exciting voice of this person appeared at the Cairo Supper Club in this Egyptomania photo.

Manuel De Silva.

Although it’s not part of the quiz, here’s a review I found of him in a review from Billboard in 1948:

“Manuel De Silva, billed as the “New Voice,” loses little time living up to the cognomen. Handsome youth exhibits an excellent song choice and his lusty-lunged barying nets him the show’s top mitt. Manages striking nuances with a cultured piping of Donkey Serenade and surpasses this effort with smart selling of Sorrento, Temptation and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. Had to beg off. Lad looks like a comer and it shouldn’t be long before he’s rated tops in the field.”

It’s on page 48, where you also learn the “Mary Kaye Trio” was originally the “Mary Kaaihue Trio.” They’re from Hawaii.

…

8. You can find the records of the Jane Dent Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People at this library.

The Richard J. Daley Library Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

…

9. When the Loop addresses were converted to the new numbering system in 1911, the Hotel Princess at 267 S. Clark St. got this as its new address.

331 S. Clark St. For this you have to use the address conversion guides in the Chicago History Museum, Building and House History section.

Both Curious City and I have done stories on Edward Brennan, the force behind the new numbering system, although only I present a compelling case for why he was history’s greatest monster.

I mean, I was super-sleepy the next day, man.

…

10. This Uptown silent movie studio produced both early Sherlock Holmes movies and the world’s first pie in the face.

Essanay. You can find out about the Sherlock Holmes and watch the movie in the room where it was shot in an upcoming joint Atlas Obscura/Mysterious Chicago event. You can find out about the pie from me in story #602: Chicago, the Home of the Pie in the Face.

…

11. Three werewolves from this area of the Baltic are killing time waiting for prey in a South Loop statue. One has a book.

Livonia. As in the Livonian Wolves in this Atlas Obscura entry. It’s a creepy myth of Christmastime and the fattest werewolf.

…

12. “Kitchen Klenzer” was advertised for this much in the storefront window in a 1963 photograph of a drugstore at Drexel and 47th.

Two for 21 cents. I mean, seriously, just play around with the Consortium site. You can find just, just anything there.

…

13. Researchers found this species of bat living under the boardwalk at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Bonus points for finding out from a particular interactive display on a certain radio station’s website.

I was going for the little brown bat, as mentioned in the Curious City interactive display created by Erik Rodriguez of The Illustrated Press, but a sharp-eyed reader (hi, Joann) found in the accompanying article that all seven locally common species have been found under the boardwalk.

So if you said:

• little brown bat
• big brown bat
• hoary bat
• silver-haired bat
• eastern red bat
• evening bat
• eastern pipistrelle
• or the number seven

you should be good.

Anyway, thanks for taking/please forgive me for this quiz. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get more ‘tussin.

Read a random story that’s most likely not a quiz

Help support 1,001 Chicago Afternoons on Patreon

Sure, you know that the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was at the U of C campus, but do you know what sport the room was originally made for?

Part of this project is to get people interested in the historical resources around us every day, to show that history is a live, breathing thing.

That and the fact my cute little sneezy cold has morphed into a broad, hacking bronchitis and I wanted a story I could write indoors led to today’s challenge, 13 of the most fiendishly obscure questions my cold medicine-addled brain could muster.

This being the Internet, you can find all these answers in seconds with a few well-chosen keywords. But the point of this is exploration, to give you an excuse to crack into the Chicago Collections Consortium’s historical photographs for the Iroquois Theater usher or WBEZ’s Curious City for the location of “Chicago Pile 1.” (Those two are on the house.)

Search within the collections, of course. But while Phineas H. Google has made a heck of a site, this will be more fun for you the deeper in you dig.

All of the answers can be found at one or more of the following sites:

• 1,001 Chicago Afternoons
• Atlas Obscura
• Curious City
• Chicago Collections Consortium
• The Chicago History Museum, Building and House History
• Mysterious Chicago

In disclosure, I contribute to Atlas Obscura for fun (no money changes hands, alas). I also am included in the Chicago History Museum’s ongoing “Chicago Authored” exhibit and am participating in a professional development event for teachers on April 2.

Other than that, I have no connection to any of these sites other than that I like ‘em. And I would straight up kill a man to get a job with WBEZ’s Curious City.

Seriously, who do you want done? One of those WFMT guys? Consider it handled.

Enjoy! Answers Friday.

The Questions

1. Assistant chief usher of the Iroquois Theater, seen in news photos following the fire.

2. The first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, located underneath the University of Chicago’s football field, was in a room originally constructed for this sport.

