The PopCulteer
December 12, 2025

Your PopCulteer is back from his annual trip to Chicago to celebrate his beautiful wife’s birthday. Even though she absolutely hates having her picture taken, I’m including a couple of shots of her in this post because she’s the reason we went in the first place. That’s us at right, back at the place where we got married in 2014.

We had a great trip, actually including two different shows at Steppenwolf, plus visits to other cool places, all crammed into a too-short visit.

Actually, we got back Wednesday morning, but we’re still sort of exhausted. I had a few fires to put out when we got home, plus we needed to get the trees (yes, plural) up, and recover from having our Amtrak tickets downgraded both ways, which really messed with our ability to sleep and then function the next day.

What this means for you is, it’s time for a short PHOTO ESSAY!

So here’s some of the images from our trip. I’ll write more about it later, when I’m more awake.

On the way there, we were stuck on the tracks for close to an hour while the engine was downloading new navigation software, but we got to pass the time watching this cool little device go on and off the rails, towing and pushing train cars out of the snow on a side-rail. Now I want one for the train layout I swear I’m going to build one day.

Closer to our destination, here’s where the White Sox play, at “I’m not going to bother learning the mile-long, stupid-sounding corporate name” Park.

Our first stop after checking into the hotel was across the street at Nordstrom’s, which had a pop-up JellyCat boutique. We went on a weekday when you could walk right in to buy some lovely plush. On the weekends, they had crowd control barriers and it was like the Black Hole of Calcutta.

The adjoining mall, The Shops at Northbridge, had its own pop-up, several areas of the mall had been done up in the style of Chicago’s 2D restaurant, where everything looks like a 2D line drawing.

The effect is striking, and very appealing to a graphic designer, like yours truly.

The furniture was functional, and the selfie opportunities were boundless.

It would’ve been cool if the snacks in the snack shop were also in 2D, but the expense couldn’t justify the effort.

The piano in the background was working. Mel actually played a little on it.

After we were there for a while, I started hearing “Take On Me” very faintly in the background. I looked down and my watch had changed. We got the hell out of there before it spread.

Because I’ve done so many photo essays on Christkindl Market, I planned to skip taking any pictures there, but I did want you guys to see the bondage ornaments–a long-standing German tradition!

Saturday night we went to see John C. Reilly as Mister Romantic. I will tell you more about this great show next week.

A quick side-trip saw us back in Giddings Plaza, where Mel went to Enjoy, one of her favorite stores, and I took a photo of the tree…again.

We found the place where they designed the top bunks in Amtrak’s sleeper roomettes.

We hotel-hopped to end our stay at The Wit, in the Loop. This is what we saw out the window.

After droppiing our bags at The Wit on Sunday, we rode the L out to the Fulton Market district to procure Mel’s birthday slice of Rainbow Cake from The Goddess and the Grocer.

Post-cake, we returned to Steppenwolf to watch an amazing matinee performance of Amadeus. Review coming next week.

While checking out the gym at The Wit we found this strange Kubrick corridor, with weird lighting and some funged-up shui.

We leave you with that same photo, color-corrected, cropped and fuzzy as hell.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back every day for fresh content and all of our regular features. With any luck, we’ll be back to writing form by next week.  And yes, I wore the Fedora and the Picasso shirt to the gym.