Pants in the bedroom but still can't get my head around the balls

It all began with pants in the bedroom.

For those of you born and raised on this side of the pond, there’s nothing too unusual about that. But for Windy City blow-ins like myself, the use of the word "pants" in the bedroom had previously been restricted to non-legged undergarments as in “the dog’s got your pants again – that’s what happens when you drop them on the floor”.

But last week I caught myself asking Super if he wanted me to take his pants to the dry cleaners. What’s worse, he understood. It was then I realized that the conversion from Irish to Chirish was well underway. I’m even getting used to seeing "realized" spelt (spelled) with a “z”- and can say “zee” rather than “zed”.

I’ve written before about how sharing the same language hasn’t meant conversations with the locals don’t get lost in translation. Our first summer, we did the obligatory trip to Navy Pier and I tried to buy water from a hot dog stand. The conversation went like this. 

"Two waters, please”

“Two orders of what?” 

This was repeated several times until I realized I had forgotten the “pretend you have a piece of fluff at the back of your throat which you are trying to regurgitate” method. I also tried to hand out Hallowe’en rubbers to trick-or-treaters this year – until I remembered they are called erasers.

But I do now go to the grocery “store” to buy “produce”, with the emphasis on the “pro” rather than the “prod” – perhaps that’s a clever ploy by the locals to stop you doing just that with the avos and peaches. There they laugh at me when I say I don’t need a bag as I’m just going “down the road”. Although to be fair, with a Northern Ireland accent, even my British friends laugh at me when I say that. Sidebar, if you meet someone from Northern Ireland, get them to say “How, now, brown cow”. Better still, google Liam Neeson talking about his role in a cowboy movie and you’ll get my point.

I talk about my kids being in 10^th Grade or being a sophomore (still had to check how to spell it ‘though) and I’ve even discussed an upcoming Manchester United "soccer" match. But that leads me to one thing I am still struggling to come to grips with – all the balls, be it foot, base or basket.

Now this I appreciate is a true crime in Chirish-land where if there is more than one team in a particular sport, you must decide for one or the other. Actually this is in a way similar to my wee corner of Ireland where you have to be either Protestant or Catholic. To the extent, that when Super discovered he had Jewish ancestry, our local 90-year old farmer, in all sincerity, asked him “But are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?”

My inability to sort out the balls is so bad that I have to use my own mnemonic tricks to remember who plays what. So (in my mind) it goes “cubs” rhyme with “clubs” so the Cubs are baseball, “bears” make me think of “barefoot” so the Bears are football, “bulls” go with “balls” so that leaves basketball. 

The Blackhawks I have no problem remembering as we moved into our new home just before they won the Stanley Cup. The cheering that night made me first think of football games in Brazil while the window-smashing and police sirens later took me back to my wee corner of Ireland. I haven’t worked out anything yet for the White Sox so needless to say if asked which baseball team I support, I’m for the Cubs.

Plus it took me a while to see their team logo says ‘Sox” – sorry, back to the bedroom again!

"Bone-ing" up on the local underground history

We’re surrounded by bones, half-empty graveyards and ghosts. And not just in our neighbours’ Hallowe’en-bedecked gardens.

It all started on a dark, windy night. Well, actually, it was a sunny, cloudless day when, walking in Lincoln Park, I noticed an innocuous sign marked “Hidden Truths”. “Hidden Bodies” would have been more appropriate as it explained Lincoln Park used to be a city cemetery and the final resting place for an estimated 35,000 souls. That was until the city decided at the end of the 19^th Century it needed the land and that those resting places weren't so final.

But with only 10 men reportedly given just over a month to complete the task, not all of the bodies managed to make it to new graves. Some researchers estimate over 10,000 people could still be buried there to this day. That’s a ballpark figure. To include the ball park, the Lincoln Park Farm Zoo and the Chicago History Museum. A museum which, by the way, literally proved to be history in the making after builders constructing its underground car park in 1998 discovered the remains of 81 early Chicagoans and an iron coffin. As the bones were over 100 hundred years old, they at least did manage to find a final resting place - the Illinois State Museum.

