Decent Docent

Next week I go to the open house for prospective docents at the Architecture Foundation to talk about my experiences as a first year docent. A year ago, I went to this same open house. I can’t believe it’s been a year.

I was so excited I thought I was going to explode.

And the great thing is, I’m still REALLY excited about it all. Now that I am one, and have been giving tours all summer, I love being a docent. I love saying that I am one and I love being one and I love giving tours, except when they suck it.

I find that giving tours is much like Improv. Mostly, they go pretty well (usually better than pretty well actually, there’s not so much risk with the tour, cause you know pretty much what you’re going to say). They clap and thank you and want to talk to you afterwards. But when it goes badly. Man. It’s just as bad if not worse than being in the worst improv show. And you feel badly, until the next tour comes to take your mind off of it.

A couple of weeks ago I gave a rotten tour to 4 rotten tourees. They were questioning me, yawning, hanging too far back, etc. It was just a nightmare. And the thing is, I knew right away it was going to be horrible, so that’s two hours of wandering around, knowing that they were going to hate the whole thing.

The next week, I gave the same tour to another group, and they were AWESOME. As we were walking along through the city the nice middle aged lady was just kinda of walking next to me, looking all around at nothing in particular and she said “this is just so much fun”. And I knew just what she meant. It is fun.

I give two tours, the Modern Skyscrapers and the Architecture of Culture and Commerce. The ACC tour is mostly Burnham, Worlds Fair, Sullivan, Cultural Center, the historic stuff (with Millennium Park thrown in, not unlike a modern day worlds fair is it not?). I have some great bits for this tour; it’s mostly stories about the personalities of Chicago, Potter Palmer and Marshall Fields. So easy to make it interesting, it is interesting and funny and touching and sad and amazing.

But the Modern Tour, the Modern tour is way different. It’s not cute, it’s exacting. It’s not touching, it’s awe-inspiring. I have NO BITS. There aren’t any. Mies Van der Rohe is not the most hilarious guy on the planet. So cutesy does not work. Me being enthusiastic and interested, no one cares. They want engineering, explanation; they don’t want funny marriage bits about Helmut Jahn and Skidmore Owings & Merrill. So it’s really hard, because I have to rely on what I know, about architecture. Not about what I know about Chicago or it’s history.

I love giving both tours. There’s more to learn architecturally on the Modern Tour, you’re actually teaching concepts, Modernism, Postmodernism. You’re teaching philosophies and techniques. The Historical tour, you’re showing them how amazing Chicago is, things you can’t imagine that we did, that they did.

Who knew it was A. Montgomery Ward that saved the lakefront from having structures built on it? And that he questioned if anyone would ever know what he did for the city? And when I tell my tourists this, I cry. Because I’m making sure they know how important this man was. And I cry at the end of this tour when I repeat Daniel Burnham’s quote “Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood”.

I don’t cry on the Modern Tour, but I love giving it just as much.

So a year ago I knew nothing, except that I wanted desperately to know something.

And now I know, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg, but teach me more Windy City, teach me more.