And I couldn’t stop laughing.

Down some water. Laugh. Dip among traffic. Laugh. Cram an energy bar and stop by the tampon boxes, fast food wrappers and museum-pimping statuary that pool along the spot the Roosevelt Road bridge overlooks both river and the vacant Rezkoville and I laugh laugh laugh.

July. Bike ride. Entire length of the city just for funsies and to end the site on a high note. I’ve been posting about it for a week and a half in stories I wrote between August and early October. You’re all caught up.

This is story #1,000. This site will end on Friday. I will miss it greatly. But I’m not ending, nor is Chicago.

I found crime here. I found death and sex and sin and kiddos playing piggy on summer days in the park. I wept and shook here and I laughed and shook here. I got drunk and kissed girls and took boat rides and played croquet. I wore spiked leather bracelets in one life and neckties in another. This town rattled and made me.

North through the skyscrapers, north through the trendy bars, north through gay neighborhoods and wealthy ones and ones where the poverty bleeds and bubbles from the soil itself. North.

The stories, by god the stories. The people I met! The people I didn’t meet! I’ve talked to dancers and magicians, politicians and thugs and drunks. I hit this city with all I had and at the end I told so, so few of its tales. This city threw itself at me and I gave it a pittance, my thousand stories trickle and tinkle against the ocean this Chicago throws back each moment.

In June 1921, Chicago Daily News reporter Ben Hecht debuted “1001 Afternoons in Chicago,” a daily column slicing life in the first quarter of the 20th century. In the preface to the book version, editor Henry Justin Smith recalled the “haggard but very happy” Hecht turning in the first few columns.

“It was clear that he had sat up nights with those stories. He thumbed them over as though he hated to let them go. They were the first fruits of his Big Idea — the idea that just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often flatly and unimaginatively told, lay life; that in this urban life there dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote places, either, but walking the downtown streets, peering from the windows of sky scrapers, sunning itself in parks and boulevards. He was going to be its interpreter. His was to be the lens throwing city life into new colors, his the microscope revealing its contortions in life and death. It was no newspaper dream at all, in fact. It was an artist’s dream. And it had begun to come true. Here were the stories. … Hoped I’d like ‘em.”

By 1925, Hecht was sick of it. He had written a deliberately smutty novel called “Fantazius Mallare” as a test case on American obscenity law, and American obscenity law won.

He was fired from the Daily News in 1923 but had with a group of friends from the Dil Pickle Club arthouse scene started the Chicago Literary Times, an inspiring, brilliant drain on time and funding. Writer pals were calling about easy money and literary fortune in New York, and Hecht was ready to submit.

These are the final lines of the last 1001 Afternoons in Chicago story, “My Last Park Bench,” in which an older, weary Hecht stumbles across the younger version of himself.

“I catch a glimpse of him following me with his eyes, excited, damn him, over the mystery and romance which lurk in every corner of the city, even on a cinder-covered bench in Grant Park. Let him sit till doom’s day on this bench; he will never see me again. I have more important things to do than to collect cinders under my collar.”

I didn’t know when I started that Hecht was a liar and fabricator, a newsman conman of the era for whom Truth and Fact formed a Venn diagram, and none of it mattered so long as the words sang. He ended up in Hollywood, his gift for witty lies finding a more appropriate setting than a newspaper page.

I just knew I wanted to try what he claimed he was doing.

Since April 2012, I never missed a scheduled post day and, aside from some clearly satirical stories about mascots, Santa Claus and the brainstorming session for “tronc,” I never made up a word. What you read from me over these last six years is Chicago in the 20-tens as seen through my lens and microscope.

Hope you liked ‘em.

I was laughing when I hit the graveyard.

I made it. I made it through my self-assigned task. I made it through Chicago and I made it through, Chicago. My throat was dry and my legs burned white like charcoal ready for meat. But I was laughing.

My side trips and roundabouts added almost 20 miles to the route. Had I stuck to the path, I could have gotten there at 30. Instead the app tolds me I took 49.86 miles to get from Burnham to Evanston, plowing through that town between.

I’m not done yet. Not with my 1,001 stories, not with my half-century ride. Just a touch more to go.

I turned the bike around and headed back into the city, aiming my aching bones, burning legs and slightly chafed uppity bits toward the Howard Red Line stop. Nothing left in me, I slouched toward Bethlehem to be born.

