Buzzing the Bridgehouse: Hollywood Star goes behind the Camera at Wabash Avenue Bridge for Dhoom 3

click images for larger view

Marina City residents hoping to sleep in Saturday morning got an unexpected wake-up call, courtesy of a Eurocopter N350SC helicopter which made an early morning appearance low on the Chicago river over the Wabash avenue bridge.

N350SC is a motion picture veteran, co-starring with Bruce Willis in Live Free and Die Hard.

photo courtesy Warner Brothers

 . . . Alan Arkin and Anne Hathaway in the Steve Carrell vehicle Get Smart . . .

© 2006: Geffen Records

 . . . and, emblazoned with the singer's name, in a music video for Nelly Furtado's Say It Right.

On Saturday, however, mounted on the N350SC's was a Spacecam steadicam pod . . .

  . . . as the copter took shots including actors standing on the approach to the bridge, as actors portraying Chicago's finest (or moonlighting police officers) stood at their squad cars, guns drawn.

The crew remained safely tucked away on east Wacker behind Harry Weese's Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist.

The State Street bridge raised and lowered several times in the course of the filming, which appears to be for the Bollywood action sequel Dhoom 3: Back in Action,  starring Katrina Kaif, Abhishek Bachchan and Aamir Khan, the later two who turned down luxury hotel suites in favor of renting apartments so they could come home to their families during the three-month shoot in Chicago.

"Don't get me wrong," commented N350SC when asked on the transition from supporting actor to part of the crew, "I love being in front of the camera.  But in movies you're never, ultimately, in control of your own performance.  You're at the mercy of the cinematographer, the editor, the director.  So, no, I don't buy into all those people saying I'm washed up.  Now, I'm the one taking the pictures.  I'm the one pointing the camera, the one in control of the artistic vision.  Except for the pilot.  And the cameraman sitting next to him.  I have to go now."

Vote Bridges, Steel Bridges - through April 30th

Since 1928, the National Steel Bridge Alliance Prize Bridge Competition has honored more than 300 United States bridges (yeah, I know, that's the third time we've used the word "bridge"  - no, four times - in a single sentence) for excellence in design.  This year, the Alliance, the bridge division of the American Institute of Steel Construction, is promising "the most exciting steel bridge competition in history," a selection of all-time greats from a roster of past winners, with both Industry and People's Choice awards.

So, you the People's have through the end of April to pick your favorites.  You can find the on-line ballot form here.

Illinois is represented by 16 choices.  Indiana has none. (Take that!)  Kansas has one, in Leavenworth, also known as "the bridge no one really wants to cross unless its outbound".   Chicago nominees include the Wabash Avenue bridge, completed in September of 1930 for a mere $1,750,000.

click on images for larger view

Skip forward a half a century and there's the Columbus Drive bridge.  Flat and plain, it looks a little underwhelming today, but when it was completed in 1984, it was one of the largest movable bridges in the world - seven lanes of traffic, two 10-foot sidewalks, 270 feet between pivot points, with each of its twin spans weighing 6.3 million pounds, not counting the guy walking across with that really humongous Great Dane.

There's also 1974's Ramp "Q" Structure, an elevated whipsaw which I believe is on the Bishop Ford Freeway somewhere around Stony Island.  (If anyone has tighter info on the exact location, please let me know.)

photograph: AISC

Of course, the nominees aren't limited to Chicago.  There's also 1933's graceful Cedar Street Bridge in Peoria . . .

photograph: AISC 

Two of my favorite steel bridges, which didn't make the cut, are both on North Avenue (kind of), both the old classic in Lincoln Park (and what other city can claim they have dozens of bridges on LSD?) . . . 

and a much newer addition over the river . . . 

 The good news is that, due to date and technique of construction, such icons as the Brooklyn Bridge are not even in the running.  The bad news, the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge and Golden Gate are.

But don't let that discourage you.  This is a contest where ballot stuffing is not only not frowned upon, it's encouraged.  You can vote for as many of the nominees as you like, as many times as you want. It's  like a classic  Chicago election - but legal!  Vote early and vote often, here.