1,001 Chicago Afternoons

On Oct. 8, 2015, photographer AJ Kane and I hopped a median under Trump Tower to explore Carroll Street, a long-forgotten subterranean road running 30 feet and a world beneath Chicago’s downtown.

Via an interactive StoryMapJS from Northwestern University’s Knight Lab, this is what we found. » Read the rest of this entry «

A racist patent. A Swedish piano repairman. A corner that now houses a four-story car dealership and a faux-Irish sports bar.

This is how Chicago helped make the ray gun. » Read the rest of this entry «

500. Half a thou. D, to the ancient Romans. As close to the halfway point of the project as an odd-numbered goal allows.

So what should I write this milestone story about?

I decided to toss that question to the folks who made up the first 499, asking the people who got me this far how I should kick off the second half. » Read the rest of this entry «

He was at the bar two patrons down from me, leaning over and pointing at the drinker he had buttonholed. He jabbed the air with every point he made, leaning his head down to wait for confirmation on each, because it’s not fun being right if no one says it.

It was the same tone he used to take with me when I was the one leaned into and pointed at. I nodded then just as rigorously as the drinker was now. “Yes. Yes. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. I should write about that.”

But it was to the same effect. My agreement then and the nodding drinker’s agreement now egged him on, not shut him up.

I turned away, moved over to the counter where they sell “no fries, chips” to wait until the line cook finished my Billy Goat cheezborger. » Read the rest of this entry «

He walked about 10 feet behind me, smoking and muttering. Coat over hooded sweatshirt and a black, flat-brimmed baseball cap. It was late. I was alone. I stepped closer to the street and slowed down so he would pass.

“You messing with me, bro?” he said as he hustled past me, taking angry puffs of his cigarette. It wasn’t until he repeated the phrase that I noticed it wasn’t to me. He was talking to himself.

I noticed him slip a ball-peen hammer up his sleeve. » Read the rest of this entry «

My friend Joann spent two-and-a-half months eating dessert first.

She had a sickly, six-and-a-half month pregnancy that culminated in a fight with her ex over sandwiches and an appointment for one of those shots you need when your baby is a different blood type than you are.

At the appointment, they told her she wasn’t going anywhere. They told her to get some tests. » Read the rest of this entry «

The man shuffled about the Grand Red Line station in the Friday night rush.

He was short, gray-haired and trim, surprisingly trim. He was in very good shape for a man his age. He was white and well-appointed, fashion-wise. A long, black coat was buttoned tightly around his suit.

He had a friendly smile that didn’t quite reach his deep, sunken eyes.

He paused to take a picture with a young Latino woman, then thanked her and looked around the train station for the next person to be pleasant at.

I walked up and reached out to shake his hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“Nice to meet you too,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel replied. » Read the rest of this entry «

“Art is Long,” the curlicued letters carved in stone said on one side of the second story window bay. “Time is Fleeting.”

Over the other window, it completed what I found out later was a Longfellow poem: “So be Up and Doing, Still Achieving, Still Pursuing.”

It was a bank in a high-shopping slip of State Street, one midway between my two jobs. Paper cup of low-rent coffee in my hand and urbanites bustling around, I paused to look back and forth between the signs. » Read the rest of this entry «

At the Newberry Library, the staid old temple to history located in an 1890s Spanish Romanesque manor north of Bughouse Square, two journalists talked about how Facebook and Google algorithms give different people different news. » Read the rest of this entry «

There once was an orange door

Down an alley off the ritzy street.

Down the alley, on the right side, the backs of houses. Luxury houses. Fancy brownstones a couple million a pop in the Near North Side. People walk toy dogs here.

On that right side of the alley, a lanky man in a polo shirt and expensive haircut starts an electric barbecue grill in a fenced-in back staircase. “Honey,” he calls, turning his head toward an unseen woman inside.

On the left side of the alley, a three-level parking garage. The fronts of SUVs and crossovers peek through the chain link saving the parked cars from alley dwellers like me and whoever scribbled “Trust Only Vandals” on one of the Dumpsters.

There once was an orange door here.

There once was an orange door and a sign that said “Step High, Stoop Low, Leave Your Dignity Outside.”

This yuppie alley once housed the Dill Pickle Club, the center of bohemian counterculture in the 1920s. » Read the rest of this entry «