When you live in a major metropolitan area, solitude on a winter’s day, as lovely as it may sound, is more likely to be a new perfume (we’re imagining “Solitude” by Robert Frost Casuals) than a reality. Snow can muffle only so much. But here are two places, one outside and one inside, where you are guaranteed a modicum of alone time while the rest of the world huddles together for warmth:
Outside
The jetty at the top of Loyola Park in Rogers Park, between Pratt and Farwell avenues, stretching into Lake Michigan. Your easiest access is at Farwell. Walk east from Sheridan, past the tennis court, down the sloping path that curves north of the beach. Cross the bike path that slices through this 22-acre neighborhood oasis, and here you find a long dark break wall lined with steel cables. Bring a coat. If it’s the heart of winter, shove your hands deep into the pockets. Trudge out on the wall, your head bowed against the wind — you can walk 50 yards into the lake here, maybe more. On a crisp day, you can see downtown. And when the sky is slate and weather imminent, you can linger for 10 minutes before retreating, the waves tumbling beneath you.
Inside
The Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Hyde Park. 5757 S. University Ave. Obvious perhaps. For 48 years, it has been a retreat within a retreat, a submarine of an academic bookstore, with aisles that seem to stretch a city block, tucked beneath the Chicago Theological Seminary (founded in 1855) — itself a silent maze of stone arches and cloisters, benches cushioned in red satin and staircases that can only lead to Hogwarts. We suggest taking a moment of peace here now: The University of Chicago recently bought this gothic wonder and plans to move its Milton Friedman Institute into the space around 2012. According to the university, there are no plans to force out the bookstore. But we’re counting the days anyway.
— Christopher Borrelli
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Literary heights
CULTURAL CRITIC JULIA KELLER
They raced up mountains, plunged into chilly waters, ranged across vast deserts and flung themselves into thick jungles. Yet these explorers weren’t contestants on “The Amazing Race.” They were scientists.
As Sean B. Carroll, professor of molecular biology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin, recounts in his ravishingly entertaining book “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species” (Houghton Mifflin), you don’t have to be a skateboarder to have a lot of high-risk, death-defying fun. Researchers such as Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin and Eugene Dubois “walked where no others had walked, saw what no one else had seen,” because of “the urge to explore.”
Their exploits are harrowing — and exhilarating, especially because they can be enjoyed while on the couch in fuzzy slippers, thanks to Carroll’s book, which was published this year.
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Stone-faced fun
FILM CRITIC MICHAEL PHILLIPS
No one went to more breathtaking comic extremes for his art, and his paychecks, than Buster Keaton, master of the deadpan.
If you’ve never seen his third feature, the 1924 comedy “Sherlock Jr.,” you’re in for a treat. He plays a cinema projectionist coping with a romantic rival, a frame-up, and a series of daydreams, allowing Keaton to enter into various on-screen perils.
For the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s “Friday Night at the Movies” presentation, “Sherlock Jr.” will be accompanied by the CSO (conducted by Richard Kaufman) playing Timothy Brock’s original musical score. For cinephiles, as well as for fans of great screen comedy, this should be a pleasurable winter evening indeed. 8 p.m. Feb. 5, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave. Tickets $29-$103 at cso.org or 312-294-3000.
