1,001 Chicago Afternoons

It turns out Snoopy was born at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, but the man running the trivia night said he’d take Daisy Mills.

I’ve been hearing about it at work for about two weeks. Just little barbs and jabs. A few references here and there. Snarky asides, glare in the eyes as they call me out. But I’ll stand by what I said, may god or man judge me how they will: “Land of Lincoln” is a terrible [...]

Fifteen minutes to midnight on the last day of the 19th century, a real estate historian named Mark Putney climbed to the roof of a downtown Chicago skyscraper and dreamed about the future.

I thought I was meant to laugh unending. I thought I was meant to joke and taunt, bouncing unbruised from one fiasco to another, enthusiasm unflagged. I would joke away the Bushes, the Cruz, the neverending Romneys pop pop popping up like four-year perennials. I would win one of these days, I thought, because I [...]

A cold wind pulses through the region. It pulses down streets, up alleys, through television-clad bars. It throbs and flits, breezing some Chicagoans away like the puff of air that separates wheat from chaff in an ancient farm’s winnow. It’s the winnow for Chicago. It’s the season where the wind blows residents away, clustering them [...]

“You will have little bits of bee in your honey, I’ll tell you that right now.” On a rainy Thursday under a park district shelter, a group of about 12 people and one puppy gathered to talk bees.

Catch. Throw. “Ah, I overthought it.” Catch. Throw. “I could feel it slipping.” Catch. Throw. “Oof. Sorry, Dan.” As I mentioned last month, I’ve been asked to throw out the first pitch at an upcoming Kane County Cougars minor league baseball game in August. I’m sort of a sports Einstein (in that I play like [...]

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 [...]

I’m in crunch time on a top-secret writing project that, for purposes of anonymity and to sound cool, I’m referring to only as “Operation Scalded Armadillo.” It’ll knock your socks off when complete, but OSA (aka “The Armadills”) hasn’t left me much time for the usual running around, doing stuff and writing about it. To [...]

1,001  1,000-951  950-901  900-851  850-801  800-751  750-701  700-651  650-601  600-551  550-501  500-451  450-401  400-351  350-301  300-251  250-201  200-151  150-101  100-51  50-1 1,001 — So long, Chicago. 1,001  1,000-951  950-901  900-851  850-801  800-751  750-701  700-651  650-601  600-551  550-501  500-451  450-401  400-351  350-301  300-251  250-201  200-151  150-101  100-51  50-1 The Ride Home — Winding down with a few last [...]