Barack's Rock

What in holy hell is that edifice wreck doing in my old neighborhood?!

I guess as a long-time Democrat I am required to pluck down the $30 admission fee, buy the over-priced merch, and pay cult-like homage to the new $850 million-dollar Obama Presidential Center, aka Barack’s Rock. To praise all the real (or imagined) benefits it will provide to Chicago’s South Side. And always to honor what in comparison to what we suffer at the present was a fairly successful presidency, albeit as low a bar as you can limbo under.

But I’m not there yet. Neither are the critics.

“A defensive bunker.” Guardian

“Cold and forbidding…Standing just below it in Jackson Park, the tower looms like a castle keep, its mass and height in tension with the park’s pastoral beauty and origins.” NYT

“Sightless shrine.” “A cerebral version of the Trump ballroom.” Tina Brown

The 225-foot granite monolith that obscenely towers over my beloved Jackson Park, on Chicago’s South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park, where I was raised, is an assault on my sense of aesthetics and a visible blot on my city’s landscape.

(Note: President Trump’s planned golden arch will be 250-feet in height, or 25 feet taller than Obama’s rock of ages. Hmm, is this one of those macho male ego throw-downs? My edifice wreck is bigger than your edifice wreck? Times like these I sure miss Jimmy Carter.)

Speaking of princely egos, remember Obama’s over-the-top 60th birthday at his $12 million, 30-acre oceanfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard. At least there were no tattooed bros hitting each other in the brain. But still.

I wrote about it here for the Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/obama-birthday-party-covid-liberal-b1896934.html

My third grade class. Bret Harte Elementary School. 1963. I am the only one with his eyes closed.

I attended Bret Harte grade school, on 56^th Street, directly across from the northern-most reaches of Jackson Park. At lunch my buddies and I would play Civil War in the park, the North versus the South. We walked the bridle path in search of change that fell out of the riders’ pockets.

If I had any money for lunch (almost never), I would head kitty-corner from Bret Harte to Ed’s Lunch, a wooden fire-hazard of a shack on Stoney Island, for a hot dog, chips and maybe a Pay Day candy bar.

I was also a “patrol boy,” holding up traffic so my classmates could safely cross the small intersection at the historic Hotel Windermere Hotel’s parking garage. There was nothing valiant about my volunteer service. After all, I could leave school 15 minutes early to man my post. Additionally, the majestic Windermere was where some of my beloved White Sox lived. I met pitchers Gary Peters and Joe Horlen there, still a thrilling memory.

My pack of kids were once entertained by a nose-less man. He sat facing us at a picnic table in the park. Although he reeked of wine and his clothes were soiled, he seemed content and centered, not at all like our squirmy, odorous tribe of pre-teen boys.

He did appall us at first, but after the first lunch hour with him, we no longer felt there was anything odd about him. In a big city you see the complete range of human shapes, sizes and malformations. Leg-less people rolling around on carts, propelling their bodies down the sidewalks with their hands. Women with elephantiasis, their baggy skin cascading around their ankles like a second skin. Dwarfs waiting for the bus, dressed in three-piece suits, checking their watches, and carrying briefcases.

Our guy lived in our park and even smoked, an activity many of us were desperate to try. He blew the smoke out the two brown holes above his mouth, proving that his respiratory system still worked.

Jackson Park was our urban wilderness. We spend every free moment roaming among its overgrown shrubs and towering trees. Lake Michigan shimmered to the east, just beyond Promontory Point’s battery of Nike Hercules missiles. Much later I heard that it was possible that some of those missiles had live nuclear warheads on their tips, and that two hundred trees were cut down to make room for them. The Chicago American boasted of the missiles: “A ring of sword-like guided missiles called the Nike—revealed for the first time today—stands ready to send sudden death belting into the sky to meet any enemy head on.”

We related to Jackson Park at a kids’ ground level, a 550-acre playground. The most impressive structure was the Museum of Science and Industry, where we fantasized about sneaking in after hours and having all the exhibits to ourselves. I would have headed right to the working coal mine. Or the submarine. Or the model train set.

But this too-tall swaggering fortress of wealth poking up at the sky like an infected jagged tooth? What is it doing in my park? Why is it taller than the trees? Is this what Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux had in mind when in 1871 they designed the park? In Robin Bachin’s book “Building the South Side,” the author quotes Olmstead regarding these public spaces that they contain “the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green pastures and the still waters. What we want to gain is the tranquility and rest to the mind.”

But when I see the Obamalisk towering over the South Side like a Giza-like homage to a pharaoh, all I can I think about is that the target of our next No Kings rally might just warrant another addition.

END