Travelling Hopefully - Leather & Stained Glass

I am a shambling imbecile!  I actually consider myself quite intelligent but even my best friends would agree (in fact, especially my best friends would agree) that when it comes to the task of being a functional human being I swing somewhere between "barely competent" and "alien from another planet".  My long suffering host in Chicago is the latest to discover this fact.  First I told her I was going to be late then I wasn't (not really my fault, Amtrak had a sudden burst of competence). Then I went to the wrong door and sent my host an increasingly hysterical series of messages because my key didn't open the wrong door.  Finally I managed to lock myself out of my own room.  More hysterical messages to my host later and she must be about ready to give up on Airbnb and convert her room into  a pumpkin patch to make some money.

Despite all of the above I've managed to achieve everything I planned for Chicago.  My secret?  Set the bar low.  Since my stay in Chicago was a short one I had identified precisely two sights that I was determined to see; the Leather Archive & Museum and a stained glass exhibition at Navy Pier.  Thanks largely to an excellent public transport system and guidance from helpful (and surprisingly knowledgeable) derelicts I was able to achieve both goals.

The Leather Archive & Museum is a facility dedicated to preserving papers and memorabilia from the leather and BDSM community.  The train dropped me in Loyola in northish Chicago a mere five minutes walk from the museum, or ten minutes if you get off the train and start walking the wrong way.  Still I found the place without too many problems (Squirrels!  Bunnies!  Bunnies & Squirrels!). Sorry, where was I?  Oh yes, the Leather Archive.

After I was buzzed in I was able to wander around and take in large murals of well muscled men with not a great deal of clothing.  The murals are the work of an artist called Etienne whose partner founded the museum after Etienne died in part to preserve the murals.

There is a generous collection of toys or "tools" as I was informed they used to be called.  Apparently in the 1950s code for a leather man was "working man".  So a leather man could approach a likely looking stranger and simply say, "working man, you?".  As such the collection of cuffs, restraints, dildos, chains etc were the working man's tools.  Centrepiece was a bright red spanking bench that looked so nice that I personally would have been afraid to touch it.

Also interesting was the memorabilia together with short biographies of various members of the community past & present.  For a brief sit down there was a video room showing interviews and clips from fetish movies.  The attendant seemed terribly chuffed that I had selected the museum as one of my sights to see in Chicago.

The next day it was grey and rainy so I went to look at stained glass at Navy Pier.  Lonely Planet which had guided me to the Leather Archive also directed my here but it would appear that the major display I was expecting had been removed.  However there was a modest display of work by Louis Tiffany so it wasn't a wasted trip.  There were only perhaps twenty pieces but they were exquisite and delicately beautiful.  Brightly lit on a pure black background the work seemed to glow as if it were alive.

I stood there wondering if photos were allowed when a wedding party arrived and turned the place into a photo shoot.  The bride and groom were photographed in front of a couple of the more spectacular pieces but I'm not sure if they actually looked at them.  Still with my photo question answered I waited until they made themselves scarce then went back and took a few snaps myself.

With Chicago thoroughly conquered (squirrels, squirrels, squirrels) there was nothing left to do but board a train to Cleveland.  Enough of this wandering around America like a slightly confused tornado.  Now it was time for ASLOK.