Hey Chicago

Come to Bloodhound Blog OR Geno From Chicago to check out my latest posts across the internet.

Thanks for reading and for your comments. I generally can't respond but I do read every one...more than once!

G

Is it safe to come out yet?

We are hunkered down. We've brought in supplies for the long November haul. Our new minds are set. Storm windows are affixed and our shutters pulled tight and locked. Our safes are stuffed with inflated tender; confederate currency for a later day perhaps, pilfered from the Dows, the Joneses, and the Banks of middle America. Our media scouts up on the Hill tell us there is hope on the fiscal horizon but the morning on this day is still dark and cool. We put our ears to the ground and sense apathy rumbling amongst our uncivil servants.

We've opened our garage stables and set our horses free to run in the solar wind, too expensive to maintain anymore. We are willing to walk away from our leveraged homesteads, settling for pennies on the dollar when our escrowed notes expire; Selling short. Falling shorter.

On the safe side of the glass we look across the plains and into the vortex. We count our blessings on one hand and await the new Obama Nation with fingers crossed, on the other. Our children join us on our financial corners begging for spare Euros. You can keep the Change. We want Service... and at least two weeks in Cabo (oceanfront) for the holidays. We are, after all, still Americans.

Geno Petro

Chicago Real Estate Market Charts

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Geno Petro

The Doctor's Loan: Part One in a Series

I was working with an out-of-state client earlier this summer who had just completed the last stage of his Medical Residency and was planning a move to Chicago. He was hoping to purchase a condominium along Lake Michigan that was walking distance to his new hospital and priced around $300,000. The two big, lingering questions on his mind were:

1) 'How would his accrued Medical School debts affect his ability to purchase a first home?'

and

2) 'How much down payment and closing cost money would be needed for such a purchase?

I immediately shot off an email to Chris Hahn at Bank of America, the only professional source in Chicago I know of who specializes in such a program. This is what I found:

• While some loans are available with No Money Down, a nominal amount of capital (3-5%) is generally required. Still, this is far less than many conventional conforming loans on the market today.
  
  
• PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) is usually NOT required.

• Student Loans are NOT counted in the Debt Ratios.

• Flexible Loan Programs (such as ARMS and Interest Only) are available.
  
  

This program is available to Medical Residents, Medical Doctors, Licensed Dental Surgeons specializing in oral and maxillofacial surgery and full-time Medical Instructors who are Licensed Doctors.

Feel free to comment below or simply email Chris Hahn at:

Christopher.T.Hahn@BankOfAmerica.com

Geno Petro

Chicago Cinema

Mona and I had a bite to eat at La Creperie on Clark Street last evening then afterwards, walked over to the Landmark's Century Centre Cinema for a reception and screening of Chicago Writer/Director Steve Conrad's The Promotion starring Chicago actors John C. Reilly and Fred Armisen. Sponsored by the Midwest Independent Film Festival, a Producer's Panel, headed by long time local movie mainstay Steve Jones, kicked off the non-socializing part of the night at 6:30 followed by the 85 minute semi-dark comedy. Conrad and Jones then held a brief Q&A before everyone, several hundred independent film and media types, flocked to an after party at Forno Diablo on Diversey. I had to grab my wife by the arm and head in the opposite direction; home to reality in Forest Glen and a good night's sleep after a long real estate day (a career as rewarding at times, but not nearly as glamorous, I've concluded).

The beauty of this sweet and funny film, for me, was not so much the clever dialogue and intelligent performances from a variety of local actors but the presence of the various Chicago settings in the frames; a south side grocery store at Greenwood and 55th Street, several vacant lots in gentrifying areas with new construction projects and crafty shots of the skyline in the rack-focused background (not the usual stock footage of the Sears, Hancock, Lakefront, Navy Pier, etc ...), interior settings of 1920's brick apartment dwellings and two-flats, and of course...the cadre of Chicago 'extras' on the street (and in the parking lot--rent the DVD which comes out this week and you'll see what I mean. Hilarious.).

