went to the city yesterday in the good company of sr. joan... who managed to pry me out of this lake county cave... with the printer's row book fair on our minds... we ended up in a good day... with or without books... and she drove... freeing me up for some in-car picturizing... as we approached the city...

wherein we intended to park far north at quigley and transport south to the fair... but we had some key trouble... so took a short tour of the quigley chapel's gothic stone and stained glass (imagine my dad here... back in the early thirties) and headed south for public parking... and the el's underside was looking good on this sunny day...

then joan introduced me to the harold washington library... quite a gorgeous operation... inside and out... but i didn't get any pictures... don't know why... i really like the huge copper(?) owls on the roof corners and the flaming copperwork of the cornice (?) ...

i don't know what i was expecting for the book fair... but there it was... a closed street packed and lined with tents... books... and big lots of people...

these were not optimum conditions for browsing or buying.. though it looked like lots of good junk in boxes and on shelves... every time i got close to a shelf and held an actual book in my hands i flashed back to this room with all current reading and un-reading piled up... under better conditions i might have done some damage... but i remained a purchase-free people-watcher...

lots of folks out for the sun... and gospel fest in grant park... made some surreptitious pictures while waiting for the light...

and every trip to the city needs a boring old generic shot of the aion building...

and some passing reference to what was once the world's tallest building...

and a view of the latest chicago gehry... the millenium park bandshell...

that was it... pretty much... aside from the way i ate too much of the fried onion ring lump at dinner...

a note on june's book cover by david bullen: he has apparently worked steadily with jack shoemaker at north point, then counterpoint, and now shoemaker & hoard. this one for life is a miracle sets the rectangles of the title box and the audubon hummingbirds against the faint brown circle in back. it's a cover that feels like it has always existed. bullen's recent covers for the re-publications of the long-legged house and a continuous harmony... using just text and geometry... are also models ofsimple, elegant, and balanced design.

The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.

Italo Calvino

talk to me

brtom.org