Our underground Lincoln Park neighbours aren't the only local ghosts we have to watch out for next week. Just down the road from us at 2122 North Clark Street is the site of the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre where arch gangster Al Capone had seven men gunned down in a garage. Six of the men worked for Capone’s rival Bugs Moran, the seventh was an unlucky car mechanic. The garage has since been torn down and now is the garden of a retirement home. No irony there. 

Apparently some of the senior residents have reported seeing gangster ghosts and hearing screams and automatic gunfire. Others claim that dogs walking past the site become very agitated. This, the paranormal experts say, could be due to a "psychic imprint" left by Highball, the unlucky mechanic’s dog, who witnessed the murders and was apparently permanently traumatized by the event.

I decided to test this one out by walking the Irish Wheaten Terror past the spot the other day and for once he was as good as gold. For some reason, all he wanted to do was go and dig holes in Lincoln Park….

The Chirish guide to being Irish

As the great day approaches, the many suggestions on offer as to how to celebrate the wearing of the green never cease to amaze me, mainly because many of them are about as Irish as Barack O’Bama. So here are a few guidelines to show your green credentials are more emerald than limey.

Don’t eat corned beef and cabbage

A favourite beef of mine (sorry). This most un-Irish of dishes came to my attention in our first year living in the Big Apple and I assumed it was simply because corned beef was readily available as a stalwart in Jewish cuisine. However the Big Onion, in all its Chirish-ness, is no different which got me wondering.

A few google searches later and I discover the most traditionally Irish thing about corned beef was the beef itself. Back in the 17^th to 19^th centuries, it was a big industry in Ireland, either traded via the Atlantic or used by the British armed forces. But, as you can probably guess, Irish people themselves couldn’t afford it - until they emigrated to America, that is. So it really is an O'Bama-style traditional Irish dish.

The true culinary companion to cabbage (and not to found in Jewish cuisine)  has to be ham, either boiled or baked. But then we're back to the old American bacon versus Irish bacon dilemma. Except we've solved that one by getting Male Mini-Me a DIY curing kit for Christmas so now there are two males bringing home the bacon in this household.

And then there’s lamb. You really can’t get more Irish than Irish stew but trying to track down some reasonably-priced lamb is like trying to catch a haggis on a Scottish mountain (you know, the creatures with one set of legs shorter than the other so it can run quickly around the hillsides).

If that seems like a tall story to you, I’m seriously beginning to wonder if all the sheep here only comprise of legs as a) that’s all I seem to be able to buy in the shops and b) it would account for why it costs an arm and a leg to buy them.

Don’t imagine it’s always been a big parade day in the Emerald Isle

The first St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin was only held in 1931. Given the man himself died on March 17, 461, it has taken a while for the whole green-shamrock-beads-in-the-shops thing to catch on.

In my wee corner of Ireland (where the great man is actually thought to be buried), it took us even longer to jump on the parade bandwagon, with our first parade in Belfast only taking place In 1998. Support at that time was, shall we say, mixed, despite it trying to be very much a cross-community event - which in Norn Iron usually just means one or other of the two communities is cross.

Today, I am proud to say, the Belfast “carnival parade” is very much cross-community, with this year’s line-up including a "Manchester-born winner of the UK X-Factor", the Tir na N’Og Irish dancers and the South Asian Dance Academy

Don’t wear green but blue instead

Only kidding on that one although apparently St Patrick was originally associated with the colour blue.  Even today, St Patrick’s blue is a sky blue used by the Order of St Patrick in the UK or a dark blue in Ireland as seen in the Irish Presidential Standard

Don’t expect to be served a drink in a pub on St Patrick’s Day

Again, only kidding although in Ireland, it was true for over 30 years last century. That was because the very nice man who made St Patrick’s Day a national holiday in 1903 also instigated a law closing pubs for the day in 1927 for fear of excessive alcohol consumption on a religious holiday. The law was repealed in 1961 but during that time, the only place to drink legally in Dublin was the Royal Dublin Society Dog show. Surprisingly attendance shot up. No doubt they all needed the hair of the dog come March 18.

Don’t go on the go unless you want to be fined up to $1,000

And here I’m not joking! We all know that what goes in has to come out sometime and there is a fair amount of imbibing of many dubious liquids on March 17. In order to avoid dubious liquids of another sort, Chicago’s City Council last April doubled the maximum fines for both drinking and tinkling in public to $1,000.

