Juneteenth in Chicago

“Thanks” to holiday disparity between Liz’s work calendar and mine (don’t get us started!) I drove home to Chicago for a nice weekend with Mom and Dad. Halfway home I stopped for sliders at Power’s in Fort Wayne, another Hamburger America spot checked off the list! They really were like if a person made you White Castle with care and the onions were rather thickly sliced. Nice.

I left for Oak Park from work around noon and ran into just some of the worst Chicago traffic coming in. Just how it had to be. The drive took a few more hours than I expected. Just how it had to be. I did eventually get there and that’s what matters.

And after a nice dinner at home with Mom and Dad, a walk around the neighborhood with Mom and Dad, followed by additional Brigham solo-walking.

On Friday the 19th I set off on a huge walk that eventually got too huge. First I walked down to the L station, passing OPRF construction along the way..

And then I made my way from the West Loop to the Loop and ate at a Hawaiian restaurant that did not meet hopes or expectations.

From lunch we go to the Art Institute for a bit.

From the Art Institute, a walk up Michigan Avenue

The main goal of my walk up Michigan: a visit to Chicago’s new Leica store, to see if they had the new 35mm f/1.2 Noctilux. Which they did. And to see if they’d let me try it out. Which they did.

$10,000 is quite the price for a lens (and not nearly the most expensive Leica lens, either). But consider this photo and the far beyond 100% close up on the lens…look how clear and sharp that lettering is, at f/1.2. That’s not nothing.

From the Leica Store I backtrack and eventually make it all the way back home. 25,000 steps doesn’t seem the right number.

Saturday: Up and at ‘em and down to the Oak Park Farmer’s Market with Dad.

Then we went with Mom to Palmisano Park, a quarry park right in the middle of a part of Chicago I don’t know that I’ve ever been to before. We had a nice explore and worked up the perfect Johnnie’s hunger.

Saturday afternoon: I walk to downtown Oak Park to mail a postcard. To whom? Oh you know who!

And that evening, a little family walk. On Sunday we went to church and celebrated Father's Day and then my drive home to Columbus took a lot, lot longer than expected. Seems I should adjust my expectations. Anyway. Nice Chicago weekend.

May 2026

I am going to make this post out of order, time wise, to make it more interesting. I mean to start with something more interesting. Because if I made the post in chronological order, then it would start with lots of pictures from walks without any people in them. And that’s a little less interesting of a way to start a post.

But here’s a great way to start a post: With a wedding! On May 16 I went with Liz to the wedding of a former coworker of her’s and it was a really lovely affair, like just the best and sweetest time. And also, we had just gotten an offer on our house after it only being on the market for one day. So Liz and I were riding high and enjoying that wedding! (…however, those would be buyers would eventually become not buyers, but guess what, I’m writing this post in the middle of July and we’ve completely sold the old house, so all’s well that ends well).

Another thing that had me in a great wedding mood is I finally had an occasion to wear my blue seersucker JPress suit, at last, and I was really feeling myself. As I believe I should have been. Shout out to Keith for the talking to about wearing a pocket square he had given me a few years back. In this occasion it was certainly the thing to have done.

Okay now we jump back in time to May 9 when I needed to go to the old house for some reason and took some Hardesty Heights pictures. It’s a cute place to live! Or to have lived! (but don’t worry I am still alive a ghost is not writing this).

And another cute place to live is our current house, a.k.a. our new house!

On May 11 I took a day off from work so that I could go to this marshy place near our house and see what kinds of animals or birds I might see in the very early morning. The answer: normal birds, some deer. It was nice, though.

May 15 we went and celebrated Anne’s birthday at a favorite Italian restaurant where they kicked us out of our private room right after dropping the check. Hrrmmm. Pasta was good as always, though. Maybe we’ll be back at PF Chang’s next year?

Later that evening, a bit of a walk in the new neighborhood.

And then May 17th (the day after the wedding at the beginning of the post) a long afternoon walk in the new neighborhood.

Kitty is sad because there’s this scary balloon stuck to the ceiling (it has finally come down).

May 28 Liz had a gig at Ginger Rabbit with Orb but you do NOT want to miss her co-headlining show there on Saturday July 18!!

