The Willis tower (really called the Sears tower) used to be the tallest building in the world. Its not the tallest anymore, so how could they expect to attract the same sort of crowds to the top? With SkyDeck.
A see through box on the 103rd floor that hangs out over the street. I was scared, before I worked up the courage to stand on it I had to tap my feet on it, and even then I jumped straight off 2 or 3 times before taking any pictures. Its supposedly designed to hold 2 elephants, but I still saw someone come straight off when they saw a really fat person get on...
One thing Ive really liked about this city is that almost everywhere seems to have a free day of the week you can go along to. Art museums, the aquarium, the science museum and the planetarium all have this. My favourite of the bunch was probably the planetarium - perhaps because Ive never seen one before. The theatre is amazing, you lie down and look up at the ceiling and look at cool stuff. In my case the cool stuff was giant collisions in space, and sundance told me how it all worked. Amazing. I also got see this:
Important note: I didnt see this at the planetarium.
Chicago is also famous for its deep dish pizza. When I say deep dish, I mean it: the thing was 2 inches deep. Between me and my friend we only managed one small pizza between us. 3 Slices and we were done! Ive never felt so ashamed, but the thing was so thick! (and so good...) If you come to Chicago my only suggestion would be to do it in Summer. Theres loads to do at this time of year, but in the Summer theres free movies and music in the various parks on an almost nightly basis. And you'd get to take advantage of Lake Michigan, which is a load of broken ice right now.
******************************************************
I feel it would be wrong for me to talk about all the good things in Chicago without discussing what I see as the bad, or in this case, the treatment of the river. Im about to turn into an ill informed Al Gore here so stop reading if your not interested.
The Chicago river naturally ran into the lake, however due to the drinking water being polluted by the waste being put into the river by the City, they decided to reverse the flow. Recently there has been some evidence this is not working as everyone thought all year long. For me this isnt a long term solution to the problem. If theres too much waste being created, sending it somewhere else isnt stopping the underlying problem, not to mention the ecological impact.
On St. Patricks day every year the river is dyed green. They originally used Fluorescein, which was banned after being shown to be harmful to the river. The dye now used is claimed to be completely safe, but seriously, how can this be proven? The ingredients they use are secret!
There are now concerns that invasive species such as the silver carp and bighead carp are going to reach the Great Lakes and wipe out the current ecosystem through competition. These were brought in to farms in the 1970's, but escaped into the river after flooding and have been heading north since. At present the solution is an electrified fence in the river that prevents anything from coming upstream, but again what kind of impact will this be having?
I should note that these are all issues that Ive only been made aware of in the last week, and that most of my research come from wikipedia. If Ive got anything wrong here feel free to point it out in the comments and I can amend any mistakes, but all the things Ive just mentioned here to me seem to be incredibly wrong. How can you take any of these measures without thought to the effects?
No comments:
Post a Comment