The first Tuesday of every month a different independent film from Chicago (and the other Midwestern states) is featured. My suggestion though, is to inquire about passes in advance. At the ticket booth I was told there was only one ticket left and I reluctantly forked over $10 for it at the urging of my wife. "Don't worry. I'll get in," she promised as she wandered up to the guy standing behind the velvet VIP rope. A few minutes later she was back with a ticket of her own.

"How did you manage that?" I asked.

"I told them my husband was a writer. He asked me 'who's your husband?' I said Geno Petro. He looked down at his paperwork and said 'he's not on the list. What's his name?' I said Geno Petro...okay, maybe he's just a blogger. Anyway, he gave me a ticket for free."

Figures. Beauty works every time. But then again, she actually looks like a movie star. I only look like a blogger.


Geno Petro

Bad to da Chicago bone

This gray, primed beast can usually be found parked in front of Suzie China's on Lincoln Ave in the West Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago at around high noon. It's 'chopped and channeled and lowered and louvered' and...well, it pretty much follows along with the rest of the lines of that old Tom Waits song, too. The machine may be out of time and place with the rest of the BMW condo set in this bustling upwardly mobile phoned community but one thing is for sure; it is definitely not 'cookie cutter.'

In the last 10 years this offbeat Ashland/Belmont/Lincoln enclave has moved from a double row of gritty storefronts and 1920s apartment rentals to an upscale, walk around 'hood along the lines of Lincoln Square, Roscoe Village, and even Bucktown. Only Suzie C and a handful of other old mainstays remain. In this way, the old gray beast is a metaphor of yesteryear Chicago.

They don't build cars with chrome teeth anymore. And while it may take a fairly frugal owner to shun a two-tone emerald powdercoat for an Earl Sheibs coupon special, it takes an even out-of-the-boxier individual to keep the paint job primer gray with a cobwebbed pinstripe applique. But above all, I think, it takes a truly singular soul, with an iron clad constitution (and colon), to eat at Suzie China's everyday.

Geno Petro

i snapped the shot (but as always, I did not shoot the deputy...)

Chicago Hardball

I am, what some might call, a Bi-Soxual--I love both teams, north(side) as well as south(side). If a ball, bat and hot dogs are involved then I'm all in. If a cool, summer Chicago night happens to be the setting, all the better. Add a couple dingers over the left field fence and a 7th inning stretch led by Cubbie great, Ron Santo or Drunky Martin offspring, Dina...well, words just can't describe the euphoria. Not fully, anyway. (Only a quick correction from a flat Chicago real estate market could be better. But for now, I'll enjoy the hot dogs and the dingers.)

As of this writing both the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Cubs are perched atop their respective Divisions with 36 games to go. In interleague play back in June, each team swept the other at home. Then there's Lou. And Ozzie. And the fans.

I've heard mutterings of a 'Subway Series' as I go about my day; water cooler talk in the office, passing conversations on the sidewalk, whispers carrying on the lake front breeze over the bike paths and beaches. Toddlers are donned with Cubbie Blue and White Sox Black as the mothers congregate in Starbacks for their morning fixes. W flags are hanging everywhere north of Madison. The radio talk show pundits recalculate the Vegas spread on a daily basis.

And the numbers don't lie:

Theriot is batting 316. Quentin has 35 Homers. Jenks has 25 Saves, Wood 26. Soriano is on fire. The Cubs have the strongest batting line-up in the majors. The Sox may have the best bullpen of all time (according to Joe Morgan and others). October is only weeks away--that's 36 games in baseball years--and Chicago is ready for some cross-town hardball. When the boys of summer are gone (the Brewers, the Twins, the Yanks, et al) that's when the men of autumn suit up and play for all the marbles, several million each in bonus money (split 50 ways), and the Championship flag; the World Series in Chicago...somebody pinch me, please. And just to be clear, the word was Bi-Sox-ual.