A CTA worker came out of her glass cage to greet me.

“No bikes on the train,” she said.

And I laughed.

…

Read a few of my favorites:

The Rabbi’s Machine is Missing — Whatever happened to Chicago’s last typewriter repairman?

The Human Addict — A begging addict talks about being treated like a person.

Old Joe of Canaryville — Joe sits in his shop waiting for customers, as he’s done for 68 years.

Nuns in a Cash Register Store — Another bit of Chicago is lost.

The Nut Hut — Over soup, a woman recalls her role as a professional tease in a prostitution scam.

Party at Uncle Fun — Customers, staff and Uncle Fun himself say goodbye to the well-loved Belmont gag shop.

The Murderess Down the Block — I find out a 1920s lady gunner lived a few houses over from me.

The Most Sarcastic Child in Chicago Watches a Clown Show — Clowns from Theater Oobleck and El Circo Nacional de Puerto Rico win over a very sarcastic child.

The Steelworker’s Mermaid — How four sculptors hid a seven-foot mermaid for 14 years.

Mama Olaf — An immigrant tale of love and tripe soup.

Miss Sweetfeet Breaks — A breakdancer talks about the need for more B-Girls.

Light and the Rocket — A child I knew just killed a man.

The 16th Artist — One man’s arts center aims to revive Englewood.

The Rabbi, Harry Potter and Too Many Corpses — A rabbi has to tell a little boy some bad news.

Whatever Happened to the High Priestess of the Flappers? — In 2016, I wrote about the head of a 1920s clique of teen glamour girls. In 2018, her granddaughter reached out.

There’s still a city to the south and safe-wrapped suburbia to the north. And if the sun glints at a different angle between a.m. and p., it does so over the same sand and prairie grass.

There’s still a concrete pier shaped like a question mark jutting out into the water.

I feel I’ve gotten to a spot where I’m burning a potentially good story just to notch up one more on my quest to 1,001. I went to Montrose Beach early this morning to talk to the fisherfolk, but I feel I botched it.

Too few were there.

Too few spoke English.

Too many looked peaceful and calm and relaxed at the promise of a new day for me to barge in and blog at them.

A trio of young men on the question-mark pier laughed and joked in a Southeast Asian language I couldn’t place. They had bikes and bait and six or seven rods dangling out into the water, held aloft by metal prongs attached to the concrete, line pulled taut by Lake Michigan waves and the promise of future fish.

I could hear one of the men from dozens of yards away, back on the beach before you even step foot on the curlicue concrete pier. Above waves, birds and rustling wind through the tall grass of the nature preserve, a metallic rat-tat-tat that tings three or four times, then stops. Ting ting ting of metal on metal, then stops.

Closer to the men and the Asian-language jokes and teases, I saw the man was banging a forklike metal prong on one of the metal bars holding up a long-snapped cable fence that runs through the middle of the half-spiral pier.

He banged the fork a few times, then looked at it. Bang bang bang, look look look. He was trying to bend it back into whatever shape it initially held.

I moved on.

Further along the pier’s curve, an aging Chinese-American couple sat in folding chairs, their own early-morning lines held up by their own early-morning fork-prongs.

I stopped to chat with them, and got not much in return. Their English was too stilted. My guilt at bothering them too strong. I botched it. I botched it all.

We all came to the pier to seek, whether fish, stories or, like the early risers back on the beach, photos of migratory lake birds. We all came to seek with very little chance or promise of finding, just a sense of failure or guilt when the sought stayed unfound.

But we did it in a place of beauty, which makes the difference. We all came on our own fools’ errands as an excuse for morning grace along lapping water.

I asked the old man if he caught a lot of fish.

“No,” he said. “I just come here.”

Read part one

Another botched story

And another

Oh, I’m sure there are empty rooms, abandoned corridors, deep dank tunnels where all you can here is the drip drip drip of a long-forgotten pipe.

But in general, the lapping of the water and screaming of sanctuary birds is the best chance we have.

I went to Montrose Beach to scope out the fisherfolk. I was planning — still am — an early morning chatting about why men and women plod each day to the concrete pier that shoots off like a question mark to sit with rod and reel waiting for fish. Do they catch anything? Do they want to?