Given this will be the first St Patrick's Day under the new ruling, it brings a whole new meaning to the traditional pot of gold!

Chirish-land shows its true colour - all 40 shades of it....

If we’ve been feeling the effects of global warming over the past few months, at last we’re about to embark on a period of global greening, even if we can’t quite yet see the grass through the snow!

St Patrick’s Day is just around the corner and Chicago is participating in Tourism Ireland’s annual "Global Greening" campaign which sees iconic monuments such as the Sydney Opera House and the Pyramids in Egypt all given the green light. 

Buildings and skyscrapers all over Chirish-land will adopt several of the 40 famous shades (as opposed to 50 infamous ones) in the week running up to next Saturday’s parade and the celebrated dyeing of the Chicago river.

The first thing that pops into your head when you see the Chicago river is that it is green already. Honest, it is. A nice murky, soggy welly-boot, moss-covered-wood-‘cos-it’s been-raining-non-stop-for-two-weeks green. But apparently it gets greener.

The story goes that in 1961 the Business Manager of the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers encountered a workman in Irish green-splattered overalls. He discovered the plumber had been using a green dye to test for waste leakages in the river and the idea for turning the river into an apparent field of clover was born.

The first year, around 100 lbs of dye were used and the "clover" hung around for a week. More recently, worries about possible pollution caused the Chicago Journeymen Plumbers to rethink their dousing and today around 40 lbs of vegetable dye are used, the recipe for which is as closely guarded a secret as Coca Cola. 

The powder dye is actually orange so you just need some white in there and there's the Irish tricolour. Which could be provided this year by floating blocks of ice as we'll only be seeing daytime temperatures climb above freezing in the week before the big event.

Having lived through a few St Paddy’s Days in New York, I’m almost immune now to the luminous-green hats, beads and flashing sunglasses that invade the shops this time of year. The Shamrock Shakes are back at McDonald’s and the supermarkets are pushing corned beef and cabbage (don’t ask). I did have to look up the ingredients for an Irish Car Bomb cocktail as it was a new one on me. Needless to say, it sounds as if it should taste as awful as its tasteless name.

I’ve been warned that the top of our wee road is a no-go area the day of the parade because the rest of the city will have been on the go there since 8am. In particular we’ve been told our go-to local Irish pub, the nicest I’ve been in outside of the Emerald Isle and provider of real Irish bacon, sausages and tea during early morning Premier League football matches, is a very definite no-go-to. 

So we’re planning to give it a miss parade-day and instead slip over there for a quiet dinner and wee drink the following Monday night when all the shenanigans have died down. Why that Monday? Only because it’s actually St Patrick’s Day!

Gum, Goofy and the Golden Arches – the Chicago connection

Wrigley’s chewing gum, Walt Disney and McDonald's – three things I’ve always regarded as all-American. What I’ve never realized until recently is they are also all-Chicagoan.

The gum I hit upon soon after our arrival, a big clue being the fact the name Wrigley kept cropping up around our new hometown. As in Wrigley Building on Michigan Avenue, Wrigley Field, home to the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and the Wrigley Mansion, home to well, I’m not sure whom but a very nice one at any rate, on Lincoln Park.

What I soon after discovered is that Mr Wrigley was not originally Mr Gum. His first loves were scouring soap and baking powder. But obviously there was much competition amongst purveyors of baking powder back in the 1890s so Wrigley started giving away sticks of the sticky stuff as an added stick. And it stuck.

Not only did Wrigley introduce us to Doublemint, but also to the idea of a double day of rest at the end of the week. For he was one of the first employers to give his factory workers both Saturday and Sunday off. Wrigley, the company, is still looking out for us even today. A visit to wrigley.com saw me clicking in the intriguing “Benefits of Chewing” link. There I discovered how chewing sugar-free gum for 20 minutes after food and drinks has been proven to help protect your teeth.

Better still, chew instead of chow. And then you save the calories but, thanks to Wrigley, you can still savour the flavor. Especially if you choose any of the Extra Dessert Delights options such as Key Lime Pie, Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream and Strawberry Shortcake.