Geno Petro

pix: Wrigley Field from the $52.00 nosebleed seats (another story for another day) and a guy (who only looks like me) in a goofy shirt.

A Cafe Society

I was cruising down Lincoln Avenue last week when I caught a glimpse of the rare bird out of the corner of my eye. She was perched at a meter in front of the Starbucks at Greenview but by the time I pulled over to the curb for a closer look, she had flown away in the opposite direction towards Southport Avenue in a blur of orange creme beauty. I couldn't identify the exact specimen at first but I made a note to myself on the iPhone...'Cafe Racer/Orange/very rare/Google it.'

Two days ago I saw her again, banking the Diversey/Racine/Lincoln 6 way at a 45 degree angle and sling shotting toward the Chicago lake front and all things high rise and condominium. I did a loose back end U-turn, gunned it, but lost her just before the Sheffield Brown Line construction quagmire, my Mini Cooper jammed between two CTA buses and a Flash Cab, everyone's horn blaring at once in the same impatient disharmony. This time I noticed the badge on the gas tank as she weaved between vehicles, eastward and away---BMW Cafe. She soared into the exhaust horizon...

Now if you've ever met my father you would know for sure that you've been in the presence of a true Birder (that's a bird watcher in layman's terms). The fascination has been there for as long as I can recall. There was the time he spotted a 'flicker' (Woodpecker? Not quite) on Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia and stopped his Cadillac dead in the middle lane of traffic for a better, craned neck view. There were the countless trips to Cape May, New Jersey and the Maryland wetlands, in his younger days, to catch a glimpse of soaring eagles or sandy beach egrets. His den at home is packed with Omithological reference books, high end binoculars, artwork, photos, and bird sounding clocks. Lot's of clocks--every hour, on the hour; CHIRP. Chirp, chirp, WHISTLE, Whistle, whistle, BEEP, Beep, beep or some variation thereof. Anyway, that's where I get it from.

I've always looked at motorized vehicles, cars and motorcycles alike, as engineering wonders of beauty (save the occasional Chevy Vega or Ford Maverick. The AMC Pacer was pretty lame too, along with countless station wagons and most things with four or more doors). Some however, are almost the same as Art. The rare few are Art. I've collected them for years in my mind.

When I was seven or eight years old I would sit on the grassy area alongside the Mill Creek Parkway in Levittown and identify the cars as they zoomed by; 1950s and 60s Impalas, Bel Airs, Imperials, the rare Corvette Stingray, a whole variety of Studebakers and Ramblers. Later on, and a little further south down the Eastern Seaboard, motorcycles would be included in the ritual; Triumphs, Nortons, BSAs and of course, Harleys. I never did acquire a taste for anything Japanese (two or four wheelers) although the new Lexus L650H V12 Hybrid Super Sedan is a bad maama jaama, from what they say.

My first and only motorcycle was a 1969 BSA 441 Victor; yellow and chrome with a ripped leather seat and scratchy horsehair sticking out. It smelled like a saddle; a saddle and motor oil. I rode it until it needed a total rebuild and eventually sold it in a basket for $441. It, like most of the guitars that have also passed through my hands over the years, would be worth many, many times the original value had I kept it. Doesn't matter anyway, my wife won't let me have a motorcycle and my dog goes bonkers whenever he hears one rumble down the street as every other husband on my block in Forest Glen has a big, fat Harley (okay, maybe not every husband, but a few...at least one I'm positive of, although he may not actually be married anymore). Anyway... I am allowed to look...

I saw the orange and creme BMW Cafe parked in front of the Starbucks near my office on Friday. I recognized the owner as he sat on the patio and worked his crossword puzzle. I felt like a kid asking for an autograph as I interrupted his morning ritual.

"Is that your bike?" I asked motioning toward the sidewalk with my head.

"Yeah."

"Can I take a picture?" I followed.