May 29 we had the privilege of attending Lizzie’s high school graduation. It had been a long while since my last graduation!

And then, on the morning of May 31, Liz ran a 5K with her co-workers and I got to get the Go Liz Go sign out!

And that was May! Or at least the parts of May where we weren’t in New York!

Twenty Two Years of Blogging / A New York City Trip

I started blogging 22 years ago, looking for way to share pictures from a Memorial Day hike on the internet. I couldn’t figure out how to post photos, but I did post a post about eating at Benny’s Burritos (RIP) in the West Village.

22 Memorial Days later, I found myself heading to New York for a long weekend with my wife, Liz, so let’s call this the 22nd Anniversary Post and maybe that will get more views?

Anyway, every now and then Liz and I just sense it’s time to go visit New York. A few months ago that feeling came over us again and so we lined up all our travel ducks and then, a month or two later, we were off to New York once more!

The spirit of Spirit, gone but not forgotten, lives on at the Columbus Airport.

An especially interesting duck that got lined up for this trip: When I was booking our flight, first class tickets were fewer points than economy? Uh oh, guess we had to fly an hour to New York in moderate luxury, what can you do?

New York City, Baby! Our generous hostess generously ordered us an Uber to her apartment that she was lending us, you really can’t beat that kind of hospitality. A quick zippy ride got us to Harlem, hungry, and a little wandering had us hooking ourselves up with a nice tray of chicken and rice. What a life!

And then the next morning we woke up and it was Saturday morning. Liz went off on a big run and I walked over to and around my old East Harlem neighborhood. It, uhm, looked less good than before? Nice to hear that sometimes the tides of gentrification get beaten back, I guess?

Liz and I met back up at Luigi’s Garden of Love.

Back to the apartment for a minute and down to the subway, it was time to go downtown and start our New York City day for real!

And we started that day right with Yellow Rose brunch! It’s funny how many trips we say “we don’t necessarily need to get Yellow Rose every time” but every time we go to Yellow Rose and say “oh we’re so glad we went to Yellow Rose!” This time I was especially grateful to finally try their avocado dip.

Then we walked down Bowery to our next destination and I caught a top tier photo of Liz doing a top tier Liz-move.

Our next destination? The newly opened New Museum new expansion! Bigger and better? Absolutely, and pretty seamless, if you ask me. There’s just more room and a new way in. And a nice big weird exhibit about, I don’t know, humans and technology? to kick it off. A good wander it was.

Rain had been very much in the forecast and when we left the museum that rain had arrived. Sort of thought we could power through it through Nolita and environs, but eventually that rain got real oppressive. We tried the big deal L’Industrie Pizza, which was packed a chaotic, probably because it had a roof. But that pizza was pretty good. Also made a Hamburger America stop, because those burgers are real great.

And for the grand finale of our rainy New York Saturday, Liz took us to see Maybe Happy Ending, an awful good musical that is famous and award winning, and rightfully so! Probably my favorite part of our New York trip, too.

Now…a New York City Sunday! With a lot of Brooklyn in it. We start the day with a long subway ride out to Fort Greene for brunch at Sailor, April Bloomfield’s new-ish restaurant. Let me tell you, it’s great to have April cooking in New York again and I arrived at this restaurant with high hopes and, Yep, expectations were exceeded! Totally cool looking restaurant + super good food, that’s my kind of place! (Probably everyone’s kind of place).

We ate: salad with oregano dressing!

An asparagus and pea quiche … wow!

And the Sailor Burger with melted onions and cheddar. As you may know, every April Bloomfield restaurant features an awesome burger and, well, that streak most definitely continues at Sailor because Wow, I don’t know if this is the best burger I’ve ever had BUT I can’t think of a burger that I’ve had that was better than it. Really!

Our waiter forgot that we had ordered the French toast but we didn’t.

A very contented diner.

And then we made our drizzly way back into Manhattan for a little church and a visit to the Whitney with Garrett.

I was real keen on getting to the Whitney because it’s Biennial Time and, well, have you ever noticed that sometimes the Biennial is a little Yawn? This was one of those Biennials. Nothing really popping in there for me, but very glad to have the chance to catch up with Garrett and to watch Liz look at art. (And she’ll tell you that it wasn’t an especially good Biennial herself, too).