I’m waiting to see if they take it a step further and develop a hamburger variety. But that might be encroaching on the territory of a certain Chicagoan corporate neighbour that also boasts a downtown landmark building. Except that instead of the Wrigley Building’s ornate, soaring clock tower, this one has 60-ft golden arches. And seating for 300. And a two-lane drive–through.

I only discovered recently that McDonald’s has its corporate headquarters in the Chicagoan suburb of Oak Brook. But I should have been tipped off by the city's Thanksgiving Parade. Until now this American tradition has been indelibly linked in my mind with the word “Macy’s”. But whereas in the Big Apple, the parade was thanks to the owners of the big shop, in the Big Onion, it’s all down to the makers of the Big Mac.

McDonald's Corp's Chicago base is because the company's founder, Ray Kroc, was born in Oak Brook. Again news to me but apparently the man who had the vision to plant those Golden Arches across America and beyond did not own the chain’s first burger bar in California (that was in fact owned by the McDonald brothers). Kroc, a milkshake machine salesman, visited the restaurant, saw the patty potential and entered into business with the McDonald brothers, eventually buying out the exclusive rights to the McDonald’s name. I suppose even he didn’t think McKroc’s sounded the same.

Reading about Kroc led me to discover my third, somewhat surprising, Chicago connection. When he was 15, Kroc lied about his age and joined the Red Cross during the First World War. At a training camp in Connecticut, he came across another Chicagoan who had done the same. In his autobiography, Kroc noted this young chap never came out on the town with the rest of the volunteers when they had time off. Instead he would stay in the camp drawing. His name? Walt Disney.

Disney’s Chicagoan heritage may not be known to many but the city is taking steps to correct this. Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared December 5 – Disney’s birth date in 1901 – to be Walt Disney Day. The same day, the new owners of the Disney family home where Walt was born announced their plans to restore the house to its original state and eventually open a small private museum. 

The house was built by Walt's carpenter father Elias in 1893 while he was working on the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Many believe that Elias’ stories about the World Fair (which saw the creation of the Ferris wheel) helped inspire Walt Disney's own Magic Kingdom in later life.

Come to think of it, modern day Chicago still has much that resembles Disneyland. A Main Street, a big lake, castles and towers like the Wrigley Building, rides like the Ferris Wheel on Navy Pier - and, of course, McDonald's!

POST FROM THE PAST: Seeing red as Planet Big Apple prepares for "V-Day"

From the archives of www.newyorksubalien.com, a Valentine's Day remembered....

As you can imagine, they don’t do things in halves over in Planet Big Apple – and that certainly applies to Valentine’s Day which no one could say is celebrated over here in a “half-hearted” fashion (sorry).

As soon as they cleared the all-embracing holiday decorations out of the shops, the shelves in our local drug store filled up with little red boxes of candy, enormous rose-carrying, all-embracing stuffed gorillas (I have no idea why – I obviously haven’t evolved enough) and red hearts or variations thereof appeared in every shop window. Even my local shoe-repair store has popped some red heart-covered wellies in the window for sale - or would that mean you want to give her the boot.

And I know that as soon as the candles are blown out and the last champagne, truffle and mungo bean-flavoured chocolate is eaten, everything will go green for St Patrick’s Day. Actually I’ve seen one liquor store that has decided to skip the Valentine’s Day stage altogether and has gone straight to the St Paddy’s Day paraphernalia. Obviously more money in Irish whiskey sales than bottles of cheap pink sparkling wine. Or in the hope that singles will buy Irish whiskey to drink with their mates on St Valentine’s Day – they could call it St Palentine’s Day.

The advanced concept that there’s no reason why St Valentine’s Day should just be enjoyed by lovers is certainly one that has already reached our new home planet. We’re back to that all-embracing, all-inclusive thing again. So of course you should send Valentine’s Day cards to your friends, your work colleagues, your teachers and other members of your family. Walk into a card shop at this time of the year and good luck on finding a birthday card. Rather the walls are full of such permutations as “From grandchildren to grandparents”,  “ From woman to woman”, “From your dog”,  “From tenant to super” (OK, I made the last one up).

