Chicagoans, nestled in the bosom of the greatest city on earth, have limited interest in the bland nowheres beyond its borders. Therefore, as a columnist for Chicago’s preeminent daily newspaper, I try not to bore Chicago readers with places that aren’t Chicago and therefore don’t really matter.
However. With temperatures in Chicago predicted to hit 100 degrees Wednesday, I feel obligated to share my recent experience in a certain sun-blasted city, despite it not being Chicago.
Specifically, Phoenix.
If you know one thing about Phoenix — and who does? — you know it is very, very hot. Surpassing 110 degrees for 31 consecutive days this summer. Fate dictated I fly there last week.
Going to Phoenix in August must seem mad. In my defense, it was one of those duties parents sometimes find themselves shouldering, in this case delivering a cat to its owner, a young man associated with the federal judiciary there.
While I did consider simply landing, handing over the beloved pet, then catching the next fight home — it is Phoenix after all — that seemed a failure of imagination. Besides, there was a single aspect of Phoenician life I was curious about: the temperature. What must that be like? The hottest I’ve endured as a resident of Chicago was 105 on July 13, 1995. I still remember walking one block to the dry cleaners, then returning to our apartment on Pine Grove Avenue and lying down, utterly drained.
But 111 degrees is ... not bad, particularly if you are lounging by a pool. Yes, the concrete is too hot to step upon with bare feet, the metal rail leading into the water too hot to touch. But once you are submerged up to your chin, 111 degrees is just fine. It is, as they say, a dry heat.
Beyond the heat, I couldn’t imagine what else Phoenix might offer. An art museum of some sort, no doubt. But so vastly inferior to the Art Institute that going would just be sad. Third-rate works by familiar names, larded with forgettable local efforts. I never considered going.
As my host drove me around, showing off the Sandra Day O’Connor United States Courthouse — quite beautiful — Phoenix unfolded, a rather uninspiring hodgepodge of junior colleges and welding supply yards, interspersed with occasional streets of high rises of the most anodyne architecture imaginable. Occasional silhouettes of mountains in the background, trying to add interest. It was as if someone shuffled together Franklin Park and Central Station and began dealing cards.
Someplace called the Musical Instrument Museum was suggested. My enthusiasm was not sparked — I thought of double-necked guitars and fringed jackets behind glass at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
But being a polite guest, and not having a better idea, I went along.
O ... M ... G ..., as the kids say. The Musical Instrument Museum — M.I.M, in local parlance — is fantastic. And huge: 15,000 instruments in a gorgeous 200,000 square foot building constructed in 2010.
Instruments from a feather carved into a three-hole flute to “Apollonia,” a two-ton, 25-foot wide automatic orchestra from 1926 that we saw demonstrated in all its clattering, wheezing, dance hall glory.
I can’t convey the museum and shouldn’t try, except to say it is like taking a musical tour of the world, and M.I.M. made me very happy. You wear a headset, and as you move from one nation to the next, you’re bathed in sound, chanting, plangeant strings, pounding slit drums, hewn from logs.
The most moving exhibit, for me, were bamboo instruments — tuba, trumpet, trombone — from the Philippines, an effort to mimic marching bands without the expense of brass.
Chicago was well-represented, by the way, from the gorgeous cherry red 1962 National “Glenwood 95” electric guitar to Puente’s “Aurora 1000” vibraharp.
When we passed the four-hour mark with tracts of museum yet unexplored, I announced that the place had defeated me, physically. I’d just have to come back, even if it means returning to Phoenix this winter.
I also saw my first driverless car, a Waymo thrumming in the distance at 7th and Van Buren. Since the New York Times sent three, count ‘em, three, reporters to San Francisco to investigate that very vehicle, I suppose I can be excused for elaborating about it on Friday, if you can bear two consecutive non-Chicago columns. It isn’t as if those creepy driverless cars won’t be showing up here sooner or later.