He looked up at me for a second, sizing me up no doubt; 'Older dude. Bike enthusiast. Probably has a wife who won't let him have a motorcycle.'

"Sure. Go ahead..." he said.

I almost got clipped by a beer truck as I stood in the street trying to get a cool angle with my iPhone camera. Like I mentioned earlier, I am very closely related to a man who will slam on the brakes in the middle of Philadelphia to see a yellow breasted sap sucker. We are fearless, us Petros, if nothing else. Fearless with an eye for beauty.

Geno Petro

Chicago Market Days

There are a lot of places where, quite frankly, I stick out like a sore thumb (see photos in the sidebar > ) but believe me when I tell you, Chicago's Halsted Street in August is not one of those places....









...and I think I'll just leave it at that.


Geno Petro

yeah, I took them all

Drove my Chevy to the Levee...

...then I left it there for 35 years. Nostalgia will not get the best of me. Not this time. It's back to the future, if anything.

You see, I went to my 20th high school reunion back in 1994--an event I had pondered for the better part of a decade prior--basically wondering how my peers were aging and succeeding in comparison to...well, me. But no, that wasn't enough. I had to go back for seconds 10 years later, even fatter, balder and more mediocre (but with a much better wife) than the first time. Few classmates looked even vaguely familiar during this second visit, and I spent most of the evening talking with someone named Chippy; a person I'd never seen before in my life (although according to him we were the best of buds back in the day... frequently skipping homeroom for higher ground, as it were. Hey, I don't remember nothin' but apparently, he graduated from Duke and I barely made it through Slippery Rock with a 2.0 average so he must not have been inhaling.). Anyway, the few people I did recognize were very happy to learn that rumors of my early demise 'were greatly exaggerated,' to paraphrase Twain/Clements/et al... as was I.

I left high school thinking I was going to be an actor or a writer or a movie director but ended up selling insurance for 15 years--my 'profession' when I made that first grand re-entrance to a gallery of uncaring eyes at the 20th gathering. A good many of my immediate peers in attendance had either inherited family businesses or were existing on some form of trust fund or another. Old money runs deep and wide in those Mid-Atlantic southern states or at least, that's how I've observed it over the years. All my rich kid friends became rich parent aquaintances--if even that.

When I hobbled into the 30th get together, 10 years later, I held the designation of 'Chicago Realtor.' Again, my immediate peers were either semi-retired or at the very least, identical clones of their own wealthy mothers and fathers, grandparents, etc.; good old boys in the richest sense. Old money is funny like that--it is genetically unforgiving. More so than ever, I realized that I was cast into a life where any success on my part would have to either come from within (i.e....selling lots of condos, houses and multi-units), or via the Illinois lottery.

And now it's 2008 and Classmates.com has informed me of yet another soiree---The 35th Reunion of the Myers Park Graduating Class of 1974. I emailed Chippy to see if he was going but he responded back saying he had no idea who I was and to take him off my list. (I email at least a half dozen other people every week I never went to high school with who tell me basically the same thing. The real estate business is also funny that way--quite unforgiving in its own right.)

The truth is, I don't have a list. I only approach those who have either happened upon one of my blogs or Googled 'Chicago Real Estate' and registered on our ChicagoHomeEstates.com site. These registrants are then assigned to me for follow-up. I don't send out direct mail or make cold calls or even knock on doors anymore. No farming. No magnets. No newspaper advertising, to be sure. No billboards. Only the Internet, dear friends (and the occasional referral or past client still residing in the overtaxed boundries of Cook County). The Internet holds the passcode to the future of Chicago real estate marketing as I see it. So don't worry Chippy, you'll never hear from me again. Same for anyone who has registered but apparently forgotten. Not a problem. I'm trying to reduce my oversized nostalgic footprint anyway.

