The most important parts of a play are often performed beyond view of the audience; a play—after all—is the visible drama and the mood surrounding it. There are other elements of theater, however, that make drama possible. There are sets: the ones that we see, but our attention is often diverted from the support struts and guy wires holding things in place. Though lighting is an important, mood-enhancing feature, we are not encouraged to look at the lights themselves. Plays, like any other aspect of human gesture, resound in significant ways only when there is a recipient of that gesture, or an object to which that gesture may indicate. The same goes for cities. There are the things any tourist agency may wish for us to see: the pretty lights, the jazz clubs, the boats on the river, or the animals in a zoo. We may be invited to partake in the drama of the city, without ever considering what a holds all of that drama together. Cities, like state-plays are gestures, but the mechanics of such gestures and their actual anatomies are never the focus of human concern. I enjoy plays. I enjoy cities. I enjoy the drama and the gestures of any human language, including the languages of stage, screen, and city. I enjoy the anatomies of such gestures as well: and in a sense, I suspect that this interest is largely linguistic in nature. If a city is a language, then all of the “behind the scenes” bits of its infrastructure are the grammar allowing that language to have a coherent and repeatable meaning. Where the grammar of Prague seemed ancient and stony in nature, or at least wooden, the grammar of Chicago is distinctly metallic and distinctly younger. Chicago’s grammar appeals to me more than the city itself. I’m not interested in the drama of Chicago: I’m more interested in how that drama’s inherent grammar makes it coherent and repeatable. Rivets, nuts, and bolts are profound elements of Chicago’s urban grammar, and I find beauty in Chicago, when I find such things. I love the glass and the light, but it’s the rust, the rivets, the cross-struts, and the braces that appeal more to me than anything showy. I suspect that if Chicago was an actual language, then the easiest way to learn it would be to look at the rivets and the nuts, the bolts, and the struts: the grammar. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week. I have lots of catching up to do, which isn’t surprising, and I hope to accomplish that catching up soon.