The Daily Parker

Politico has a long-form article describing Evanston's efforts to rid its downtown of cars:

With stops for Chicago Transit Authority buses and its “L” rail line, Metra suburban rail’s Union Pacific North line and the Pace suburban bus, Evanston always had great transit bones. For much of its history it had also been a relatively prosperous North Shore city, its growth initially spurred by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, as Chicagoans fled its chaotic density, and in the 20^th century, its share of once-famous industrial names, from Rust-Oleum Corp. to Shure, the audio products company, to Bell & Howell, then best known for its film cameras and projectors.

The answer to the suburb’s economic woes, as it turned out, lay in embracing Lerner’s theory that “city is not the problem, city is solution.” Beginning in 1986, a new plan for Evanston embraced the idea of a “24/7” downtown, pouring resources into increasing the density of its downtown—a density that also meant decreasing residents’ reliance on automobiles. As a compact city, Evanston couldn’t compete with the vast sprawling parking spots of the Old Orchard Mall. It had to build a different sort of appeal.

Evanston’s approach mixed investments in mass transit—including building a new downtown transportation center—and relaxing its zoning restrictions along two designated corridors, Main and Central Streets, to permit increased residential density. “Nobody wanted a 20-story building in their downtown,” recalls Aiello-Fantus, the former assistant city manager. “There was this perception that we’re just a little town and having something 20 stories changes that character.”

I'm glad Evanston's planning is getting national press. I love the place, which is why I lived there for many years (and may do again). For many years before then, my mom lived along the Main Street corridor mentioned in the article—and then moved up to Central Street later on. And, of course, I was just there a couple weeks ago.

Interesting aside: 116 years ago today, the village of Austin ceased to exist as it was absorbed into the City of Chicago by legislative fiat. The city might have swallowed Evanston as well. How Evanston avoided that is a story in itself.

My new LG G4 phone has one hell of a camera:

That's what came out of the phone, unedited (except for location tagging). The phone can save photos in raw .dng format, which Adobe Lightroom reads just fine. This enables full editing control and zero data loss, among other things. Pretty cool.

The Tribune waxes rhapsodic about the season that was:

Let's take stock of all that before we start with the wait-till-next-year business.

Let's celebrate this year.

It was awesome. It was unexpected. It was thrilling.

It was a gift to the city of Chicago from a team of overachievers, including four standout rookie starters.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Cubs all-time postseason home run leader Kyle Schwarber, age 22. Rookie of the year candidate Kris Bryant, 23. Cardinal-killer Jorge Soler, 23. And who knows how this series might have ended if clutch-hitter Addison Russell hadn't been forced to sit out with a pulled hamstring? He's 21.

Sure. Let me put it another way, in October 1918:

Let's take stock of all that before we start with the wait-till-reparations-are-paid business.

Let's celebrate this war.

It was awesome. It was unexpected. It laid waste to Belgium.

It was a gift to the nations of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Russia—sorry, the Soviet Union (a brand-new country!)—from a team of overconfident aristocrats, including four standout emperors.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the largest sum ever spent on a war in the history of mankind: $337 billion, which will be $5.3 trillion adjusted for inflation just 97 years from now. Fourteen million dead (equivalent to 56 million in 2015), not including the 20 million who are about to die of influenza. And who knows how this war would have ended had we not attacked American ships in the Atlantic? Maybe we would have held Alscace for another century. And who will ever forget how tanks changed the game entirely? No more endless trench warfare! Huzzah!

No, guys. The Cubs lost. Again. They lost the league for the 70th time in a row. They haven't won the World Series since just after Henry Ford sold his first Model T. They bloodly lost.

So win the damn pennant, and STFU until then.

It's a little like hearing from an abusive partner a year after breaking up. Glad you're doing better, glad you're getting on your feet, but you're still doing the really bad things that led to me leaving, so no, don't call again.

I've been a Cubs fan for most of my life, as were my parents before me, and some of my ancestors before them. My mother lived and died without seeing them in the World Series, as have about two billion other people who were born after October 1945. It's possible I may never see them win the pennant either.

After last season's 89 losses—not a great improvement over 2013's 96 losses—I broke up with them. They kept saying, "I promise to do better, if only you'll give me another $1,800 and buy some $9 hot dogs." And every year, I'd fork over the money. And then I stopped.

This year they won 97 games. Mazel tov. But when it counted, when they really needed to get their shit together and win, they completely fell apart. Tonight's 8-3 loss to the Mets ended what the Tribune unironically called the Cubs' "Magical Season," perhaps forgetting that they've done this repeatedly.