But as my nights are better than my mornings, I took a pedal to find the fastest bike route as the cicadas chirruped and the sun lazed down to the west. An evening bike ride under the guise of a recon expedition.

There were fisherfolk there, the ones I came to talk to. Lone men with jerry-rigged kits and water pail rod-holders so they could sit back and let the bucket do their fishing for them. Middle-aged couples sitting in silence, the rods an excuse for moments on a question-mark pier. Families laughing, fishing and shucking corn to toss on tiny charcoal grills they brought along.

Almost all Hispanic. Almost all silent against the lapping waves and shrieking birds.

Off the pier, past the bird sanctuary, beach and sand volleyball tournament, I found a spot along a concrete wall, hopped off my bike and turned to look at the water to see what so hypnotized the fisherfolk.

20 minutes later, I was still there.

The sky behind me was turning blood orange with crests and peaks of bright white gold peaking around clouds. To my fore, water. Endless water. Lapping, sinking, crying water beating pulse against the concrete shore.

A city to my south. Manicured suburbs to my north. A few scattered sailboats as punctuation ahead.

And always over all the sound. Slish slosh water. Crying lake birds. A momentary break from ceaseless city sounds of humans.

The slosh on concrete doesn’t make the same as it does on beach. The birds might have called more 200, 300, 10,000 ago. But for a moment, a fool like me could imagine he was the only one in Chicago, that all these sounds and drips and birdshriek caws were only for him.

I will go back and talk to the fisherfolk, ask them why they lay line for fish that will never come. For now, I’m happy enough knowing why I chose an orange sky, splishing water and the call of seabirds looking for home.

Learning “piggy” on Montrose Beach

A fire jam along the water

A lakefront mermaid smuggled by a steel worker

The drum circle at 63rd

Hardwood floors of the type that made sneakers squeak. Overhead fluorescent and steps to the back of the gym leading up to a stage perfect for plays about the importance of saying please and thank you.

The steps were riddled with holes.

I nocked an arrow, drew back the string and let a shaft of aluminum fly into a target tattered by all the arrows before.

It was archery at the American Indian Center.

The lesson-takers at the Native American cultural center Tuesday night were me, my friend Nathan and a young woman named Roxie who did archery in college but couldn’t find anywhere to practice until “Hunger Games” fever died down.

“Everybody wanted to be Katniss,” she said, laughing.

For a disturbingly reasonable price, we received endless arrows and a young man with a gym whistle, giving soft-spoken advice on how best to hit our targets.

Three whistles meant it was safe to retrieve your arrows from the target. Two whistles meant pick up your bow and go to the line. One whistle meant start shooting.

We did that for an hour. The three of us firing at blocks cobbled from Styrofoam and cardboard at paper targets stapled atop with golf tees. Whistles and foam and the instructor moving the targets back back back the better and more accustomed we got.

A loud, industrial fan blanketed the room with white noise. Foam scraps lay around the room. Plasticized tapestries of athletes hung on the walls. An old mural of headdress feathers hid in the background. A portion of wall behind us was missing, that insulation mascotted by the Pink Panther visible underneath.

It was tawdry and glorious.

Maybe it was the lights or the fan or the hypnotic whistle of the instructor, but soon the process became meditative, trance-like. I made attempts at chit-chat, gossiping between draws like how golfers trade stock tips and polo shirt advice between swings.

It felt wrong. This wasn’t a place for chat. It was a place for deep breaths, focus, stance, form and an almost preternatural relaxation. It was forced relaxation. You had to relax and clear your mind or else your arrow would shake and stir and fling past the target into the hole-riddled steps on the far wall.

I did that three times. When I stopped and breathed and didn’t think about what I was doing, that’s when I got it done.

A book I read in college called “Zen in the Art of Archery” has a quote that always stuck with me.

“What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.”

(Lest you think my quotery too impressive, I should mention I checked the book out of the university library after reading that quote in a Teen Titans comic book.)

Toward the end of the hour, the instructor held out a bag of small balloons. We each inflated one and golf-teed it to our target. It was a bit of fun for our last few minutes.

Two whistles, to the line. One whistle, shoot.

Thwipt thwipt thwipt, like had been going all night. A pop to my left. Nathan had hit his balloon. A pop to my right. Roxie hit hers. Thwipt and thwipt and twhipt. Nothing popped for me.

