Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
The Obama Presidential Center opens June 19 on Chicago’s South Side. This issue starts there.
The Dispatch makes the case for the presidential library as this summer’s domestic trip, tracing how these places began with FDR and what they are built to do. A Chosen Place argues that you come to know Chicago one neighborhood and one street festival at a time. The Journey follows reader Frederick J. Nachman through a Swiss week gone sideways, after an avalanche near Zermatt strands the luggage and leaves his group in the same clothes for days. Further Afield gathers the practical follow-ups: two presidential centers opening within weeks of each other, a cross-country library road trip, and where to find Chicago’s festivals.
Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
Sit Behind the Resolute Desk This Summer.
A presidential library is worth a summer drive, and the Obama Center opens June 19. What these places are for, and how they’ve changed.
During my eight years working at the University of Chicago, I regularly drove past the site and later the construction of the Obama Presidential Center. I found myself wondering why presidential centers exist, who they were built for, and what they're supposed to do. Last week, I finally got to tour the building before it opens to the public on June 19.
Why go this summer
If you are still finalizing your summer travel plans, consider building a trip around a presidential library. After all, the cost of flying overseas has climbed, more Americans are staying closer to home, and the country turns 250 in July.
Inside the Obama Center
The center sits on nineteen acres of Jackson Park, on Chicago’s South Side, most of it free and open to anyone. The museum is an imposing granite tower. Near the top, concrete letters five feet tall spell a passage from Obama’s 2015 Selma speech across two of its corners. There’s a replica of the Oval Office, with the Resolute Desk you can sit behind, and twenty-eight artworks.
Its purpose differs from the centers before it. Earlier presidential libraries are archives of a completed presidency. The Obama Center sets out to do more. The Foundation describes it as a place to explore democracy, telling the nation's story through its first Black president and first lady and the movements behind them. The site was deliberate, the neighborhood where Michelle Obama grew up and Barack Obama organized, and one they hoped to help. It is built to send visitors back out to act: leadership programs, public forums, a public library branch, and a regulation basketball court called Home Court.
How they began
These places have a short history. The first belonged to Franklin Roosevelt, who decided in 1939 that a president’s papers were the country’s property rather than the family’s, and gave his to the government in Hyde Park, New York. Congress made it law in 1955: private money builds the library, and the National Archives runs it. After Nixon, the Presidential Records Act made the papers of every president public property.
Thirteen of these federal libraries exist now, from Hoover in Iowa to George W. Bush in Dallas. The most-visited is Reagan’s, in Simi Valley, whose main draw is an Air Force One you can walk through. The Obama Center is the first to step outside that system. Its records were digitized; the building belongs to a foundation, and there is no Archives reading room inside. Trump has gone further. In his renderings, his planned library is a glass tower in Miami. The newest are private institutions, outside the federal system.
What they’re really for
They look different, but they are all trying to answer the same question. Each is built around a single president, and presidents and their priorities pass through while the country goes on. Walk through any of them long enough, and the focus shifts. You stop thinking about the president and start thinking about the country, along with what we ask of the people we elect, and what we still hope this country can be.
It is worth being reminded that those hopes are held in common, among people who may agree on little else. You can disagree with the president and still take that seriously.
From the top floor of the center, a room called the Sky Room, you look out through the reversed letters of the speech to the University of Chicago campus below. I have always thought it is among the most beautiful campuses anywhere. I drove toward it for eight years. It was strange to look back at it from the top of the building I had watched go up.
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling for — and understanding once you arrive
Chicago, Illinois
A City You Meet One Neighborhood at a Time
Chicago does not need our help. Condé Nast Traveler’s readers have named it the best big city in the country for nine years running, and we have spent enough time in and around it to know the ranking is earned. We also know something the awards leave out: this is a warm-weather city. It is at its best from May through October, and best of all in summer. Go in February, and you will wonder what people see in it. Go in July, and you will understand.
The famous Chicago
The architecture is the best in America, and the way to see it is from the river, on a boat, with someone pointing out what you are looking at. The lakefront runs eighteen miles, with beaches and a path the whole way. The Art Institute would anchor a trip to any city. Millennium Park has the bean-shaped sculpture everyone photographs and a free summer concert series under Gehry’s band shell. The food long ago outgrew the deep-dish joke. You could fill a week this way and leave happy.