Keep in mind, they were the wild card this year; the Pirates and the Cardinals had 98 and 100 wins, respectively, putting the Cubs in third place at season's end. And the Cubs had 97 wins in 2008, another heartbreaking year. (And 98 wins in 1945, which wasn't so heartbreaking only because no one could foresee, just a few weeks after the end of World War II, and after the Cubs had just played their third World Series in 10 years, that the Cubs would never win another pennant.)

So tonight, I have mixed feelings. I'm happy the Cubs did better this year than in the preceding six. And I think they have some potential to win next season. But after 70 years, I just can't keep expending emotional energy on them anymore.

Someday, probably, they will win the pennant. Someday they might even win the World Series. But after so many chokes, after so many goats, after so many abject failures when it really counted, I'm done. I was done at the beginning of this season, and I'm still done. I wish the team well in 2016. I hope the fans enjoy the games. But until the Cubs actually win the National League Championship, I'm not giving them a dime. You can call me a fair-weather fan, or you can acknowledge that after hoping against reason for more than 40 seasons that this year could be the year, not giving any more shits is a rational response.

Maybe next year...but I won't be there.

Note: The title of this post echoes a sign across Sheffield from the park. The letters "AC" mean "Anno Catuli:" "Year of the Cub." The first two digits (00) count the years from them last winning the division, the second two (70) from the National League championship, and the remainder (107) from the World Series. They had to add another digit after the 2008 season. That should have told you something.

When the weather is like this (22°C and sunny) in the middle of October, I happily walk the kilometer and a half to the nearest Whole Foods to grab a salad. (When the weather isn't as good, I still walk, just not as happily.)

Today I had a slight delay:

The city raises the bridges most often in October and April to let sailboats through. The whole process takes about 10 minutes, and on a day like today, I'm happy to watch.

 Read or look at these:

• Colorized photos from the Civil War
• The Economist has a list of the best airports to sleep in
• Crain's has a list of Chicago's coolest offices
• Want your kid to be a virtuoso violinist? I hope not
• Today is Back to the Future II day. Here's what they got right
• Don Friesen forgets his password a lot

Oh, and the Cubs lost, which feels somehow familiar.

Tonight's pub quiz got cancelled because of some sports game.

Long-time Daily Parker readers may remember I used to go to lots of Cubs games. Then I got season tickets, after which they lost 185 games in the following two seasons. So we didn't re-up, and this year, the cubs won 97 and tonight will play game 3 of the NLCS.

This year I've been pretty annoyed with myself, and with the team, so I'm just not into the playoffs. Not to mention, this season feels a lot like 2008 or even 2003, both of which ended in heartbreak. The Cubs' 0-2 hole in this year's series is achingly familiar.

So, we're looking forward to a Halloween-themed pub quiz next Tuesday—unless the Cubs do win the pennant, in which case I will, if only because my mother would have wanted it, watch them play game 1 in Toronto or Kansas City.

Incidentally, has anyone else noticed that all four teams in this years' playoffs have dark blue uniforms? And that this may be the first World Series in 22 years with a team from outside the United States? (That interval might possibly be shorter if there were more than one team in major league baseball from abroad. To the extent Toronto qualifies as "abroad," I guess...)

We have a crystal-clear, crisp October morning, perfect for spending three hours in a rehearsal for the Apollo Chorus...sigh.

It's also a good morning to test the new blog engine and posting from my friend's car.

A new runway opened at O'Hare this morning, and the Sun-Times can't understand why:

At a cost of $516 million, a new O’Hare International Airport runway opens this week with so little predicted use — initially 5 percent of all flights — that some question its bang for the buck.

Runway 10R-28L should increase efficiency and arrival capacity when jet traffic moves from west to east — now about 30 percent of the time, officials say. That boost will be especially large during low visibility and critical during peak hours, they contend.

Well, yes, on average it will handle 5% of flights. But it will handle most of those flights during periods of low visibility, when the flights would otherwise be stacked up all the way to Janesville. In other words, the new runway boosts capacity at O'Hare when it's most needed (during bad weather) and doesn't actually hurt anything when it's not needed.

The Sun-Times goes on to quote critics of the new runway who, perhaps not being pilots or aviation engineers, want to lengthen the diagonal runways that cross the east-west runways already in place. Since crossing runways increases the separation between planes on approach, extending 4R/22L and 4L/22R would do nothing to alleviate delays during low visibility.

The Sun-Times own graphic shows that the 5% figure is quite a different story when you look at all of the runways together.

I'm happy for the increased capacity. It should cut weather-related delays at O'Hare significantly, though I'm not wild about the 20-minute taxi time, and I understand residents of Wood Dale and Bensenville aren't wild about the noise.

Two things this weekend kept me from blogging. First, the amazing weather. It was warm and sunny both days, so I spent time picking apples and sitting outside with a book.

The other thing is that the time I did spend at my computer involved working on the replacement for this blog engine.

Regular blogging will continue this week.