I was angry at that dumb balloon. Frustrated. Focusing my annoyance and willful will on that taunting bit of rubber and air as my arrows went above, below, left, right of it.

Last arrow.

I stood, I took a deep breath, I drew back the string and felt myself let go.

Across the room, something popped.

The fan droned on.

Zen in the Art of Juggling by the Lake

Zen in the Art of Throwing a Baseball

Zen in the Art of a Hippie on a Slackline in Union Park on a Darkening Summer Night

We did not.

Blanket, grill, Montrose Beach Park. Fun, friends, three separate dogs, a Frisbee no one used and baseballs we did toss around every now and again.

And the baseballs netted us the invite.

The park is a typical Chicago lakefront affair. Trees, grass, bike path, a beach and miles of free open public land people seem to forget they value whenever someone goes “Ooh, a Yoda museum.”

On July 3, it was packed with grills. Each tree, shrub or spot of shade available had a grill and a family tucked beneath.

Some had tiny setups like ours, just grill, blanket and a cooler for the bratwurst.

Others had sprawling setups with radios, chairs, tables, tents, portable canopies with mesh netting to keep the bugs away from the stations set up for condiments and a buffet of side dishes.

Our advanced scout and fearless grill leader had arrived at the park at 9 a.m. for a 1 p.m. start time. Not only were most spots taken, some people had been there so long they had already set up, started their grills, let the coals get hot and cooked and were eating a full meal.

Then there were the sports. Football, volleyball, catch, Frisbee, various odd plastic lawn games involving hooks or paddles or cups to fling and catch rings or balls.

And 16-inch softball.

The 16-inch softball is larger and squishier than the pastel neon numbers used in gym classes, bar rec leagues and women’s college athletics. It’s pretty rare outside of Chicago. As a kid in Illinois, I thought it was called “Chicagoball.”

As we sat on our blanket in the grill-clustered park, two of our number came back from a game of catch (baseball) and said we got invited to join a softball game. I grabbed my mitt and joined, then saw it was 16-inch and threw my mitt in the grass. You don’t use mitts.

There was yelling and joking and moving the bases time and again based on differing opinions of which picnickers the ball would hit and how close was too close for the bases. There was counting and re-counting to ensure that, yes absolutely we completely and totally did not have enough people for a game.

So we played piggy.

In piggy, we were told, there’s a pitcher, a “back catcher,” a batter and everyone else fields. You catch a hit either in the air or after one bounce — no fumble, “You wouldn’t count that in the hood” — and it’s your bat. The batter keeps batting until someone catches a fly ball.

Pitch (underhand of course), swing and, at the best of times, a satisfying “whump” when the batter connected. People tearing after line drives or just standing waiting for a pop fly to fall down to them.

Eventually, we did get enough for an eight-on-eight game. I played a few innings, got tagged out at first every at bat and went back to the blanket once a new guy came on to replace me. I was told the final score was either 14-12 or 14-9. My team lost, but it wasn’t about that.

It was about play. Simple, perfect play, not like “play a game” but like a child handing over a toy and asking if you want to pretend you’re pirates.

We were a collection of strangers standing in the sun and joking. We laughed and played with people we didn’t know on a sunny summer day.

A different cookout in the same park

An even older ball game

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The conga line of beach-and-parkgoers was now heading westward, hauling now-empty coolers and now-full livers back to parking spaces, buses and home.

Dogs worn from a full day of fetch trotted sleepily after their masters. Children too, also worn from 16-inch softball, soccer, volleyball, Frisbee and just running like mad midgets between grass, sand and a freshwater lake trotted after their adults too.

Stomachs were full, muscles were tired and a family of garbage pickers was tipping over the recycling bins to fish out aluminum cans.

Yes, it’s another story of rich vs. poor. It’s another Chicago tale of heaven and hell sharing the same ZIP. It’s another preachy anecdote of how messed it is that some live in joy and some live in squalor because that’s the only story I know how to tell some days.

Because that’s the only story there is.

I don’t know if it was an entire family or just two groups who converged at the same moment. The trucks had already come by to empty the bins, so the pickers were just dealing with the ankle-deep refuse from the later-night drinkers and barbecuers, not a full beach day’s allotment of city trash.

They were dealing with fewer cans and bottles. They were dealing with mine and my friends’.