3. Her husband signed away her objections to the Art Institute.

4. A mysterious submarine found in the river, maybe.

5. The only newspaper to make deadline after the Great Chicago Fire.

6. This obscure library at the Leather Archives and Museum has a flowery name.

7. The exciting voice of this person appeared at the Cairo Supper Club in this Egyptomania photo.

8. You can find the records of the Jane Dent Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People at this library.

9. When the Loop addresses were converted to the new numbering system in 1911, the Hotel Princess at 267 S. Clark St. got this as its new address.

10. This Uptown silent movie studio produced both early Sherlock Holmes movies and the world’s first pie in the face.

11. Three werewolves from this area of the Baltic are killing time waiting for prey in a South Loop statue. One has a book.

12. “Kitchen Klenzer” was advertised for this much in the storefront window in a 1963 photograph of a drugstore at Drexel and 47th.

13. Researchers found this species of bat living under the boardwalk at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Bonus points for finding out from a particular interactive display on a certain radio station’s website. (Edit 3:34 p.m. March 9: The article connected with the interactive element mentions more species than the interactive element did. Name either the species listed in the interactive, or the number of species mentioned in the article.)

Think you’ve got it? Email your answers to 1001chicago@gmail.com.

Help support 1,001 Chicago Afternoons on Patreon

These were some of the watchwords at the Chicago Auto Show’s media center.

In my pre-blog newspaper days, I was no stranger to the event media center. These are little rooms, tents or other quiet spots where reporters covering everything from auto shows to music festivals can get away from the throng and commit the hard-hitting acts of journalism you can only get from local reporters covering auto shows and music festivals.

If you want some quiet, a cup of lukewarm coffee and a spot to transcribe a 5-year-old saying “I liked it. It was fun.” an event’s media center is where you want to be.

And the 2016 Chicago Auto Show had the greatest media center I’ve ever been in.

I attended the yearly show through the auspices of one of my freelance clients, a university whose students designed a car that gets more than 1,000 miles to the gallon.

It’s an amazing machine and a cause worthy of attention, but since it gets a maximum 40 mph if they really gun it and they only get the crazy-high mileage if the driver is a 5’ 3” freshman engineering major named Marissa, don’t expect to see one heading down I-90 any time soon.

But it brought me to the yearly spectacle of wheels at the McCormick Place convention center on the lake. And to the greatest media center I’ve ever known.

As for the show itself, I’m not really the guy for that. My car is a bike, my other car is a Ventra pass and my other other car is a carshare membership I rarely use.

But, from an outsider perspective, a few observations:

• Everything looked shiny and the convention center smelled like churros.
• They didn’t have ladies in sparkle-dresses gesturing at gently spinning cars like I was expecting. Now the average auto show presentation is modeled after an Apple products release, down to the white guy with an earpiece mic gesturing as Steve Jobbishly as possible.
• That said, Alfa Romeo did stuff a bunch of size one models in size zero miniskirts and sent them around to chat up the Giulia Quadrifoglio to men petrified or over-willing to glance south of the neckline.
• I saw a J.D. Powers and Associates award up close. It had the faint aura of fame clinging to the air around it, like getting to see a minor celebrity’s local daytime Emmy.
• Someone set one of the iPads by the Smart Fortwos to Google “cock.”

But, oh, that media center!

Endless tables with endless power strips. Lockers for personal possessions. Outlets for charging USB devices. A printer. Free wifi, but also a series of desktop computers — both Mac and PC — to write breaking coverage live from the show.

(Disclosure: This is being written on a desktop Mac in the convention center while interns chat, trade journalists type, photographers download in RAW and I’m on coffee three or four. I’m also eying a can of root beer from the soft drink table.)

Sheer magic. I never want to leave.

The non-secret secret of journalism is that the less important the work, the better the people are treated. The reporters who dug into the Chicago Tribune’s recent “street files” investigation get bullshat by cops in warehouses. I get coffee and comfy chairs at a convention center.

While people like Maudlyne Ihejirika get tossed around covering Black Lives Matter, I might go down to the convention floor and get a churro.

Maybe it’s predictive, that you can tell how socially useless your coverage is by how nicely they treat you. If the people you’re looking into love what you do so much they give you things, maybe you’re not doing the lord’s work.

The students and their supermileage car deserve the ink, and I am proud to give it to them. But as for the churro-scented trade show of Jobbish presentations and alpha Juliets for Alfa Romeo, this beautiful, comfortable media room I never want to leave makes me think I probably should.

The Sun-Times photographers wish each other goodbye

Two journalists transcribe the world in cartoon

Help support 1,001 Chicago Afternoons on Patreon