A city of neighborhoods
Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, seventy-seven of them by the official count, each with its own food and its own idea of itself. In summer, they come outside. From May into September, on nearly every weekend, a neighborhood closes a few blocks, sets up stages and food stalls, and throws a street festival. There are dozens of them.
They all follow roughly the same script. You pay a few dollars at a rope line, or nothing at all. A stage or two, a band the neighborhood is proud of, tents of local food, a beer line, a block of vendors selling things you do not need. Mostly, it's a chance to spend an afternoon in a place where Chicagoans actually live.
The festivals
Andersonville throws Midsommarfest, a nod to its Swedish roots that has run for more than fifty years. West Town has Do Division and West Fest, both heavy on music. Wicker Park Fest leans hard on music, and the Tribune has called it the best street festival of the summer. The West Loop eats its way through Taste of Randolph. Lincoln Square keeps the German and folk traditions going at Square Roots. Pilsen’s Fiesta del Sol is one of the largest Latino festivals in the Midwest. Northalsted’s Market Days takes over the city’s gay village every August, among the country’s biggest LGBTQ+ street festivals. Roscoe Village has Retro on Roscoe. Most are free or close to it.
Planning the weekend
The lineup shifts a little every year, so plan close to your trip. Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism site, keeps a running summer guide. Do312 lists the street fests as they are announced, neighborhood by neighborhood. Time Out Chicago sorts the season into what is worth your weekend. Pick a neighborhood and give a Saturday to its festival.
If you are already coming to Chicago this summer for the Obama Center, here is how to make the most of the trip. See the museum and walk the South Side, then give the next day to a neighborhood with its streets closed and its music up. Chicago is easiest to love from the middle of one of those blocks.
The Journey — Voices of the Nomadic Spirit
Stories from travelers who have learned that the journey matters as much as the destination. If you have one to share, please reach out to [email protected].
An Avalanche Closed the Road Out of Zermatt. Our Suitcases Stayed Behind.
Photo and story by Frederick J. Nachman
On June 24, 2024, our group tour was speeding through the Swiss Alps on the Glacier Express, marveling at the rushing river and cascading waterfalls as rain pelted the windows. Shortly after departing, an announcement came: an avalanche just outside our departure city, Zermatt, had closed all road traffic. Unfortunately, our luggage was not on the train; it was on a truck stranded in Zermatt. We were headed to Lucerne; our luggage was not.
Arriving for a two-night stay with the luggage’s arrival date unknown, we unpacked and found that important items – including medicine and chargers – were in our roller bags. With the assistance of one of the tour directors, we immediately hit the pharmacies to obtain our medicines. Having our prescription data accessible on our cellphones via MyChart made the task easier than expected (several drugs were over-the-counter in Switzerland), but I needed a prescription for 81mg aspirin. The quest requiring two different pharmacies to complete was complicated by torrential rains (the hotel’s umbrella notwithstanding), soaking what we now figured would be our clothing for the foreseeable future. The hotel had chargers and toilet articles. We carefully kept all receipts; reimbursement from the trip-insurance company covered a significant portion, but not all, of the expenses.
The situation had its light moments. It was amusing to see our fellow travelers – at breakfast in the hotel, on the walking tour of the city, gondolas up Mount Pilatus, and a rainy Lake Lucerne cruise – dressed in the same clothing throughout our stay. I’ve been packing dry-fast t-shirts for my travels; my gray New Balance shirt was washed in the sink each night and dried with a hair dryer when needed. We also purchased underwear from H&M; everything else was worn multiple days.
After departing for Basel (on the bus that had just transported the Swiss women’s World Cup team), some fellow passengers shouted that their AirTags indicated their luggage was on the move! Shortly thereafter, we were informed our luggage would meet us on the boat, where we would embark on a Rhine River cruise to Amsterdam.
Frederick J. Nachman is a Nomadic Spirit reader, a retired corporate communications/investor relations consultant, avid photographer, and die-hard Chicago White Sox fan. His photography is displayed at www.flickr.com/photos/brulelaker.
