The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

A 102-year lawsuit changed a Chicago neighborhood

On this day 180 years ago (28 January 1836), John L. Wilson purchased 33 hectares of land about 16 km from the city, by what is now 83rd and Cottage Grove. At the time it was a swath of prairie two hours outside Chicago. But through a series of missteps, slow City workers, and a very long-lived lawsuit, no one developed the land until 1940, by which time the city had grown to surround the lot on all sides:

The property was so remote—and the value so depressed—that nobody paid much attention to it for nearly 40 years. Then, in 1875, Isaac Palmer discovered that the original land patent had been issued in his name by mistake. He decided to cash in on it.

So now the matter went to the Superior Court of Cook County. By the time the Illinois Supreme Court got the case, the City of Chicago was involved, as well as the successors to Wilson and Palmer. In 1887 the Supreme Court ruled that the Wilson successors had legal title to the property. The City of Chicago also had a valid mortgage of $1,500 against it, with 10% annual interest dating back to the unpaid October 1836 mortgage.

Except there was  yet another complication—most land records had been lost in the 1871 Chicago Fire. The further details of the dispute don’t need to be elaborated here, except to say that many lawyers were kept busy over the next fifty years, with the 80-acre plot remaining vacant while the rest of the area was built up.

On August 4, 1939 the drama ended. Compound interest over 102 years had ballooned the defaulted $1,500 mortgage to $34,755,000. Because of all the mistakes various governments had made over the years, Janet Fairbank—the last holder in the chain of title from original patentee John L. Wilson—was allowed to settle the debt and have clear title to the property on payment of $30,000.

For what it's worth, $1,500 in 1837 is about $38,000 today, and $34.8m in 1939 is around $590m today.

It's Friday, I think

This means I have some time to digest this over the weekend:

I might have a chance to read this weekend. Perhaps.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

The Economist reports this week that the Tsujiki fish market will close at the end of November:

Squeezed between the Sumida river and the Ginza shopping district, Tsukiji is creaking at the seams. Some 60,000 people work under its leaky roof, and hundreds of forklifts, carrying everything from sea urchins to whale meat, careen across bumpy floors. The site’s owner, the city government, wants it moved.

The final blow was Tokyo’s successful bid to host the 2020 Olympics. A new traffic artery will cut through Tsukiji, transporting visitors to the games’ venues. Part of the site will become a temporary press centre, says Yutaka Maeyasui, the executive in charge of shifting the market. Our time is up, he says, glancing around his decrepit office. The site has become too small, old and crowded. An earthquake could bring the roof down.

I'm planning to re-visit Tokyo in October, so I might just get in under the wire. When I visited in November 2011, I didn't get up early enough to watch the fish auction (which starts around 4am); this autumn, I may force myself to see one of the last ever.

Link round-up

As the work week slowly grinds down, I've lined these articles up for consumption tomorrow morning:

And now it's off to the barber shop. And then the pub.

Dying suburban office parks (shudder)

It's a slow, agonizing death:

A report from the real estate service firm NGKF released late last year provides new numbers on an ongoing phenomenon: the slow, agonizing death of the American office park. The report looks at five far-flung office tenancy submarkets—Santa Clara, in the San Francisco Bay Area; Denver; the O’Hare region in Chicago; Reston/Herndon outside of Washington, D.C.; and Parsippany, New Jersey—and finds a general aura of decline.

Between 14 and 22 percent of the suburban office inventory in these areas is “in some stage of obsolescence,” suggesting that between 600 million and 1 billion square feet of office space are far from ideal for the modern company and worker. That’s about 7.5 percent of the country’s entire office inventory.

I would almost rather go to prison than work in a suburban office park. I mean, take this one outside Cincinnati, for example. I can't believe I had to spend four weeks there:

Cincinnati suburban office park

Chicago sunrises, 2016

Here's the semi-annual Chicago sunrise chart. I'm posting it as a regular post in addition to posting it as a permanent page, to maintain deep-linking archiving. The previous post was here.

In just a few hours we'll see the latest sunrise of winter, until the days just before the change back to Standard Time in November. That will bring us something really rare: the latest sunrise in Chicago until November 2027, at 7:29am on November 6th. Thank leap years and orbital eccentricity for that. This statement holds true in all parts of the U.S. and Canada that observe daylight saving time until the first Sunday in November. The worst place to be that morning will be in the U.P. of Michigan, where the sun won't rise until after 8:30am. That's almost British.

Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight
2016
4 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 28th 07:19 16:33 9:13
28 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:01 9:52
5 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:11 10:10
20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:30 10:49
27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:30 17:39 11:08
12 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 17th
Earliest sunset until Oct 24th
06:07 17:55 11:47
13 Mar Daylight saving time begins
Latest sunrise until Oct 16th
Earliest sunset until Sep 18th
07:05 18:56 11:50
16 Mar 7am sunrise, 7pm sunset
12-hour day
07:00 19:00 11:59
19 Mar Equinox 23:30 CDT 06:54 19:03 12:08
3 Apr 6:30am sunrise (again) 06:30 19:20 12:50
12 Apr 7:30pm sunset 06:15 19:30 13:15
22 Apr 6am sunrise 05:59 19:41 13:41
10 May 8pm sunset 05:35 20:00 14:24
15 May 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:05 14:35
14 Jun Earliest sunrise of the year 05:15 20:28 15:13
20 Jun Solstice 17:34 CDT
8:30pm sunset
05:16 20:30 15:14
26 Jun Latest sunset of the year 05:17 20:31 15:13
3 Jul 8:30pm sunset 05:21 20:30 15:09
16 Jul 5:30am sunrise 05:30 20:24 14:54
8 Aug 8pm sunset 05:52 20:00 14:08
16 Aug 6am sunrise 06:00 19:50 13:50
29 Aug 7:30pm sunset 06:14 19:29 13:14
14 Sep 6:30am sunrise 06:30 19:03 12:32
15 Sep 7pm sunset 06:32 19:00 12:28
22 Sep Equinox, 9:21 CDT 06:39 18:48 12:08
25 Sep 12-hour day 06:42 18:42 12:00
2 Oct 6:30pm sunset 06:50 18:30 11:40
11 Oct 7am sunrise 07:00 18:15 11:15
21 Oct 6pm sunset 07:11 18:00 10:48
5 Nov Latest sunrise until 6 Nov 2027 (!)
Latest sunset until Feb 27th
07:29 17:40 10:10
6 Nov Standard time returns
Earliest sunrise until Feb 26th
6:30am sunrise
06:30 16:38 10:08
15 Nov 4:30pm sunset 06:42 16:30 9:48
1 Dec 7am sunrise 07:00 16:21 9:20
7 Dec Earliest sunset of the year 07:06 16:20 9:14
21 Dec Solstice, 04:44 CST 07:16 16:23 9:07

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

Statistics: 2015

Here are some numbers illustrating 2015 (cf. 2014 also):

  • I took only 14 trips and flew only 25 segments, visiting 7 states and 4 countries*.
  • Of those, 11 flight segments took off or landed outside the US, which is the highest proportion of international-to-domestic flights in any single year. Those years in which I've flown more international segments were also heavy-travel years in general. For example, in 2001, my heaviest travel year ever, I flew 15 international segments—my record—out of 63 total—also my record.
  • I flew 67,187 km, barely re-qualifying (with bonus points) for American Airlines elite status.
  • The Daily Parker had 493 posts, the lowest since 2010. The daily mean dropped to 1.35, continuing a slight downward trend since 2013.
  • Chargeable hours no longer made any difference as I no longer work as a consultant. However, I did log 148.82 hours walking Parker, 10 more than in 2014.
  • Reading suffered a bit. I started 21 books but only finished 15. On the other hand, I went to more operas in 2015 than any year previously, and also ate at more Michelin-starred restaurants than in the preceding 45 years combined.
  • 2015 was the first full year for which I have complete Fitbit statistics. During the year, I walked 4.67 million steps, averaging 12,787 per day; slept 2,287 hours, averaging 6.3 per night; and had a net loss of 1.2 kg. (Though at one point in 2015 I had lost 4.1 kg, and am now hoping that the slight bump in November and December was simply holiday food.)

In 2016, I expect more travel, more Daily Parker posts, about the same number of books, and the same number of live performances.

* Germany, Poland, the UK, and Italy; DC, Virginia, New York, Wisconsin, Indiana, Arizona, California, and Texas.

Wait, it's still 2015 somewhere?

Sorry, Hawai'i. Your UTC-10 is a full day behind Kiritimati, where it's already coming up on Saturday. But happy new year regardless!

And to the few sailors and submariners hanging out in UTC-11, happy new year to you, too, in an hour or so.