The skyscrapers that so impressively line the lakefront have started throwing shadows earlier across the sand and concrete of the city’s beaches. Summer is wearing thin.
But still in bright sunlight, a nicely tanned man named Jeff Gates sits on the concrete near Division Street. On his shoulder is a bird.
It is a 4-year-old umbrella cockatoo named Quincy and it is here three days a week, traveling from the apartment it shares with Gates near Sheridan Road and Foster Avenue. They skate here, the bird riding on Gates’ shoulder.
He is a pianist and graphic artist who prefers this stretch of beach for “the obvious reason,” which is not so obvious, since he motions in the direction of both a lovely bikini-clad woman and a breathtaking skyline view.
“At first Quincy was spooked,” says Gates. “Until last summer he was an indoor bird. He had never had blue sky above him.
“He’s very comfortable. People come up to us constantly. He pulls a nice crowd. Maybe it’s a little ostentatious, but people are enamored of it.”
Quincy cocks his head as a breeze ruffles his feathers. He could fly away, if he were of a mind, and if he weren’t tethered to Gates by a leash.
“He loves it here, so much that he gets a little funny in winter,” says Gates. “He seems to be depressed in March and April.”
As Gates is talking, another creature emerges from the passageway that runs under the streaming traffic of the Outer Drive. It is a small dog, a 3-year-old toy poodle almost as small as Quincy.
The dog is Dinky, and her owner is Amy O’Keefe. They live, with O’Keefe’s husband, in a nearby high-rise. They are here three or four afternoons a week, if it’s not too hot.
“We adopted the dog after it had spent its first year or so being terribly abused,” says O’Keefe. “Shortly after we got her, she suffered a spontaneous rupture of a disc. (She) had an operation but it didn’t work. One option was to put the dog down, but she was still so vibrant, we just couldn’t.”
So O’Keefe contacted an outfit called K-9 Carts, based in Big Sky, Mont. It supplied the little contraption that allows Dinky to playfully scamper from sunbather to sunbather.
“Some people think I’m torturing the dog, but most are very friendly and very interested,” says O’Keefe. “And she loves the attention.”
Nearby a man rises from his towel and begins to do push-ups. A woman stands and slathers herself with baby oil. The shadows continue to lengthen.
