James Bond and Chicago • This is Really Bad • World’s Best Runner and God • Radical Bench Activism • Furniture Liquidators • Brazilian Gospel
James Bond and Chicago. In the late 1950s, author Ian Fleming traveled the world and compiled his notes into a book called, Thrilling Cities. As an outsider's take on Chicago, and the States more generally, I found some of his passages to be revealing of the time.
The author lamented the lack of book reading on the airplane. Other passengers read periodicals, business papers, or just stared out the window. He marveled at the American magazines of the time — Time, Life, Newsweek — admiring their entertainment and visual bravura, while dismissing British magazines as comparably bland.
Here’s the description of Chicago that jumped out at me—
“Chicago Midway Airport is one of the most congested in the world and one of the most dangerous … I should have taken the helicopter (chopper or whirlybird in the vernacular) to Meigs Airfield on Chicago's lake front, but I did not know about the service, and it took me an hour, through some of the grimmest suburbs in the world, to get to my hotel…”
The grimmest suburbs in the world.
Traveling from Midway Airport to downtown Chicago, before the introduction of the highway, one would have driven through a bleak landscape still recovering from an industrial explosion. Imagine the visuals out the taxi window: factories, railroad tracks, Schlitz ads, single family immigrant homes, slaughterhouses. You would cross “Bubbly creek” a dank and notorious mess of stockyard refuse; organic material layering and decaying until it literally started bubbling.
Despite the grimness of that drive, he appears to have enjoyed himself in Chicago. He loved the Art institute, which he called “my favourite picture gallery in the world,” made references to the excellent Chinese and Japanese cuisine in the city, and noted the marquee entertainment available: Mike and Elaine May, Nat King Cole, Mort Sahl, Blue Note jazz club.
His next chapter starts with the following line:
I enjoyed myself least of all in New York.
That does sound bad. But it could always be badder, right?
He writes in a journal by hand. Prays before runs. Cultivates a garden. Wakes up at 5:45am, every day. Trains with a group of friends. Reads business books for inspiration. Punctuality is a necessity for church. Does not take supplements.
These are some of the rituals of the world’s best runner, Eliud Kipchoge. He has sanded down life’s excesses to a solid core. He maintains a monklike focus on the absolute essentials: training, health, family, God. He’s evangelical about running as a way of life. His stated goal is to convert 3 billion humans to become believers in the running way of life.
He doesn’t talk about this much, or rather, maybe journalists don’t ask him about this much, but he considers his running to be more than a sport, he thinks of it as a spiritual expression.
As captured in a Roman newspaper:
Correre le maratone non è inseguire primati, medaglie o denaro. Come ogni altro mestiere è una testimonianza di lode a Dio.
Running marathons is not about chasing records, medals, or money. Like any other craft, it is a witness of praise to God.
You could start a committee or you could just build something. Recently, a community advocacy group observed a deficit of benches at bus stops in Chicago. So, they built and installed a suite of benches. No process, no permissions — action only. Full story at Block Club.
Independent music from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Pássaro, on the innovative Shika Shika label. This is the best song I heard this week. Mysterious, rhythmic, unexpected. The vocal counterpoints that emerge at 2:13 are the best.
Here’s a very different style of music from Sao Paolo, 60 years earlier. Nilo Amaro e Seus Cantores de Ébano — a vocal group blending Brazilian rhythms with American influences. This track is their take on American gospel.
When it comes to buying furniture, I’m fond of the office liquidators down the road. National Office Liquidators offers high-end furniture at low-end prices. Stored in a vast, under-heated, under-ventilated storage space, N.O.L. buys up furniture from businesses that are going under and sells them to the American public.
Sure, buying your furniture from a startup with a cute name has far superior customer service and well staged customer experience emails. But with Office Liquidators, you can sidestep all the niceties and get straight to the point: acquiring practical furniture and benefiting from corporate misfortunes.
A Roth IRA t-shirt in the spirit of Black Flag. For those who believe in 80s punk rock values and strategic investing in long-term, compounding retirement funds.
I have invited some new people to follow the blog. As a project, this one is not about generating traffic. It’s more about staying in touch with people through email, sharing the things I appreciate, and attempting to understand the weird dynamics of our world.
It’s my small gesture of saying nope, I’m Not Dead Yet.
I’ve set it up so that if you reply to the email, it will go to my gmail inbox. So, tell me what’s on your mind. Give me your notes. I’d love to hear from you.
—Michael Neault | Chicago