There’s the “From wife with religious message” card which seems to me an interesting combination and my favourite - “Celebrating our first holiday together”. No expectations there. Hope there’s an enormous rose-carrying, all-embracing stuffed gorilla waiting for the sender of that one.

What I particularly love is when the most un-Valentiney products get given the V-Day treatment (yes, they even call it V-Day here). I’m not talking about the obvious special discounts ahead of the big day although who could resist the Valentine’s Day nursing uniform and scrubs sale with their heartbeat and Tweety Valentine prints.  No, it’s offers like the “Happy Valentine’s Day” laser removal special for him and her with the great slogan “The couple that lasers together, stays together”.  Now there’s a gift that should go along with the “Celebrating our first holiday together” card.

On the other end of the experience scale, we’re once again feeling our alien genes. This being the first year Male Mini-me is in an American school, I am currently having to go through the same discreet negotiations with my girlfriends as when I was trying to find out about holiday gifts to doormen. Along with the individual, sender-specific cards on display in the stores, there are also multi-packs of 15 cards for schoolkids to send out to their classmates.  However given that Male Mini-me has reached the dizzy heights of Middle School, Mini-Mum (a very definite High-Schooler) has pronounced it uncool to go down the card route. I suppose the fact that the cards were all Disney princesses and SpongeBob should have given me a clue.

Her suggested compromise is to produce Valentine’s Day chocolate rice krispie buns – ie in heart-covered cases and with red sprinkles. These have always been a successful contribution to any class, even in Paris where Male Mini-me's classmates used to ask him for the recipe. I wrote it down for him – it started off “First, find a mother who can’t bake”.  Note for all other Mamasubas out there – the same buns in shamrock cases and green sprinkles make great St Patrick’s Day buns – or turf cakes as I call them. 

And what about my own Valentine’s Day? Well, it will be hard to beat last year – our first with snow on the ground and in an apartment with a little back garden.  As it was Sunday, I was lying in bed with my coffee and champagne, truffle and mungo bean-flavoured chocolates when Male Mini-me called me to look outside. There they were, the two men in my life, grinning away – and a great big heart drawn in the snow with red paint. 

They'll always be my valientines.

Did you hear the one about the turkey and the menorah?

I come from the wee corner of the Green Island not known for its integration and cultural togetherness. So I can only turn green with envy observing the preparations for a once-in-a-lifetime event about to be celebrated across this much larger island.

Next week is Thanksgiving, that most sacred of secular holidays in America, when the current natives, no matter their religion, commemorate the dinner enjoyed by the settlers and the then Native Americans after the pilgrims’ first successful harvest.

Thanksgiving is always observed on the last Thursday in November. But what makes this year’s holiday so unique is that November 28 is also the first full day of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.

Never slow to come up with new names for cultural “mash-ups”, this year’s festivities have swiftly been dubbed Thanksgivukkah. And given both celebrations focus heavily on eating, not surprisingly there’s no shortage of extra-special, cross-cultural delicacies on offer such as turkey-shaped challah bread, sweet potato latkes and pumpkin spice donuts.

One of my favourite collaborations is the menurkey, the brain-child of an actual child, who thought up the idea of combining the Hanukkah menorah, the 9-branched candlestick integral to the Festival of Lights celebrations, with - you guessed it - the turkey.

I’ve seen various versions of when Thanksgivukkah was last celebrated and when it will next appear on the (two) calendar(s). But given the most recent past occurrences are put in the late 1800s and those in the future plotted around the 78,000s (yes, you read correctly), I think it is fair to call this year's joint festivities a once-in-a-lifetime event.

And while not quite once-in-a-lifetime, next week’s holiday is also notable in that it is one of the latest Thanksgivings possible, falling on the 28th. This has less of an impact on the big day itself than on the even bigger day after that – Black Friday. 

This, as you may well know, marks the start of flash sales, lasting up to 72 hours, designed to kick start the present-buying bonanza ahead of Christmas. Except that this year, the late Thanksgiving has robbed retailers of 6 potential days of revenue, making it the shortest pre-Christmas run-up in 11 years. The result is an Inbox inundated daily with sneak peaks, hush-hush previews, Countdown to Black Friday daily deals and the outright blatant “Black Friday starts this Monday”.

