In the course of your basic run-of-the-mill Chicago hotel day, a certain contingent of unstumpable sleuths and query-takers might be called upon to:
(1) Round up 30 pig eyes, pronto.
(2) Convince the owner of an Oak Street haberdashery to open up at 9:30 on a Saturday night so some chap in for the weekend can pick up the pair of cashmere socks he says he simply must have–now.
(3) Rescue a stray Brooks Brothers jacket from the ivy-covered confines of Wrigley Field, because an out-of-town visitor left it there, and figures he has now donated it to the cause.
(4) Calculate the latitude and longitude of Richmond, Va. Heaven only knows why.
(5) Messenger a menu to the Hadley School for the Blind and, by lunch time, have it translated into Braille, just in time for the blind guest who had checked in that morning and made reservations for lunch.
(6) Look under (D) for dentist–in that handy-dandy Rolodex and serve the guest with the tooth clutched in his fist, a mere two hours before he’s to give a keynote speech.
(7) Tape over the carpet in the grand ballroom, and shield the quarter-million-dollar chandelier from some NBA team (in town for the playoffs) that doesn’t want to leave the inn but does want to get in some practice before the game–and before the hoity-toity wedding in that very room that evening, which will demand the nearly impossible task of transforming the, ahem, basketball court back into the ballroom for which the bride’s father has paid dearly.
“Sometimes the impossible we make possible,” says Derry Deridjat, one of five concierges at the 1,543-room Chicago Hilton and Towers, speaking for the entire corps of concierges around town, who keep Chicago’s guests thinking this is indeed a magical city where, at the drop of a hat, animal parts can be procured, tuxedos retrieved, medical emergencies mended and, quite simply, disasters of all sorts and sizes averted.
“We’re a little bit magician. We’re everything from slave to friend to friend’s advisor,” says Deridjat, Indonesian-born, who in 15 minutes one Sunday morning tracked down those pig eyes for a guest speaking at an ophthalmologists convention, and who, during down times, wouldn’t think twice about sewing a loose button back on a guest’s jacket. “To be concierge, to be honest, you have to be like octopus.”
Not so very long ago, only the upper-crust hotels in Europe had these hired hands, whose job it was to suit the every whim of the nobility and gentry who had checked in for a good night’s sleep. Then in the late `70s and ’80s, the rest of the world caught on, and now–with concierges in condo buildings, hospitals and even a few over-indulgent corporations–everyone seems to know that the smiling face at the concierge desk in the hotel lobby is the designated tour guide, restaurant critic, social director, tracker-downer of objects lost, rare or otherwise barely attainable. And, most of all, a 24-hour-a-day answer person.
It’s non-stop, this mother-henning of hotel guests.
“You come away from a day here so enervated that all you can think of is lying down, staring at the ceiling, turning your phone off, not talking to a single human being,” says Abigail Hart, head concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel and one of the first of her kind in this city, starting out at the Westin Hotel in 1980, back when fielding 500 phone calls a day at the concierge desk would have been unheard of.
Not now.
“Your best friend is that telephone, and you’re on it all day,” says Hart, who has worked without a chair for 17 years; there’s no time to sit down. Hers is a corps dogged in their patrons’ pursuits: “We hate to say no. You are so loathe to say, `Oh gosh, sorry.’ “
“Expect the unexpected” is the conciergess’ incantation.
“Would you go to a hotel and ask a concierge where you could get a silicone implant?” asks Jon Winke, an 18-year veteran of the concierge desk at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago, who when asked just that did not blink; he simply dialed a plastic surgeon.
And so it goes, whether it means buying up five rows of seats in a movie theater for a security-freaked guest who wanted no one seated near him, or sprinkling four hefty bags filled with rose petals around a bedroom suite (and at the last minute picking up every last petal and switching to another suite, because not until check-in did the guest mention he needed a room in which smoking was allowed.)
And the trick to these tricks, and the more prosaic queries (reservations for dinner, missing cufflinks), is that every plight must always be alleviated in minutes, if not seconds.
“You can do anything with time; we don’t have time,” says the Four Seasons’ Hart, tiptoeing toward a cupboard that is her saving grace. “We can avert disasters by supplying people with things in seconds, literally seconds.”
With that she opens the cupboard door, revealing a clear Lucite tool box with what must be dozens of drawers, each marked in plain black letters: “cotton balls,” “eye shades,” “twine,’ “‘magnifying glass,” “ponchos,” “playing cards” and more.
