August 2024 Issue: Roads (Print Edition)

Time As a Medium

A conversation with Amay Kataria about past and future art

"With an impressive résumé and body of work as both an artist and curator, Kataria has established himself as an important player in the shaping of Chicago’s art scene. Often through the incorporation of new media and technology, Kataria explores time, connection and the impact machines have on the nuanced nature of the human social condition." (Regan Dockery)

Roads

800 East

The benevolence of Cottage Grove Avenue

"B.B. King at the Trianon and Grand Ballrooms in the sixties. Decades before Count Basie and his Orchestra would play at the Pershing Lounge. Less than half a mile away, Lorado Taft, sculptor, erected his masterpiece “The Fountain of Time” (aka: Time; aka: Washington Fountain), considered the world’s first finished structure of concrete art. In or around 1980, a man tries to walk out of Seymour’s Pool Hall on 82nd without paying the bet he lost in a game and gets straight shot in his ass as soon as he opens the pool-hall door to leave, to a shitload of laughter from everyone in attendance, except the man sitting on the Cottage Grove concrete with a second hole now in his ass." (Scoop Jackson)

Fish Boils and Kewpee Burgers

Adventures just beyond the cheddar curtain

"Like sorcerers, two men stand over steaming cauldrons of water that are heated by flame fueled by chunks of oak and pine. First, red potatoes and onions are dropped inside. Then pieces of boneless fresh cod, some the size of a brick, are placed inside a steel cage. As the cage is lowered carefully, a blast of steam erupts from the fiery kettle." (David Witter)

Going to Iowa

In search of art among the ruins

"I grew up on the mother’s milk of the American road romance, an idea as manifestly emblematic of our experiment in democracy as yoga pants and Taylor Swift. And though I unabashedly admit to understanding the mass appeal of none of these things, as a child of the suburbs, the interstate, one to whom even a shitty car seemed like both the conveyance and the course to unfettered personal liberation, that I should not understand the allure of the open road was, to me, an American, the most vexing of the three." (Alan Pocaro)

Imagined Roads

Against “it is what it is”

"If only I had called J. more often, especially that summer and fall. If I had sought out her Facebook page, if I had commented on her articles. If I hadn’t asked her for favors, if so-and-so might want me to speak to their class, if that editor might want…." (S.L. Wisenberg)

Jamming

A good time to be in traffic

"There’s a period of my life I recall through traffic accidents and disruptions. I know exactly where I was the morning Governor Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal broke from Fort Lee, New Jersey, limiting access onto the George Washington Bridge." (John Moss)

Lake Shore Boulevard?

Fixing the mistake on the lake

"State Representative Kam Buckner, whose district stretches from the Gold Coast to Hyde Park, loves the Lakefront. But he doesn’t love the current design of Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable Lake Shore Drive. He thinks it’s too fast and too big, and that it needs to change to better move people around the city and adapt to a warming climate." (Mary Wisniewski)

Remembrances of Things Past

Larry Henricksen has a half million collective memories

"One of the first incongruous signals of Larry Henricksen’s passion for travel is that there is nowhere to park his Toyota Scion, Dodge Caravan, or trailer in the two-car garage of the Carol Stream home he shares with his longtime wife Sherry. The garage is filled with postcards." (Dave Hoekstra)

Road Kill

Life and death on wheels

"Neither the deer nor I foresaw its demise. It was dusk, the ungulate witching hour, and the doomed, frightened animal leapt suddenly from the brush-choked culvert along I-57. Had it leapt a second earlier, it would have cleared the front left bumper of my Ford Fusion. Had it leapt a second later, it would have crashed through my windshield." (Patrick Roberts)

Skip to the Lou

Exploring the original food and drink of St. Louis

"On a recent road trip, we found foods that St. Louis lays claim to as their very own. We’re not talking about chef’s specials or one-offs; we’re talking about foods that are traditional to that city and are served at multiple restaurants in what used to be called “Mound City” (in recognition of the native American Cahokia mounds that are right across the Mississippi in Illinois). These are not fancy foods, and it’s unlikely you’d find any of them at a white tablecloth restaurant." (David Hammond)

With Miles to Go

Music on the road

"I’ve always liked songs about the road or songs heard while on the road, which is ironic since I don’t drive. But unlike Larry McMurtry, who preferred driving the anonymous interstate—the best way to avoid human contact, he said—I am partial to William Least Heat Moon’s blue highways or Annie Proulx’s dirt roads. The farther off the interstate, the better." (June Sawyers)

Arts & Culture

Reviews

Poetry

76 Pages

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