Reviews:

Rick Kogan Chicago Tribune

The Jewel That Was Comiskey

In Friday's Tempo section, buried amid reviews of made-for-television movies and silly new shows was a review of a videotape called "The Other Side of Summer: The Wrecking of Old Comiskey Park" which aired as a part of the "Image Union" series at 10 p.m. Saturday.

It is the work of Bob Chicoine, a man whose resume has a nicely eclectic look: he's an accountant, ballpark beer vendor and poet.

He has written and narrates this amazing film, comprised of some 250 still photos, haunting and evocative, of the 80-year-old building which fell to the wrecking ball during the summer of 1991. It's a timeless, terrific piece of work and befitting such art, it will have a life after TV.



William J. McGill Spitball Magazine

The cycle of poems reproduced here is the narration for a video produced by Bougainville Productions of Chicago as a tribute to one of the now lost ballparks, the old, the real Comiskey. The video blends the gritty verse of Bob Chicoine with still-life images of the park's deconstruction and of the people who once dwelled therein, punctuated with original music that effectively bridges the interludes and underscores the moods of the language.

The people whom the poetry and the pictures feature are not the players but the fans, the vendors, the hustlers, the hopefuls, and the dying who passed through the gates, staked claim to this or that corner of the stands, and wandered the caverns beneath. And it is not the lush green field which Chicoine celebrates, but the steel girders, the walkways, the concession stands, even the urinals.

There are villains flitting in and out, the moneyed interests that condemned the old park and replaced its tawdry glory with a bone-white vault. But this slightly puerile plaint is really incidental to the vividness of the life which the words and music and images impress upon the listener/viewer.

In general, the technique of using photographs, instead of moving pictures, works effectively, particularly the shots of the park at various stages of destruction. Some of the other images seem weak or contrived in contrast to the hard-edged poetry that gives motion and energy to the whole. Enough of them work, however, both comically and poignantly, to make the video a worthwhile addition to any fan's collection.



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