One pair of pickers appeared as man and woman in silhouette against the parking lot security lighting. I saw nothing and got no context.

Tipping over the recycling bin nearer a streetlight was an old woman. Eagle-eying through the garbage to point and scream at cans was a little boy.

He might have been 4, or a very active 3. He zoomed around, laughing and squealing at his task. He was the spotter, trash and plastic no distraction for his nimble young eyes. His grandmother would then locate and bag the valuable cans he saw. The child never contacted the garbage nor was put at any risk. He seemed happy, healthy and well-loved.

Once their task was complete, the old woman straightened the bin and replaced the worthless plastic bottles and paper bags. She seemed a better steward of the parkland than the conga line of weary beachgoers that continued unabated during the family treasure hunt.

And the boy zoomed and squealed, joy in every squeaky step, knowing only that he had helped his grandma find something special.

A man hides his goods in a Chicago River bridge

A Memorial Day tradition in a graveyard

Thoughts on holidays, tradition and fat-ass doughnuts

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The purpose, aside from the fact I’ve been all coughing and bronchial and wanted a story I could write from my sickbed, was to get people to explore certain sites I like, including this one, Atlas Obscura, the Chicago Collections Consortium, the Chicago History Museum, Mysterious Chicago and Curious City.

So I made the quiz goldanged impossible. (And Curious City, that thing we talked about? It’s handled.)

From the Fool Killer submarine to park bats to Iroquois Theater Assistant Chief Usher Archie Guerin, here are the answers you didn’t get to the 1,001 Chicago Afternoons Really Difficult Trivia Quiz.

The Answers

1. Assistant chief usher of the Iroquois Theater, seen in news photos following the fire.

Archie Guerin, as seen in this Chicago Collections Consortium photo.

A brief word about the Collections Consortium: It’s awesome.

It’s an online home for the combined collections of 18 local institutions, from universities to libraries to museums to the frickin’ Brookfield Zoo. A big reason for this quiz was for an excuse to tell more people about the site.

…

2. The first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, located underneath the University of Chicago’s football field, was in a room originally constructed for this sport.

Squash. As in “that sport that’s not quite racquetball but no one can really explain how it isn’t.” As outlined in this Curious City story, Enrico Fermi and his team turned a squash court into the home of the first self-sustained nuclear reaction in 1942.

…

3. Her husband signed away her objections to the Art Institute.

For this we turn to, well, me. Her name was Sarah Daggett and you can find out more about her in #566: The Gray of the Lions.

…

4. A mysterious submarine found in the river, maybe.

The Fool Killer. Maybe.

Adam Selzer of Mysterious Chicago has put in a yeoman’s effort on separating truth from lie in the story of the Fool Killer, which was possibly a scam, possibly a hidden submarine complete with dog skeleton. Check out his whole fascinating site.

…

5. The only newspaper to make deadline after the Great Chicago Fire.

A little blurb in an 1888 listing of newspapers I got as a gift once led me to the story of Myra Bradwell and the Chicago Legal News. It’s one of my favorite stories about the Great Fire. A little girl rescued the mailing list from the legal newspaper created by her mother, who was kinda sorta the nation’s first female attorney, oh you know what? Just read #555: Myra Bradwell and the Fireproof Newspaper.

…

6. This obscure library at the Leather Archives and Museum has a flowery name.

The Teri Rose Memorial Library. See what I did with the hint there? Obscure? Like Atlas Obscura? Like this Atlas Obscura listing of Chicago’s secret libraries?

I’m very clever. The “mysterious submarine” was a hint too.

…

7. The exciting voice of this person appeared at the Cairo Supper Club in this Egyptomania photo.

Manuel De Silva.

Although it’s not part of the quiz, here’s a review I found of him in a review from Billboard in 1948:

“Manuel De Silva, billed as the “New Voice,” loses little time living up to the cognomen. Handsome youth exhibits an excellent song choice and his lusty-lunged barying nets him the show’s top mitt. Manages striking nuances with a cultured piping of Donkey Serenade and surpasses this effort with smart selling of Sorrento, Temptation and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling. Had to beg off. Lad looks like a comer and it shouldn’t be long before he’s rated tops in the field.”

It’s on page 48, where you also learn the “Mary Kaye Trio” was originally the “Mary Kaaihue Trio.” They’re from Hawaii.

