Evening Scene

From my balcony.

Morning Scene

Here's a really cool view of my apartment building. 

This photo also makes for a nice desktop background. 

Click here if you'd like to see some photos of various residents' apartments. Some of them are pretty amazing. (Mine was not featured. I completely missed out on the interior decorating gene and am a disgrace to My People.)

Happy 50th Anniversary, Marina City

Fifty years ago last week, construction began on my apartment building at Marina City.

I’ve lived here for 5 ½ years now and I still love it. About six years ago, I was downtown walking by these goofy buildings and, on a whim, decided to see what the apartments looked like and asked to see one. The leasing agent showed five of them to me and I signed a lease soon after.

I get to live in a true Chicago landmark. Whenever anyone asks where I live, they always smile when I tell them.

“Are the apartments really wedge-shaped?” they ask.

Yes, a little bit, but not as much as you’d think.

A realtor friend of mine has recently been encouraging me to buy a condo. I’d really like a two-bedroom place but there’s no way I could afford the half-million dollar price tag for one at my beloved Marina Towers. I don’t want to give up living here either. My studio apartment on the 50th floor suits me fine.

This place looks like a 1960s comic book rendition of futuristic housing. One can practically envision George Jetson and Astro flying their space-car onto one of the balconies. I don’t want to give up my comic-book apartment, especially to live in a normal, non-descript two bedroom condo. No way.

Oh, check this out. Here are two 10-minute films of Marina City being built during the early sixties. Be sure to check out the stylish clothes in second video. (I love the soundtracks to these films - - they’re a hoot.)














Here are some photos I’ve taken through the years:

From my balcony:

From the roof. (That tall building is where I work)

A night view from the balcony:

A Chicago winter is pretty brutal out on the balcony:

And a summer thunderstorm can be pretty rambunctious:

An artsy black & white view:

Happy 50th anniversary, Marina City!

Another Photo

I'm having fun with this black & white photography. This photo would really be cool if the railing wasn't there:

Photo

I took this photo last week from my balcony and converted it to black & white.

I'm not at all knowledgeable about photography, but I do appreciate it. Anyway, I've now got this photo in a 10 x 8 frame and I love it. 

Morning Scene

You know, I'm sort of captivated by this photo. . .

Evening View

Yesterday evening, we had some whopper thunderstorms here in Chicago. The tornado sirens sounded off twice as the storms passed through and it got pretty rambunctious up here on the 50th floor. The sun was setting just as things were clearing up, causing it to reflect pretty brilliantly on the remaining clouds. I'd really never seen anything quite like it.

Here's what it looked like from my living room:

Looking to the northeast:

Due north:

Toward the building across the street:

Toward the twin building beside me:

And, finally, the setting sun:

My grandmother, Budgie, always loved sunsets and city life. She would have really loved the sights this evening.

The Balcony of Extra Terror

My apartment building is getting a little face lift -- just having the outside of it cleaned and repaired. Anyway, I got off work early and the workers were right outside by 50th floor balcony on their suspended scaffolding. Cool! They posed for photos. This photo is really for JP who, for a long time, has referred to my balcony as the Balcony of Terror.

Morning Scene - Spring

After several months of freezing, dreary, winter, windy, weather, we finally got a clement, clear day.
I still don't like warm, sunny weather (it's just so invasive and smelly)
But I have to admit that today's cool sunny stuff was sort of nice.

The view is from my balcony.
You can imagine what it looks like at night (which I prefer.)

Number 11 on the List

Oh, lookie here.

Here’s a list of the 20 Weirdest Apartment Buildings of the World.

Mine is number eleven!

How cool is that? Being on a list of "the weirdest" anything is what I LIVE for.

Here’s a little tour of my dwelling-place, from the speedy elevator into my apartment and then out on the balcony.

50th Floor

Whenever friends or guests come to my 50th floor apartment at Marina Towers, they always seem to comment at how fast the elevators are. Ears pop. Tummies get that weightless feeling.

I guess I’m used to it, but on researching Marina Towers (wikipedia) it did mention that we do have some really speedy elevators.

So, I recorded it for you.

This is the elevator ride going from the lobby to the 50th floor and then, into the apartment where I live.

Is it really that fast? Maybe I’m just used to it.

It's an icy-foggy day outside. Definitely a good example of Winter in Chicago.
My windows definitely need cleaning, too, but it’s windy, nearing 10 below zero and 500 feet up in Chicago. Dirty winter windows are inevitable.

Morning Scene - West Tower

Doncha think this is a pretty cool shot of the west tower of Marina Towers? -- where I used to live. Yawn...
Isn't that sort of neat how the sunlight makes such a clean line along the balconies? I woke up this morning, ambled among the chaos of moving boxes, and just sort of saw this as I munched on some dead, leftover anchovy pizza.

