We were among more than 800,000 people in the Chicago area who lost power today after a thunderstorm that lasted about 20 minutes but did more damage than any storm in at least 13 years. We're among the lucky ones: our lights are back on. Some people may have to wait days.
In our area the Kenwood neighborhood around President Obama's house seems to have taken the worst of it.
This was the scene in Nichols Park last night as Chicago was engulfed in a blanket of fog that lasted for an uncommonly long time—well into this morning, in fact. My family transformed it into works of art. Photos by Jane Averill; art direction, digital enhancement, and layout by Michael Panelas.
I thought the food, service, and décor were all quite good at the newly renovated Giordano’s pizzeria in Hyde Park, which reopened this week after several months of remodeling. I’ll leave it at that and let people who know about restaurants fill in the details. What struck me about the place was that the tabletops are perfect for chess. Just bring pieces, and the board’s right there. The squares are about two inches and take standard-size chessmen just fine.
Props to Giordano’s, by the way, for preserving the historically significant glazed façade of the building. Hyde Parkers of a certain age will remember that the space was once the site of the Eagle, a classic neighborhood bar that closed in the late 1970s.
photo: Michael Panelas
Rated Event at U of C Next Saturday
For a blog that aspires to cover chess in Hyde Park, we're doing a pretty pathetic job of it, I must admit. I only just now spotted this three-month-old article in the Chicago Maroon about strong chess expert Jeremy Kane, captain of the University of Chicago Chess Club. He's 13 rating points shy of national master. Let's root for him to make it to 2200. Please read the article, and kudos to the Maroon for covering chess.
Incidentally, I think I have some photos from the spring chess tournament at U of C mentioned in the article, and I'll try to get those up here in due course. Yes, I know; I should've done it a long time ago. All the usual excuses.
L.V. Banks and His Swinging Blues Band kicked off the umpteenth season of the annual Nichols Park Concert Series this afternoon.
For the third year in a row, chess will be a part of the Hyde Park 4th of July festivities in Nichols Park. After crashing the picnic in 2007 and 2008 by simply showing up uninvited (though not unwelcomed) with chess equipment, this year we'll be there officially.
Good news: My neightbor, the expertish chess player Leon Shernoff, has started a chess blog. Finally, Hyde Park has a chess blogger who actually knows something about chess.
A visit to the site and a cursory glance at it reveal that one is in the presence of some serious chess analysis. Today's post in particular, about a game Leon played at the 2002 World Open, is something to be studied with monkish care. Print it out, set up the board, and work through the game. Strike a blow against the disease of multitasking and give it your undivided attention for a couple of hours. I think you'll find it's time well spent.
Leon is your basic Hyde Park Renaissance man, whose interests define a golden braid running from chess to music to mushrooms. He's been relatively inactive in chess of late, and if he decides to get back into the royal game it will be very good for chess in Chicago and Hyde Park.
Please visit "Music, chess and mushrooms" and give Leon plenty of comments and encouragement.
More evidence has surfaced, beyond that already available, that Barack Obama’s administration will be the Chess Presidency. Friday’s New York Times confirmed that until the massive Secret Service security bubble closed in on him following his election, the president-elect got his hair cut at the Hyde Park Hair Salon, on Blackstone just north of 53rd Street. Those familiar with the neighborhood scene know that chess is played at that establishment, yet the obvious suspicion—that Obama may go to the salon to play chess—is never mentioned in the mainstream media. Why?
Considering that the Leader of the Free World can get his hair cut anywhere he wants, why does he go to this particular barbershop, if not to be around woodpushers? Is it just a coincidence that Obama patronized this salon? Are we to believe that the senator only went in for a trim and never once stopped to play a game of five-minute blitz? C’mon.
Let's face it: the 44th president likes chess.
You can understand why Obama has kept mum about his ties to chess. If his tenuous links to Billy Ayers were controversial during the campaign, imagine what would have happened had his connection to the Royal Game come to light. He would have been pilloried by the nation’s trogs, that's what. Just imagine: at the very moment he was being denounced as an elitist for his superior intelligence, Ivy League degrees, and impressive accomplishments, news of his affection for something as brainy as chess could have been the final nail in the coffin of his campaign. I can only assume it was a wish to keep his love of chess under wraps that led Obama to choose Joe Biden as his running mate rather than the obvious choice, Elizabeth Vicary.
By the way, if you want to reach Obama on his Blackberry, better do it soon.
Hyde Park chess players squeezed again
CEP will hold meets in Hyde Park
Great news. Zack Fishman's Chess Education Partners (CEP), one of the leading organizers of scholastic chess events Chicago, plans to hold several tournaments right here in our neighborhood, at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club.
HPNC executive director Peter Cassel confirmed the schedule.
The first tournament will be on Sunday, September 30.
The new series is a natural outgrowth of a rapidly developing relationship between CEP and the Neighborhood Club. International Master Jan van de Mortel of CEP offered a chess class at the club last winter and spring, and the organization staged a tournament there last June in which Ray kids won big.
The new tournaments, which will be widely publicized and will draw players from all over the city, will be harder for one school to dominate, which means they'll be more fun. They will probably be rated tournaments for which U.S. Chess Federation membership will be required, and there will be an entry fee of $20.
More information as it becomes available. For now, please mark you calendar for September 30. Other tournaments are tentatively scheduled for November 4, December 2, January 6, February3, March 2, April 6, and May 4. Good turnout in the early tournaments will insure that the later ones take place, so please plan to attend some of these events. This is a great opportunity for all junior chess players in Hyde Park.
Yesterday I drove past the Hayden Market on 53rd Street between Greenwood and Ellis. That’s the convenience store that has let out its east room as a chess club for local blitz players in recent years. Apparently, not anymore. It’s now the Lundy Market, under new management, and from the look of things the chess club is gone. The store was closed when I stopped by and peeked in the window, but there was no sign of chess sets or tables anywhere.
So the Hyde Park chess diaspora continues, and once again the neighborhood’s itinerant players must find a new home.
Where have they gone? There hasn’t been much of a chess scene at the Starbucks at 53rd and Harper this summer, though I have seen people playing there a couple of times.
I went by Harold Washington Park at 53rd and Hyde Park Boulevard and was happy to see that both of the chess tables there were being used, and by chess players, not picnickers. It was encouraging, because chess players have been slow to make that spot a regular venue since the tables went up a few years ago.
Then there’s the second-floor café at Borders on 53rd and Lake Park, where some members of the Ray School Chess Club, such as Phillip Parker-Turner and Sonam Ford, like to play. There always seems to be a lively chess scene there whenever I stop in, and the store’s management has apparently relaxed its earlier rule that chess players could only gather on weekdays. I’ve seen two and three games going at a time on Saturdays and Sundays, and I commend the store’s proprietors for the welcome they have given to chess.
Finally, there are those two chess tables in Nichols Park near the 54th Street cul-du-sac that were hauled away from Harper Court and dumped in the park a few years ago when chess was banned from the shopping center. I can see them from my living room window; no one ever plays there. Pity.
Anyone have any other intelligence about the local chess scene, indoors or outdoors? Any ideas for livening things up? If so, please leave a comment.
It never fails: bring out the chess equipment and you draw a crowd. That's what happened at the neighborhood 4th of July celebration in Nichols Park. We put sets on the park's two chess tables, plus an oversized set on the ground. The kids were on it like a cheap suit. Adults, too. More photos here.