And while I'm at it, bye bye to Miss American Pie as well. I'm sick of the refrain and you're getting a little long in the tooth, if you don't mind me saying. After a couple hundred million spins of the disk over a 35 year period this could very well be the day that I die and I don't want that tune stuck in my skull ad infinitum. Like I mentioned a few minutes ago...you can find my Chevy at the levee with a couple thousand cases of long ago emptied whiskey and rye. And if the good old boys still feel like singing around the yesteryear campfire, so be it. I'll be scouring the Chicago MLS on my laptop for price reductions.

Geno Petro

and no...it's not really my ride.

No Crying in Baseball

It's one of my favorite Tom Hanks lines..."There's no crying in baseball." How could there be? In Chicago, with both teams currently at the top of their respective divisions in early August, only tears of joy are permitted. Those, and perhaps the kind that come from too much hot pepper and gardinara on the sausage, if you know what I'm sayin'. Can you tell....I just came back from a game?

The two Pinto brothers, Joe and Carmen, took me down to the old neighborhood at 32nd Street to see the White Sox chase the Tigers out of town last night. I hadn't been to 'The Cell' since...well, since its been 'The Cell' (U.S. Cellular Field for all of you outta towners and anyone trying to use AT&T service on the premises), and I have to say it's a wonderful ball park; great sight lines, good food, and lots of fanfare. And a shot of Southside Chicago revelry too; a couple of old rat pack dudes in tuxedos and bad toupees doing Frank and Deano at the front gate stage, three more fat dudes, also in tuxedos, singing The Star Spangled Banner in opera, and the lovely Dina Martin (Dean's daughter) singing Amore! on the 1st Base dugout during the 7th inning 'Stretch. Hey, it was Italian night....whacanIsay?

A few more sausages, a cup of lemon ice, and a giant pretzel with mustard later, I was drinking Alka Seltzer and chewing Extra Strength Tums like Christmas candy just to make it into dreamland where I, too, can imagine myself at the hot corner, wearing black and white pin stripes before a cheering crowd of 35,000. After all, Crede is on minor league rehabilitation assignment and Uribe is now playing third. He's batting .216 which is only .216 more than me...and I'm not even on a team.

Geno Petro

Don't pee in the alley, Sally

When you staggger out of one those few remaining Chicago beer gardens in Ukrainian Village after a night of too much 'zimne piwo' (go ahead, Google it) and start the slow crawl home to your graystone garden hovel, be careful where you relieve yourself, water the flowers, see a man about a horse...Or more specifically, don't pee in the alley behind the 1007-1015 block of N. Wolcott Ave. It is a designated urban art district of sorts. 'Tres cool,' as they used to say at the forever hip but now disinterred, Lava Lounge on Damen (most recently morphed into a place called Piccolo that serves gelato and bruschette---HUH?). Sorry, gelato is a lot of things but 'hip' isn't one of them. (Same with the 1200 block of Milwaukee Ave as compared to the 800 block of Damen back in the day. Go ahead, Google it too.)

An excerpt from the most recent issue of TimeOut Chicago's Art & Design section explains the West Town neighborhood phenom to which I refer, in further detail:

The buildings belong to sculptor Jerzy Kenar, who began commissioning alley art in 2003. And by commissioning, we mean he gave neighborhood teens $100, a can of paint and some Coca-Cola and had them go to town on his garage doors. Since then, the alley has been filled with cartoons or graffitiesque letters. Teenage boys work on the garage with their girlfriends in tow, “smoking and passing cans of paint...”

In other words, it's art. Try not to piss on it. Zimne Piwo!

(Also... Greg Whelan just sent me this link. Like I said earlier, tres cool. He lives in the UK Village.)

Geno Petro

i took the pix

Anachronic Chicago Storefronts

It ain't Mayberry...R.F.D. or otherwise

Check out the above random photos I snapped on my way into the office yesterday. The architecture is purely turn of the century (1890s to 1910 Chicago) but the actual establishments housed in each are anything but. (Notice the names and services; tattoos, piercings, manscaping...) This is one of the very cool things about living in modern day Chicago; appreciating the uber hip, small business nexus that occupies space in what was once our great grandparents' storefronts.