The Quest for Bob Newhart's Apartment

A couple of weeks ago, I was standing across the street from my apartment building waiting for the light to change. While standing there, I saw this guy pointing out my building to his two kids while telling them that this building was where Bob Newhart lived in The Bob Newhart Show.

I wanted to shout at him, "No! You uninformed cretin! Bob Newhart did NOT live in Marina Towers. Stop filling your kids' heads with lies!"
It's a common mistake, but the characters, Bob Newhart and his wife, Emily, did not live in Marina Towers.

I remember the series very well and enjoyed it as a teenager. I loved the opening sequence to the series where it showed Bob Newhart leaving work in downtown Chicago, walking past Marina Towers, hopping on the EL and then walking up to his high-rise apartment building (which was NOT Marina Towers).

I thought that all looked SO incredibly cosmopolitan and I really wanted to live like that someday.

I remember that his high-rise where he lived was just some sort of nondescript apartment building. I really wanted to find it. But how?

I'd like to say that it was quite a challenge to locate it; that I managed to do so after contacting an archivist at CBS who gave me the address to Bob's apartment building.

But I didn't.

I used Wikipedia.

So, today, after it snowed all morning, I decided to go on a pilgrimage to the building that was in the opening sequence of The Bob Newhart Show.

It was an easy train ride on the Red Line EL to the north side of Chicago. (The opening sequence to the Bob Newhart Show shows him riding the Brown Line from downtown - - hrumph!)

As I walked from the train, there it was.

I smiled.

I have to say that this quest began simply as something fun to do on a Sunday afternoon. But as I walked up to that building that I'd seen over and over back in the early 70s, I instantly connected to the 13-year-old back in South Texas who longed, someday, to live in Bob Newhart's city.

I'll have to admit, it was pretty special.

Anyway, here is the opening sequence to The Bob Newhart Show. And yes, you'll see Marina Towers in a couple of shots, but you'll also notice Bob walking up to his apartment building later on.

Click here.

And here's a photo of that building that I took today. Isn't that cool?
I hope this might clear up some of the confusion. Maybe the tourist who told his kids that Bob Newhart lived in Marina Towers will see this and stop filling his childrens' head with such horrible untruths.

Oh, and if any of you want to visit this site when you're in Chicago, it's located at 5901 N. Sheridan Rd. Just take the Red Line north to the Thorndale station and walk three blocks east.

Just like Bob Newhart did every day after work.

See? I wasn't exaggerating

In my previous post about the storms in Chicago last night, I mentioned how a bunch of us were climbing down the stairs as the storm was hitting. (I walked down 49 floors – oww). I remember speaking to this one woman who said they had been on the roof of our building (Marina Towers) watching the storms come in. She also mentioned that one young woman almost got blown off the roof.

Here’s an article about the storms from the Associated Press. And here’s a quote:

Kristin Febor, 21, watched the rain approach from the roof of the Marina Towers high-rise in downtown Chicago.

"The wind picked up and in probably five seconds it blew (my friend) into her husband," she said. "He grabbed her and pulled her inside and we all ran down the stairs. It was like dead still and then within five seconds, 10 seconds we were all blown away."

See? And my apartment faces west, right in the path of the incoming storms. It was so scary with those tornado sirens wailing. That’s why I huddled in the safety of my bathroom with my laptop when the second wave of storms came through.

The Balcony of Terror

While Lorraine and her wonderful family were here at my apartment last month, our friend, John, who was supposed to be here, and with whom we were really looking forward to connecting, but couldn't make it because of work obligations in Omaha, kept in contact and often made reference to the fact that my apartment in Chicago was on the 49th floor with a balcony, and thus being so high, was deigned The "Balcony of Terror."

I will readily admit that the balcony from my apartment does hang in a semi-circular fashion almost five-hundred feet above the street level.

Walking toward the outermost, circumferential edge of my balcony, almost five hundred feet above the surface, even for those who have no fear of heights, does indeed strike an extreme feeling of falling, of dread, vertigo, and of overwhelming uncontrollability.

Frankly, I love living fifty stories above the street.
I love knowing that all lawn care, guest parking, garbage removal, valet parking, shipping & receiving, landscaping, snow removal, is all taking place five hundred feet below my coffee table.

Looking straight down, 49 stories . Dearborn bridge looking down over the Chicago River.

Looking straight down, onto Dearborn Street.


Now, here is the most frightening pic of all
Taking a photo UP at the eleven stories above me.
Way scary!

Breakfast with view

I had a breakfast meeting at the Mid-America Club which is on the top floor (80th) of the building where I work. I took a couple of happy snaps from up there.

In the first pic, you can see Marina Towers where I live (the two round buildings). It seems strange to be looking down on them.