1,001 Chicago Afternoons

I was pleased to discover college students are still awful. » Read the rest of this entry «

The tree is on the corner of Harmony Boulevard and Ravinia Road — they give the streets silly names in the graveyard.

I read a few more of the names into the recorder I brought with me that ride day in July, but I couldn’t find the good recorder that morning. What tape I have is minutes of crackling and wind. I make out odd words like “pine cones,” “birds,” “Symphony Shores” and “I ask why, but HUSBAND Harry Davies (1880-1949) won’t answer.”

I’m typing this in October and I can’t remember why I found the graveyard so loving. » Read the rest of this entry «

At the end of Bubbly Creek, the southern fork of the Chicago River’s southern branch, where the meatpackers once dumped blood, guts and industry, where the bubbles of carbonic gas once burst in “rings two or three feet wide,” to quote the muckraker Upton, where men gathered filth for lard, skimming in scows the fat of the water, a tattooed bartender checks her phone waiting for the craft brewpub to open. » Read the rest of this entry «

A man with dancing cats on his hands first told me about Mr. Canoe. » Read the rest of this entry «

There is a spot where the dollar stores no longer have chain-link fences and concertina wire rounding their roofs.

There’s a place along Illinois Route 1 — Halsted Street to Chicagoans — where the dollar stores just become dollar stores, no extra security needed in metal and mesh. Then there’s a place further north where they disappear entirely. » Read the rest of this entry «

Chicago tastes like kimchi and sausage. It takes like bulgogi beef and a side of fries.

Chicago looks like a Saturday night in Bridgeport as the sun dips down into the suburbs and the strings of bulbs flip on over a restaurant’s walled but open-air seating area.

It sounds like parties. It sounds like laughter of friends, the cheers of a tattooed crowd’s surprise birthday and the flirting of the various couples sprinkled throughout Maria’s Community Bar and associated Kimski restaurant touching and eyefucking their way through first, second, third, 85th dates. » Read the rest of this entry «

Any night you end with a magazine you’re featured in and an original portrait of 1920s Mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson is a good one. » Read the rest of this entry «

She sat at a table by the men’s bathroom at the back of the restaurant, playing solitaire on a laptop as a Peter Francis Geraci commercial interrupted “Judge Joe Brown” on the opposite wall. » Read the rest of this entry «