After saying Adieu to Garrett we zoomed back to Brooklyn once more for a Frankies/F&F Pizza feast with Ned. I am glad Liz had been craving Frankies because, really, nothing hits quite like a perfect Frankies meal, and that’s what we had. Chatting it up, chowing down, that’s the life.

BTW, at Frankies we feasted on classics: the fennel celery root salad, cavatelli, meatballs, the braised short rib and chocolate tart. And at F&F I just had a pepperoni slice, but if I had had room for more than one slice, I would’ve had their clam slice. It’s so nice, that slice.

After dinner, a nice walk to downtown Brooklyn, Ned’s first Daily Provision cruller (sorry no picture), a nice long A train ride, and an adios to good ol’ Ned.

Then the next day was a New York Monday, a New York Monday like no other, a Memorial Day with a big plan. The plan?

Well. As you might know Liz is a big Princess Diaries fan. A fan of the original book series, that is, which takes place in New York, not San Francisco. So I organized a NYC Princess Diaries walking tour of locations from the book, and dear Patricia joined us for the fun. It was mostly rather well-known NYC spots, but on this occasion they were more special than usual because they were Princess Diaries NYC spots.

We started our day with a little breakfast at the Central Park Boathouse, the location of a pivotal reunion for Princess Mia in one of the later books.

Then we walked over to 75th and Lexington where Mia’s fictional high school, the fictional Albert Einstein High School, is fictionally located. There is a smaller sized private school nearby and also, oh what’s this? The former Whitney Museum, which is now a Sotheby’s location. We went in there for a bit and had a little look at what there was to see. Not too much was on display, but it’s nice to see the old adobe village stayed with the building.

Next we visited the Central Park Zoo, which Mia famously retreats to to gather her thoughts in the penguin habitat after finding out she was a princess. We had a nice visit with all the animals.

We walked by the Plaza Hotel, were spooked by the Do Not Enter signs, and soon called it a day for the midtown portion of the tour. We said good bye to Patricia and hello to a little rest and recharge at our hostess’s apartment.

And then back down to midtown with us for dinner at Keen’s with our buddy Jeff. None of us had ever been to this old famous steak house and, now that I’ve been, I can only ask Why the heck hadn't we? It was super great in there! Service was extremely top notch and I’ll say that the food was nearly as good as Peter Luger … but also, Peter Luger doesn’t bring out chilled crudite with pickles, olives and chunky blue cheese dressing when you’re seated. Or sell a very famous mutton. So everyone has their special speciality. And if you aren’t in the mood for a trek out to south Williamsburg, may I enthusiastically recommend a visit to Keen’s.

You will see below that we shared a Taste of Mutton, a salad, bacon, the steak for two, roasted mushrooms, and a chocolate sundae.

Keen’s has an abundance of themed rooms and cool decorations and a little email to the reservation desk a month before our visit secured us an enviable spot right below the big tiger painting.

Big meal = Big Walk and we hoofed it down to Houston street, spending extra time on Thompson Street trying to sense which building might have been Mia’s house because the books give a non-existent address.

Tuesday. Time to go home? Not just yet! Our flight isn’t until, like, 6 or 7. I start the morning off with a walk around Morningside Park and the general Columbia area.

Then we went and got breakfast from a new Daily Provisions that had opened up in midtown, but we had to wait a bit before we could go up to it. And it might be too late to say this, but if you ever have the chance to try DP’s special yuzu cruller, Get It!

Then Liz and I went downtown and had solo adventures for a bit. I engaged in one of my favorite activities: going around trying on jackets and Oxfords (I’ve gone easy on you and not posted them all), buying Mexican food (a couple tacos from Beto’s [sorry Utah friends, it’s a different Beto], a bean and cheese burrito from Son del North), and looking stuff throughout the LES/Nolita/Soho and Tribeca.

Then Liz and I were joyfully reunited and went up to the Morgan Library for a little look around. They had a Mozart exhibit with cool stuff like Wolfgang’s childhood violin.

Then we went back to “our” apartment, told Erwin goodbye, got ourselves onto an airplane and eventually were on our way back to Columbus (in First Class! don’t forget about that part of the trip!), very happy to have had a very nice New York City time.