Fork First
The Dish. The Place. The Reason to Go.
Restaurants, dishes, and tables to plan a trip around. If you have one worth sharing, please write to [email protected] for submission guidelines.
The Sandwich That Says Chicago
The guidebooks send you to deep-dish pizza and the Chicago hot dog. However, to feel like a true Chicagoan, you order the Italian beef.
Thinly shaved roast beef, slow-roasted in its own jus, stacked on an Italian roll and dipped until the bread nearly falls apart. You top it with sweet peppers or hot giardiniera, a chopped relish of pickled vegetables and hot peppers in oil. It comes out wet and messy, eaten leaning forward.
Where it came from
It started as a way to stretch a little meat. In Chicago’s old Italian neighborhoods, money was short, and the humblest weddings were known as peanut weddings, after the bowls of peanuts that stood in for a catered meal. To feed a crowd on little, hosts sliced a small cut of beef paper-thin and served it on bread soaked in its broth. Who invented the sandwich is still debated. Anthony Ferreri and Pasquale Scala both have claims. Ferreri’s son Al turned it into a business in 1938, opening the Little Italy stand that still bears his name. The cheap, tough cuts came home from the stockyards. Long roasting and thin slicing did the rest.
The beef is a working sandwich and does not look like much. For decades, it stayed local, eaten at a stand near the job. Then it caught on in the 1970s, and The Bear took it national. The FX show is built on a real Chicago stand, Mr. Beef on Orleans Street. Now people who have never set foot in the city come looking for the sandwich.
Chicago has changed around it. The city is now one of the world’s serious food destinations, with some twenty Michelin-starred restaurants, a wall of James Beard awards, and Kasama, the first Filipino restaurant anywhere to earn a star. Smyth holds three Michelin stars and was just named the best restaurant in North America. Through all of that, the sandwich hasn't changed much. It is still a few dollars at a counter, and still the sandwich that says Chicago.
Where to get the best
The best of it is not in the city. It is at Johnnie’s Beef in Elmwood Park, a low stand just past the western edge of town, doing one thing well since 1961. Order like a regular: a combo, juicy, sweet, and hot. That gets you beef and a length of char-grilled sausage, the roll dipped, sweet peppers, and giardiniera on top. Johnnie’s roasts its own beef, which is why it comes out so tender. The line runs long and moves fast. It is cash-only, and there is nowhere to sit except at a counter or in your front seat. Finish with the lemon ice. By Chicago standards, where everyone has an opinion, Johnnie's is the closest thing to a consensus pick.
If you would rather not leave the city, take the original. Al’s #1, on Taylor Street in Little Italy, has been at it since 1938, and it holds its own. But the best one is a short drive west, out past the bungalows to a corner of Elmwood Park.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
A first look inside the Obama Presidential Center
NPR
NPR toured the campus ahead of the June 19 opening: an eight-story museum rising over gardens, ball fields, and a branch library, where the first word you see is “hope.” A look inside before the doors open on Juneteenth.
A new presidential library opens July 4
National Geographic
On July 4, the nation’s 250th birthday, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens in the North Dakota Badlands that shaped him. Designed by Snøhetta to vanish into its butte beneath a living roof, it is the kind of place worth building a summer trip around.
A presidential library road trip
Roadtrippers
A run through the federal presidential libraries as road-trip stops, from FDR’s first one in Hyde Park to the newest on the map. Pick a region and you can string several into one long drive.
Chicago’s summer festival guide
Choose Chicago
The city’s tourism office keeps a running list of the season’s street fairs, neighborhood by neighborhood, with dates as they firm up. Start here to find the weekend that matches where you want to be.
What’s happening for America’s 250th
America250
The nonpartisan commission charged by Congress, with Bush and Obama among its honorary chairs, keeps an interactive map and calendar of Semiquincentennial events in every state. New ones are added daily.
“To bring together the records of the past and to house them in buildings where they will be preserved for the use of men and women in the future, a Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the dedication of the first presidential library, Hyde Park, New York, June 30, 1941