They call it “The Incredible Concierge Emporium,” and the inventory runs at about 150 different whatchamahoojies, all items born of disasters. Take, for instance, the drawer of faux gold wedding rings, there for the bridegroom who might have overlooked a little detail and nearly missed his missus. Or the sole unmarked drawer, most frequented by the midnight concierge–“condoms,” whispers Hart, ever discreet. Whenever anyone in the hotel is asked for anything in the near panic that always accompanies such queries, an e-mail is sent to the concierge desk and the item in question is stocked in the larder.
This is but one of the tools employed by those who make it their job to meet all requests, especially the ones prefaced, “You probably won’t be able to do this,” the ultimate concierge challenge and a sure way of getting a rise out of these adrenaline-stoked souls.
Concierges say theirs is a job made possible only by connections–whom you know–and by favors–who owes you. The computers at the concierge desks are jammed with esoterica ranging from the phone number for highway reports in a three-state area to the call letters and locations of area TV and radio stations.
“Every question we’re ever asked, goes in there,” says Marjorie Silverman, chief concierge at the Hotel Inter-Continental, and one of Chicago’s first concierges.
“Obviously we don’t know the answers to everything, but we have to know how to find out anything.”
And, now that summer is approaching, these innkeepers who earn their keep keeping the inn copacetic are gearing up for the concierge equivalent of accountants’ tax season.
These are the days when you might have to queue up–maybe take a number–at the concierge desk to inquire about the double-decker buses cruising the Avenue, boats on the river filled with sky-gawkers craning their necks to make out the pediment on the buildings passing by. These are the days of no rest for the city’s ambassadors of the hotel lobby.
And, based on the rat-a-tat-tat of questions spewing forth from every last soul with a Nikon around the neck, you would think Chicago was a metropolis made up only of this: the world’s tallest building (no more, but few seem to have noticed), the world’s busiest airport, the lake, Gino’s East, Oprah, Michael Jordan and–dang, will this never die?–the legend of Al Capone.
There is, if you listen closely, some fascinating sociological distinction among hotels and their guests. A favorite summer jaunt suggested by the folks at the Four Seasons is a motor drive up Sheridan Road all the way to Lake Forest, in a private car of course, with a split of champagne for the ride. At the Chicago Hilton and Towers, on the other hand, bus tours to Gurnee Mills are a hot commodity, even in the sauna months of summer.
Ah, but it’s all in a day’s work for those who make it their business to make Chicago the gosh darn friendliest, easiest place to get around, chock-full of last-minute miracles.
WHERE FIVE CHICAGO CONCIERGES WILL SEND YOU FOR THAT PERFECT WEEKEND
It’s almost too much to ask, but these are the people to ask, so we figured, what the heck, give it a shot. Ask.
What, in this city so fine in the summer months, would be the perfect weekend itinerary for someone new to its soils?
To save you the trouble of asking, here is that weekend, a compendium of the responses from those who know best in Chicago, the concierges at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, the Four Seasons Chicago, the Hotel Inter-Continental Chicago, the Renaissance Chicago Hotel and the Ritz-Carlton Chicago.
Everyone knows the weekend starts early on Friday when the Cubs are in town. So head north, and don’t think of not taking the elevated train, say those who will be more than happy to provide you with every detail for the trip–even the CTA token, if you’re lucky enough to be a Four Seasons guest.’
Provided you’re not too stuffed from the dogs-and-suds at Wrigley, you really ought to head out to one of the sidewalks around town now crowded with tables and chairs, forks and knives, and have yourself an al fresco dinner, while you watch the city lights come on.
Saturday morning get up and grab yourself a seat on one of the architectural boat tours offered by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, now the No. 1 requested tourist activity, according to our select pool.
Follow that up with lunch in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Contemporary Art, where you can still keep your eye on the lake or, craning your neck, the construction at the corner of Chicago and Michigan Avenues. Then, it’s time to shop. And you’ll probably never leave Michigan Avenue, once called the Magnificent Mile, now Glitz Gulch–except perhaps for Marshall Field’s State Street store.
That night, you should definitely get your sweet, tired self up to Ravinia Park in Highland Park on the North Shore, summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and site of the most outlandish picnicking you might ever see. (Your hotel will pack you a fine basket dinner, should you so desire, but you still might feel naked without your sterling candelabra, the accessory of choice up there.)
Sunday morning, you might like a stroll through the Lincoln Park Zoo. Follow that up with a Gospel brunch at the new House of Blues, and save Sunday afternoon for your choice of the cultural triumvirate: the Art Institute, the Museum of Science and Industry or the lakefront museum campus, which includes the Field Museum (natural history), the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium.
You can always catch up on sleep back home on Monday.