…

8. You can find the records of the Jane Dent Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People at this library.

The Richard J. Daley Library Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

…

9. When the Loop addresses were converted to the new numbering system in 1911, the Hotel Princess at 267 S. Clark St. got this as its new address.

331 S. Clark St. For this you have to use the address conversion guides in the Chicago History Museum, Building and House History section.

Both Curious City and I have done stories on Edward Brennan, the force behind the new numbering system, although only I present a compelling case for why he was history’s greatest monster.

I mean, I was super-sleepy the next day, man.

…

10. This Uptown silent movie studio produced both early Sherlock Holmes movies and the world’s first pie in the face.

Essanay. You can find out about the Sherlock Holmes and watch the movie in the room where it was shot in an upcoming joint Atlas Obscura/Mysterious Chicago event. You can find out about the pie from me in story #602: Chicago, the Home of the Pie in the Face.

…

11. Three werewolves from this area of the Baltic are killing time waiting for prey in a South Loop statue. One has a book.

Livonia. As in the Livonian Wolves in this Atlas Obscura entry. It’s a creepy myth of Christmastime and the fattest werewolf.

…

12. “Kitchen Klenzer” was advertised for this much in the storefront window in a 1963 photograph of a drugstore at Drexel and 47th.

Two for 21 cents. I mean, seriously, just play around with the Consortium site. You can find just, just anything there.

…

13. Researchers found this species of bat living under the boardwalk at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Bonus points for finding out from a particular interactive display on a certain radio station’s website.

I was going for the little brown bat, as mentioned in the Curious City interactive display created by Erik Rodriguez of The Illustrated Press, but a sharp-eyed reader (hi, Joann) found in the accompanying article that all seven locally common species have been found under the boardwalk.

So if you said:

• little brown bat
• big brown bat
• hoary bat
• silver-haired bat
• eastern red bat
• evening bat
• eastern pipistrelle
• or the number seven

you should be good.

Anyway, thanks for taking/please forgive me for this quiz. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get more ‘tussin.

Read a random story that’s most likely not a quiz

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Sure, you know that the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was at the U of C campus, but do you know what sport the room was originally made for?

Part of this project is to get people interested in the historical resources around us every day, to show that history is a live, breathing thing.

That and the fact my cute little sneezy cold has morphed into a broad, hacking bronchitis and I wanted a story I could write indoors led to today’s challenge, 13 of the most fiendishly obscure questions my cold medicine-addled brain could muster.

This being the Internet, you can find all these answers in seconds with a few well-chosen keywords. But the point of this is exploration, to give you an excuse to crack into the Chicago Collections Consortium’s historical photographs for the Iroquois Theater usher or WBEZ’s Curious City for the location of “Chicago Pile 1.” (Those two are on the house.)

Search within the collections, of course. But while Phineas H. Google has made a heck of a site, this will be more fun for you the deeper in you dig.

All of the answers can be found at one or more of the following sites:

• 1,001 Chicago Afternoons
• Atlas Obscura
• Curious City
• Chicago Collections Consortium
• The Chicago History Museum, Building and House History
• Mysterious Chicago

In disclosure, I contribute to Atlas Obscura for fun (no money changes hands, alas). I also am included in the Chicago History Museum’s ongoing “Chicago Authored” exhibit and am participating in a professional development event for teachers on April 2.

Other than that, I have no connection to any of these sites other than that I like ‘em. And I would straight up kill a man to get a job with WBEZ’s Curious City.

Seriously, who do you want done? One of those WFMT guys? Consider it handled.

Enjoy! Answers Friday.

The Questions

1. Assistant chief usher of the Iroquois Theater, seen in news photos following the fire.

2. The first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction, located underneath the University of Chicago’s football field, was in a room originally constructed for this sport.

3. Her husband signed away her objections to the Art Institute.

4. A mysterious submarine found in the river, maybe.

5. The only newspaper to make deadline after the Great Chicago Fire.

6. This obscure library at the Leather Archives and Museum has a flowery name.

7. The exciting voice of this person appeared at the Cairo Supper Club in this Egyptomania photo.

8. You can find the records of the Jane Dent Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People at this library.

9. When the Loop addresses were converted to the new numbering system in 1911, the Hotel Princess at 267 S. Clark St. got this as its new address.