Floyd, the beloved barber of Mayberry repute, would more than likely need to know how to pierce a tongue and dye a Mohawk purple to help cover the $4,000 per month triple net lease in 2008 dollars were he just simply cutting hair today. Even our own ChicagoHomeEstates.com real estate office on Diversey Parkway occupies the first floor of a 1920's walk-up. It's definitely an eclectic blend of big city lights and Main Street America. And to quote our man Floyd as he gently tugged on the sleeve of Barney's new sportcoat, twirling the herringbone fabric with his delicate fingertips:

"Oohh...Just goes to show. If you want a good suit, you gotta go to Raleigh..."


Geno Petro

Chicago Street Surfing

Zoom in on the silhouette of the dude with outstretched arms on the horizon. He's wearing inline skates and is about to ride the handrail from the Forest Glen Metra platform at Forest Glen and Balmoral Avenues (across from my house), 45 degrees straight down onto the cement sidewalk 20 ft below. One minute later the '4:55' from Fox Lake to downtown Chicago screamed by with bells clanging and horns blaring and the whole crowd, mostly teens, flipped it off.

Hey, it's an organic way for the neighborhood kids to get together and have fun with the urban landscape. It's kind of like living across the road from Diamond Head in Honolulu except that the ground here is concrete and indigenous scrub brush instead of beautiful black sand and palms; and the kids are skating instead of surfing; and the temperature in January is 20 below instead of 80 and....well, never mind. Anyway, it was pretty cool to watch until the cops came and made everybody pack up their gear and go somewhere else to possibly break their necks on private property. I'm pretty sure everyone flipped them off, too.

Geno Petro

photo by me and my iPhone

Chicago's Home Outsource

Click on either of the hyperlinks below to visit the latest news sources that have posted my Chicago's Home Weblog articles on their websites. The referenced real estate piece is from a few weeks back but the news wires just picked it up yesterday. I was noticing an unusually high traffic volume day on my site Statcounter when a Blogburst link directed me in the direction of ChicagoSunTimes.com and Reuters. And just when I thought no one was listening... "Hooray for the internet!" say I. And while you're at it, check out my latest post (and join the commenting fun) over at BloodhoundBlog.


Geno Petro

pix lifted from darienlibrary.org (I'm sure they won't mind)

Chicago Real Estate: 26.2 miles of red hot cinder

Carter Suggs and the rest of us slugs

In case you haven't been observing from the sidelines dear readers, this whole Chicago real estate diversion I've been a party to these past several years is a marathon--not a sprint. And while I don't recall ever actually running 26.2 miles consecutively or even un-consecutively (I was a sprinter when I last set foot on a track 35 very long years ago as you'll soon learn) I have been involved in some marathon-like negotiations as of late. And I'm telling you straight up, with St. Joseph as my witness, it's the last 2 /10ths (.2), that ubiquitous straw of camel back-breaking fame, that can tip the scales in either direction, for the better or worse. And it is this very, constantly shrinking margin between what makes and breaks a real estate transaction these days, that has me taking a short 'breather' to wax poetic before I re-double my efforts tomorrow and try to put together a deal that might actually involve a trip to a title company in the near future. Soooo....., allow me to digress...

My last heat

It was a blistering afternoon in the late Spring of 1974. The graduating members of our high school relay team, the mighty Mustangs of Myers Park, were slowly disembarking the un-air conditoned 1950's green and white diesel beast (our ancient, beloved, mascot emblemed school bus) for the final time, somewhere in the boondocks of eastern North Carolina, when we were suddenly struck motionless in our proverbial track shoes. We gazed in wonderment at the rural venue. Compared to our own hallowed stadium grounds of green and gold composite track surfaces, Booster Club sponsored electric scoreboard, and manicured white chalked and numbered playing field fescue back in Charlotte, the vision was almost other wordly. And myself, having recently relocated south from the great urban sprawl of northeast Philadelphia where one could definitely see the air one breathed, I was all the more intrigued by the Nature of it all. I decided it was, indeed, time to take off my leather jacket and Ray Bans and get serious. People were jogging through the woods, warming up barefoot, for crissakes.

