When Bruce Springsteen announced his Land of Hopes & Dreams tour before we left for Arizona, I knew I wanted to get tickets. I have been a fan since I was a kid but never saw him in concert. Steve had seen him in Lexington many, many years ago. The tickets went on sale at 10AM Central time on February 20th, which coincidentally was the first day we were going to be on the road traveling to Arizona. By some luck, I had enough cell service on the Bluegrass Parkway to navigate Ticketmaster & secure 2 seats for the Chicago show on April 29th. We then proceeded on our 5 week trip to Arizona & virtually forgot about it.
Fast forwarded a couple of months & it was time to head to Chicago. Since we had to board Sammie & Belle we only went up for 2 nights. It's about a 6 hour drive and since we gain an hour on the way there, we got to our hotel around 2PM. We used our Bonvoy points for a 2 night stay at the Marriott in the medical district near UIC campus. The hotel was within walking distance of the United Center where the concert was which was the main reason we stayed there. I parked in one of the nearby UIC lots for $15 per night because the hotel only offers $60 per night valet which is an insane rate considering it's not even downtown.
After getting checked in & settled we headed to Wicker Park to meet my friend Vicki from our high school days. We met for happy hour at KAMA. They had a fantastic happy hour menu & everything that we tried was so good. Highly recommend. It was so great to catch up with Vicki. I find it so hard to believe that I moved from Chicago almost 23 years ago. I love Chicago so much, it's probably the only big city that I enjoy spending time in anymore. Most likely because it is so familiar & I find it so easy to get around. It still feels like home.
The day of the show we got breakfast on at Sweet Maple Cafe on Taylor street. It opened one year after I graduated from UIC so even though it's been around for a long time, this was my first visit. It is in an unassuming brick walkup but the service & the food was fantastic. Like the website says, customers from all walks were enjoying breakfast, from international students, medical residents, police officers, families & a couple of retirees. I do miss the international flair & diversity that Chicago offers.
After breakfast, we walked through the UIC campus. Some things have changed greatly, some things haven't changed at all since I graduated almost 30 years ago. It felt good to be on campus but I definitely felt old and everyone looked so young, LOL. We did swing by the bookstore to pick up a new hoodie. When we were walking back towards our hotel we noticed a banner that said UIC was a top 25 public university. The university is well recognized now & makes several top lists. It also ranks very high for social mobility, in 2024 it also came in 8th among all public & private universities.
From the website: The rankings also measure social mobility, where UIC is 8th among all public and private universities. The social mobility ranking acknowledges universities with the highest proportion of students from lower-income families — those who receive Pell Grants — that also excel at boosting graduate salaries while minimizing the costs of attending college. At UIC, more than 50% of students are Pell Grant recipients.
I went to UIC on pell grants & student loans. Unfortunately, the Pell grant does not offer nearly as much as it did in the 90's. UIC was a very affordable school when I attended plus being in the city I was able to work part time & have an engineering job while finishing my last two years of college.
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| Top 25?! |
After the campus tour, we stopped into the National Public Housing Museum. We did the guided tour & it was amazing. The building is in one of the last standing Jane Addams homes on South Ada street. When I went to UIC, there were was still a lot of the original public housing around the campus area and around the city. I recall a lot of frustration during that time because UIC wanted to expand at the same time the city was relocating a lot of the current residents from various housing projects around the city.
This museum did a great job highlighting the origins of public housing in the 1930's & the transitions over the years. The tour shared threee different apartments that included original items that the families dontated to the museum. One was the Turovitz family from the 1930's and the other was the Hatch family from the 1960's. Between the Turovitz (1930s) & the Hatch(1960s) family apartments we sat in a recreated 1950's apartment. There we learned how the homes transitioned due to redlining, racial covenants, and federal & local policies that impacted families not just in the Jane Addams homes but all across the country.