10. This Uptown silent movie studio produced both early Sherlock Holmes movies and the world’s first pie in the face.

11. Three werewolves from this area of the Baltic are killing time waiting for prey in a South Loop statue. One has a book.

12. “Kitchen Klenzer” was advertised for this much in the storefront window in a 1963 photograph of a drugstore at Drexel and 47th.

13. Researchers found this species of bat living under the boardwalk at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Bonus points for finding out from a particular interactive display on a certain radio station’s website. (Edit 3:34 p.m. March 9: The article connected with the interactive element mentions more species than the interactive element did. Name either the species listed in the interactive, or the number of species mentioned in the article.)

Think you’ve got it? Email your answers to 1001chicago@gmail.com.

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The most famous unseen pie fight was the original ending of 1963’s “Dr. Strangelove,” in which a massive pie fight breaks out in the war room. It was scrapped because no one told the actors to play it straight, or because it was filmed shortly before Kennedy was shot and the line “Our President has been struck down in his prime!” after getting hit by a pie was a little close to home, depending on which version of the story you believe.

But the very first cinematic pie in the face in history was right here in Chicago.

It’s from the 1909 film “Mr. Flip,” a four-minute silent comedy of actor Ben Turpin walking around trying to molest women and getting punished by them.

He goes into a general store, grabs the counter girl and gets hauled off in a dolly.

He goes to get a manicure and grabs the manicurist, who gets her friend to stab him with a pair of scissors.

He gets zapped by a telephone operator cranking her manual generator, sprayed with shaving cream by lady barbers, sprayed with seltzer at a bar and, when he tries to get similarly rapey with a woman at a restaurant, gets hit in the face with the very first pie-as-weapon in cinematic history.

Correcting for the time, and given that it would be hard to illustrate “cheeky flirt” in a silent movie without going broad, it’s pretty funny.

It was produced by Essanay Studios, a short-lived silent movie studio located in Uptown. Turpin, who also worked as a janitor and carpenter for the fledgling studio, became its first star in 1907 with “An Awful Skate; or, the Hobo on Rollers.”

The most famous Essanay star would be Charlie Chaplin, who worked there for a year and grew to hate the place. Chaplin only filmed one movie, “His New Job,” in Chicago, preferring the year-round filming conditions Essanay’s California studio offered.

Turpin left Essanay in 1916, a year after the Chaplin year, joining the Vogue-Mutual company. He joined with Mack Sennett the year after, finally becoming a star.

He retired in the 1920s to take care of his ailing wife. She died in 1925. Turpin returned to work.

Although he faced a lot of the same problems silent stars did in the talkie era — Turpin’s speaking voice was a raspy French New Orleans accent — his story has a happier ending than most. Yes, he never made the jump to talkies, but that’s because he didn’t want to.

The recipient of the world’s first comedy pie was a ridiculous looking Mexican-Irish New Orleanian with crossed eyes, a brush mustache and a penchant for the broadest of slapstick, but he was also a shrewd businessman, heavily invested in real estate.

Now let’s watch the world’s first pie in the face.

Meet the man who owned the universe

Meet a suburbanite who thought the earth was hollow

Meet the women behind the only newspaper to make deadline after the Great Chicago Fire

And, just for fun, what Rahm’s missing finger says about him

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Followers of the sect known as Christianity celebrate a special day called “Christ-mas” in which trees are slaughtered, cookies are left for fat, flying elvish deer-herders and Irishmen receive massive amounts of birds.

In case you want to purchase a gift for this regional folk festival, here are some ideas that will support a few of the people and organizations I’ve written about in the 150 stories that have appeared on this site so far in 2015.

A Tactile Magic Act

For the past 19 years, 25-year-old Jeanette Andrews has only had one job. Stage magician. And yes, the math checks.

On Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016, Andrews debuts her new show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Thresholds” will be an immersive magic experience by a woman who considers slight of hand a fine art. The tricks aren’t just designed to fool the eye, but to fool all five senses.

“Thresholds” is free with museum admission ($12 for adults, $7 for students and seniors), but cheapskates delight: The museum is free to Illinois residents on Tuesdays. If your loved ones ask, I’ll tell them it was really, really expensive.

If you like the illustration that accompanied my profile of Andrews, artist Marine Tempels takes commissions.

