#816: Tour de Chicago – News History by Bike

July 14th, 2017

By the time you read these lines, my wife, two travelers backpacks, a whole ton of jetlag and I will have have landed in Paris, France (Motto: The Paris, Texas, of France) for our honeymoon.

Although there will be two days of pastries, Seine and wine, we’re spending the bulk of the trip backpacking, following the Tour de France. It’s a lifelong dream of my wife’s to watch the Tour and a lifelong dream of mine to get drunk at 10 a.m. with skinny Belgians in wicking fabric.

While I’m watching Austrians argue over what exactly went down between Cavendish and Sagan, I leave you my city with your own cycling tour. This and the next three stories will come in the form of bike tours I designed taking you to different sites in Chicago history.

Monday’s stage of the tour will be about LGBTQ history. Wednesday’s will be about private encroachment on the public lakefront. Friday’s will be an odd one-mile jaunt with stories about Wesley Willis, a naval disaster, lopsided architecture, a faceless goddess and a man who claimed the moon.

Kicking off our Tour de Chicago is a 2.4-mile look at the history of Chicago news, starting at the spot the city’s first paper debuted in 1833.

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