I'm a little relieved however the earlier start to the Black Friday activities doesn't seem to have extended to the associated "Blackout" Wednesday goings-on. 

The latter refers to the night before Thanksgiving when everyone home for the big day hits the local bars, figuratively that is (usually). Here in Chirish-land, Blackout Wednesday is apparently a bigger party night than New Year's and even St Patrick's Day. From Turkey Crawls to Very Special Black Wednesday goth nights, the options for revelers are endless - or at least until they have to turn up for the turkey dinner itself. The down-side is that Black Wednesday is rapidly becoming the biggest night of the year for drink-driving arrests and incidents, not only in Chicago but nationwide. 

So on the eve of this extraordinary cross-cultural family holiday, I'd like to add my own humble wish - don't be a turkey and leave the mash-ups to the sweet potatoes. Happy Thanks-give-up-car!

From Big Apple to the Big Onion – a newcomer’s first thoughts

The Big Onion, the Second City, the Windy City – our new hometown has as many nicknames as our old one.

The Big Onion you might not have heard of and derives from the original Native American name for the area – shikaakwa (you know you want to say it aloud) or wild onion.

Second City evolved at the end of the 19^th Century when Chicago became - guess what - the second largest city in the USA in terms of population. Then it became more of a derogatory term in the continuous battle with New York. But no point in Chicagoans being offended as Chicago is now actually the third largest city in the USA after NY and LA.

And as for the Windy City, you can take your pick. Some say it’s the obvious. That great big puddle right by the city called Lake Michigan may have something to do with it. But sure it’s only about four times the size of the wee corner of the Emerald Isle that I come from so why would that make any difference! Others agree it’s to do with a large amount of air – but hot air expended tirelessly by its politicians.

If that were the case, then New York would also be in the running for that title. But it seems to me the two cities make more noise about their differences than their similarities. For example...

Don’t mention tall buildings – this week Chicago’s Willis Tower lost out to New York’s nearly-finished Freedom Tower as America’s tallest building. Both rely on tall pokey bits at the top (ever the architect’s daughter) to get those essential extra inches. But it would appear that the Freedom Tower’s pokey bit is a little more permanent than that of the poor Willis Tower. So it’s been pipped by a slightly longer post.

All this ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ goes back a long way. While most people associate New York with skyscrapers, Chicago was the birthplace of all things multistoried, with the first 10-floored, steel-framed beast rising from the depths of Chicago in the mid-1880s.

Hot dog battles – in New York, use of ketchup is optional; in Chicago it’s a crime

Gotham and the City that Never Sleeps – two well-known names for New York. Less well-known is that Chicago masqueraded as Gotham in the recent Bat Man movies. That’s probably because Chicago does go to sleep, giving production crews the chance to film in empty streets from about 10:30 pm….or 9pm on a week night.

Pizzas – we’re back to size again except this time it’s not about height but depth. But there’s no question here over the winner. While the New York variety is thin and crusty, Chicago is thick and deep, up to 3 inches deep and baked in a cake tin. We’ve yet to steel ourselves to try one (it’s not got THAT cold yet). But anyone worried about the health issues could perhaps try out one of the deep pizza walking tours on offer, complete with promises not to put you into a food coma.

Taxis – everyone knows the iconic New York taxi is yellow. But probably few know the story that the idea of decking out a fleet of cars in bright-custard hues was born in Chicago. This was after a gentleman whose surname is now eponymous with a well-known car hire company asked the local university to pinpoint the most standout colour. He then founded the Yellow Cab Company in 1915 and it is also no surprise that yellow is still used as the background colour in said rental company's logo today. 

What has changed is that Chicago cabs are not always yellow, in fact apparently only one in four are. Today the most popular hue is white, either on its own or in combination with another colour. This takes a while getting used to but at least allayed my concerns about the many blue and white “police cars” that seemed to frequent our local area!

For all their differences, there is one way in which Chicago and New York are seen as closely linked - at least in the subalien household. First there were many Aprils in Paris, then there was New York, New York and now it's fair to say that My Kind of Town, Chicago is. Yup, it's all getting a wee bit like some weird Frank Sinatra pilgrimage. Perhaps there is something Super's not telling me. San Francisco next?