The burnt colored, coarsely raked, 440 yard oval cut-out that encircled the overgrown football/baseball/tobacco field we looked onto was a Milky Way of sooty glass specks and finely crushed gravel--cinder, to be exact. The infield, 120 patchy yards, elbow to elbow with other multicolored warm-up suited runners in different stretched positions alongside their own painted diesel transports; The Demons, The Eagles, The Orangemen--was a base of red, hard Carolina clay. Bushels of unharvested dandelion weeds lined the outer perimeter of the back country school grounds.

The air smelled of pine tar and lumber from a nearby saw mill. An uninterrupted trickle of sulphuric well water leaked from an old fashioned hand pump in the far end zone. The Home side bleachers boasted two separate, half dozen row sections of gray splintered wooden planks attached to a common bent, rusty metal skeleton. The Visitors side sitting area was cracked earth. We looked at each other with young, overprivileged, suburban eyes. No world records would be set on this May day we joked half-heartedly. What none of us knew at that moment was that we were only correct by a mere fraction of a second.

9.3 (seconds, that is)

In 1974, Track and Field events were measured in yards and timed in minutes and seconds. The Men's World Record for the 100 Yard Dash was 9.0 seconds and had stood, unchallenged, for years. I was blessed enough to be among a handful of other sprinters to break the 10.0 second barrier that day--9.9 to be exact, finishing fifth out of a field of 6 in my heat. A young, Tarboro, NC high school student named Carter Suggs ran a 9.5 in the same race. The memory is a blur as was the image of his posterior, all ass and elbows, 30 feet ahead of me from jump street. I almost gave up smoking right then and there. Twenty minutes later in the final heat, (as I looked on from the cracked earth Visitors area with the rest of the slugs) he blazed a 9.3 on the cinder track--.3 seconds off the world mark.

Just so you know, the difference betwwen a 9.9 and a 9.3 is about a city block spread at the finish line, or in less urban terms--from grill to tail pipe--the entire length of an old green and white painted school bus, diesel, unleaded, or otherwise. It is most certainly the difference between a shot at a professional athletic career and one that entails slinging residential property for a living. At the very least, it provides a margin of posterity for all to ponder. (I've been Googling myself off and on for the past 3 years and while I can't find any virtual proof of my personal 9.9 second sprinting effort back in the glory days of 1974, I have no trouble unearthing almost every residential listing I've ever advertised during my Chicago real estate career--good, bad, or indifferent.)

I think I missed the Google "High School Track and Field Statistics" long tail search engine cut-off by considerably more than a few tenths of a second (bus lengths, city blocks, whatever...) in the same manner my last buy-side deal died over a couple thousand dollar closing credit and a furnace tune-up. It would probably be in the same manner I'd collapse at the 26 mile mark, just .2 miles shy of the golden ring, should I ever be daring enough to enter a marathon in the first place---which of course, is what this whole real estate business is---isn't it? Or shall I digress...

Geno Petro

image by billingsgazette

O'er the ramparts we watched the Chicago Fourth

Mark Rodriguez of WCBS-TV.com in New York posted this story yesterday:

Have you ever wondered why our national anthem ends with a question -- "Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"...

(click above hyperlink to read the entire article )

Anyway, the rocket's red glare was certainly bursting in the northwest Chicago air over our own Forest Glen house last evening--cat under the bedspread, dog under the bed, wife and I on the rooftop terrace hootin' and hollerin' along with the rest of the neighborhood--as the streaming, popping bursts of color lit the sky on every horizon and the familiar smell of burnt silver powder lingered in the summer breeze until well past the midnight hour. What a country!

Geno Petro

(pix not by me...)