Psalm One’s Newest Album

She wasn’t mentioned by name, but rapper and Englewood native Psalm One was one of the readers at the “Welcome to the Neighborhood” reading I organized with Rachel Hyman at the MCA in January.

Psalm One’s newest album “P.O.L.Y.” or “Psalm One Loves You” was released in September of this year and can be purchased on iTunes. Psalm One’s smart, breezy style and lyrics have made her one of the freshest voices in hip-hop, pop and soul, not just out of Chicago, not just recently. Period.

If you want to learn where Psalm One gets it from, pair the album with a copy of the coming-of-age memoirs “Old School Adventures from Englewood–South Side of Chicago” by her mother, journalist Elaine Hegwood Bowen.

A Cambodian Sorcerer Hunt

What do you do when you find out your girlfriend’s dad is a sorcerer? If you’re Uptown-based journalist Ryun Patterson, you use the experience as inspiration for an interactive multimedia exploration of the changing world of traditional Cambodian magic.

“Vanishing Act: A Glimpse into Cambodia’s World of Magic” is available on print and Kindle at Amazon and downloadable for iStuff on iTunes for a holiday special of $9.99, down from $14.99.

It’s full of photographs, interviews, videos, interactive maps and pages and pages of nuanced writing detailing how the Southeast Asian nation’s traditional folk healing and fortune-telling is disappearing in some ways, going digital in others. I got it for my dad for his birthday, so I can vouch.

Oh, and Patterson married the sorcerer’s daughter.

Kink Lectures

Formed when museums wouldn’t take a dying man’s gay erotic paintings and interested collectors only wanted to hide them away, the Leather Archives & Museum in Rogers Park has become a home to all things kink and fetish.

There’s a prurient interest to a museum filled with butt plugs, whips, masks and sexy books, but the museum is an intentionally open and free space dedicated to preserving art, craft and writing that celebrates a part of life some see as shameful, dirty, to be tossed away or hidden. Whether it’s your sexuality or not, it’s someone’s.

Although tickets or a membership to the museum could be a fun thing for Santa to leave under the tree, depending on your tree and your Santa, there are also a few upcoming events of note, including lectures on kink and fetish culture and, in February, the museum’s first overnight lock-in.

Superhero Circus

More of a pre-Christmas extravaganza, but this Friday take your loved ones to Acrobatica Infiniti’s last planned show at the Uptown Underground.

Acrobatica Infiniti is a nerd circus, a celebration of all things geek and acrobatic. People tumble as superfolk, juggle as Jedi or cavort as cartoons.

My profile of the group became part of a series of circus performer profiles, with looks at Captain Hammer and his groupie, Mister Terrific and the circus’ resident Catwoman/Dark Phoenix/Breakdancing Yoshi.

And in case you liked that illustration of Dark Phoenix in action, artist Emily Torem takes commissions too.

A Night at the Turtle Races

Bowmanville bar Big Joe’s 2 & 6 has turtle racing. Take your friends.

A Really Good Photographer

OK, I don’t know what you would hire a photographer for. That’s your lookout. But AJ Kane, who did the photography for the interactive exploration of a hidden tunnel running through the downtown, is for hire.

He’s a good guy. Check out his stuff.

Little Stubby

Not to be confused with WWI hero bull terrier mutt Sergeant Stubby, Little Stubby is the nogoodnik kid brother of corrupt Chicago cop Johnny Kelly, who was competing for a tap-dancing stripper’s affections with a guy who pretends to be a robot in a nightclub’s storefront window in the 1953 insane nonsense film “City That Never Sleeps.”

You can rent that insane nonsense (seriously, the City of Chicago itself takes human form to narrate in the voice of Francis the Talking Mule) at Odd Obsession, a Bucktown video store and mecca for all things obscure and cinematic. See about a gift certificate, buy some merch or just drop by the store to check out the exhibit of Ghanaian movie posters.

Dropping my bouncy, light and frankly hilarious tone (that “regional folk festival” line was frickin’ gold), I want to support people who bring me the strange and unique ways people across the planet have expressed themselves.

Hip-hop, magic, journalism, acrobatics, movies, kink, even turtle racing — all these people and groups are the real deal. This “Christ-mas,” go beyond shopping locally. Shop exceptionally. Support the unique and beautiful.

The worst that could happen is you’ll experience something you’ll never see again.

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Listen to a CTA street band’s holiday song

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