1,001 Chicago Afternoons

They pulled the battered paperback out of the bag, handling it like it was the relic of a saint. » Read the rest of this entry «

I think I like the business district best when I’m alone.

It’s not alone-alone, of course. It’s city-alone, where solitude means hundreds instead of thousands milling, bustling, shoving, pushing, dawdling, daydreaming denizens crowding the walks and roads.

The day before Christmas weekend is city-alone. » Read the rest of this entry «

The trailers were back by the AMA building. » Read the rest of this entry «

“We are currently experiencing difficulties. Please check back again at a later time,” the message said, presumably because an “Our servers literally cannot handle the sheer number of people we screwed over” would make a rather embarrassing error message. » Read the rest of this entry «

On June 2, 2016, Tribune Publishing announced its new corporate identity.

The nation’s third-largest newspaper publisher and owner of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times is now tronc Inc., “a content curation and monetization company focused on creating and distributing premium, verified content across all channels.”

This is the only way the brainstorming meeting could have happened. » Read the rest of this entry «

The door is open at the old Jazz Record Mart. You can see inside, see the bandsaws and construction equipment that will turn the shuttered store into whatever comes next.

The building’s having a lot of work done. The outside is covered in scaffolds and tarp. There’s a bookstore there, a Thai restaurant nearby. The Chicago Reader is a stone’s throw away.

This spot where Illinois Street cuts under Wabash is or is nearby the purported former resting spot of Chicago’s first murder victim. » Read the rest of this entry «

The room should have looked different.

It should have had low lighting, dark mahogany, crannies. The hallway to get there should have had twists and turns and sudden dead ends. Instead, there were high ceilings, tons of light, carpeting.

The Newberry Library looks like a library, of course, but more the type where students cram for PSATs than where Hercule Poirot would stumble upon a body.

And in this high-lofted room with the appalling lack of my preconceptions and stereotypes, there lay on a set of tables books older than most nations. » Read the rest of this entry «

A writer I admire is going on an absolute tear on Facebook. The subject is the Chicago Reader Best of Chicago 2016 live poll.

You can vote on the Reader’s website, although she wishes you wouldn’t. » Read the rest of this entry «

My mother has been posting photos of what the privy diggers found.

I grew up in an old house which, apparently, used to have an outhouse right below the maple I used to climb. *

Outhouses in the 1800s were apparently trash dumps too, so my parents let some privy diggers — professional excavators — dig down to see what was there. They pulled out crystal wine stoppers, old bottles, cracked porcelain plates with blue-dyed townscapes, all right under my old maple.

It got me thinking about what’s beneath our feet in Chicago.

» Read the rest of this entry «

I’ve become one of the tucked away, the hidey-holed.

Somehow, in this world where for almost four years I’ve had to cobble together bits and pieces of work to make it past each month’s bills, someone decided to let me come in from 8:30 to 5 five days a week and they’ll even pay for some health care.

I have a little cube I might put a picture of something in.

It’s nice because of PTO and 401(k)s and health insurance (although I would not have been able to get through the freelance time without Obamacare, so thank you for that Mr. President).

But it was great because of Tuesday’s rain. » Read the rest of this entry «