On weekday afternoons, when a breeze blows from just the right direction, a miraculous sight appears near the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Faces turn upward, and strangers exchange wistful smiles.
Far above, a kite hovers in the sunlight-streaked canyon over the Chicago River, riding the wind currents and floating amid the skyscrapers like an urban apparition, a square of color tethered to our city by a delicate white string.
The kite makes an unusual spectacle in this downtown area, surrounded by towering buildings, construction cranes, honking taxis and rumbling city buses. It is an area of ambition and commerce. Of shoppers toting bulging bags, tourists clicking cameras and grim-faced office workers elbowing for space on the sidewalk.
Above it all floats the kite — as peaceful as a dove. Follow the string down, down, down, to a rumpled, white-haired man standing on the west side of the bridge, squinting into the sun, reeling the string around a large red spool.
“It’s so beautiful to see the kite up in the air, don’t you think?” says Mike Illich, 74, pulling the string and watching the kite, its angular plastic frame backlit by the sun. A bespectacled man with bushy black eyebrows, a mole on his left cheek, and a shy twittering laugh, Illich started flying a kite about four years ago.
He lives alone in Oak Park and, shortly after he retired from his job as a computer systems developer, he began filling his extra time by launching his kite all over the city and suburbs, from Oak Street and North Avenue Beaches, from a golf course in the western suburbs and even from the corner of Seminary and Waveland Avenues, where he sometimes flies his kite over Wrigley Field.
In late August, he took his kite to the Orleans Bridge downtown. But the wind there seemed to circle like a mini-cyclone, making it too blustery to launch. So Illich ambled over to the Michigan Avenue Bridge, which — as it turns out — is a stellar spot for kite-flying, with winds that whip strongly over the river. Illich began flying his kite — printed with a cartoon image of Spider-Man, patched with brown tape and often trailing a makeshift toilet-paper tail — from the bridge several times a week. His kites have since hit the University of Chicago’s Gleacher Center and also broken free and gone wafting down Michigan Avenue, but Illich still flies and hope to continue through the winter.
‘It’s just fun’
Does he find deeper meaning in the kite? A metaphor for life perhaps? Does the kite provide a poetic commentary on our busy lives? To these questions, Illich just shrugs. “No,” he says. “It’s just fun.”
On a recent day, Illich stood on the bridge, gauging the conditions. He looked at the flags along the banister, which were barely flapping. He eyed the billowing white clouds moving quickly behind the skyscrapers. “See the clouds,” he said, pointing. “It means changing weather. The wind might be coming.”
With his right hand, he held the spool of string. And with his left hand, he grasped the kite — extending it over the edge of the bridge, tossing it out quickly, before pulling on the string to catch the breeze. Again and again, he tossed the kite, only to have it float like a leaf down toward the water. Then, after two-dozen attempts, the wind! The kite caught the air current and hovered for a moment, before slowly rising 20 feet, 50 feet, then 100 feet into the air.
Drawing a crowd
Excitement swept through the crowd along the bridge’s sidewalk. One man gave Illich a congratulatory pat on the back. Linda Ladwig, 56, a tourist from North Carolina, with a blond bob haircut and round black sunglasses, gushed, “Oh, that’s so pretty.” Soon, nearly everyone was staring at the kite. A boater passing on the river below waved, pointed to the kite and gave a thumbs up. A bald man in a tan jacket stopped, leaned his body back and stared up, looking awe-struck.
By now, Illich had taken his eyes off the kite and was looking at the crowd with a satisfied grin on his weathered face. “Maybe this reminds people of their childhood,” said Illich, who with his ample belly, khaki pants rolled up at the ankles and his tousled hair, looked a bit like a big kid himself.
The show lasted for just a few minutes before the wind slowed, the string grew slack and the kite began to dip. Illich quickly reeled in the kite and caught it. He cut the string with a red pocket knife, removed the plastic spine and rolled up the kite.
The crowds on the sidewalk rushed onward, and Illich headed to Oak Street Beach, where he hoped he could find better gusts. “It wasn’t a good wind today,” said Illich. But, he added with a wry smile, “It was pretty fun, huh?”
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cmastony@tribune.com
