Thursday, July 9, 2009

Blue Brothers' Chicago

Seeing all the new sights that Chicago offered was fabulous but my trip would have been incomplete if I'd not seen some Blues Brothers locations. I have seen the movie 43 times and have got to the stage where I can now only watch it by myself as I find I'm reciting lines all through the film which drives people mad! Daley Plaza was my mecca and had to be seen with my own eyes.

On the tour buses, we often drove down Wacker Drive where Jake and Elwood led hundreds of police cars on an amazingly long chase but we never clocked 130 mph like they did.


I had the chance to visit Daley Plaza on my own and was happy to just stand and drink in the atmosphere of the location that marked my heroes' destination and where the car chase ended. It looked exactly like it did on the movie but minus the thousands of military and police officers and their vehicles. I was very excited to be here and didn't know where to walk first.

The building on the left was where Jake & Elwood's car crashed through the glass windows, drove through the foyer as marked by the red arrow and then crashed out of the other side of the building to stop outside the Cook County Assessor's Office.

The two concerned faces above are on the side of the CC building and featured in the movie immediately after the Blues Mobile sadly fell apart on the pavement.


A security guard noticed me with my nose pressed to the glass and very kindly came out and took my photo outside the building as well as explaining that the interior of this actual Cook County building wasn't the interior used on the film. I took many more photos of Daley Plaza and walked around some more, reluctant to leave such a famous place and anxious in case I'd missed anything.

We also stopped at Wrigley Fields which was shown in the movie because Elwood gave the actual street address of the stadium as his home address angering the police when they turned up to arrest him and furious at having been duped.

And the icing on the cake was at the airport as we left, Jake and Elwood were sitting along one of the walkways providing an opportune photo.

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