1,001 Chicago Afternoons

“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.

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 [...]

It was a clear plastic knife, the type built for picnics where they really care. I picked up the little knife, hefted it as much as one can with a sliver of molded plastic too light even to get a recycling number printed on it and cut off a slice of vanilla bean gourmet fancy-pantsy [...]

On the day before Halloween 2015, I learned what blood looked like. I had seen blood before, of course. Scrapes, cuts, bleeds from shaving nicks on my chin to crimsoned hair matted with clots after a woman got into a chain fight at a DMV when I was 16. But until the old woman lying [...]

The sun beat down with a sickening thud. Thick patinas of sweat lubed each passerby’s forehead, with a few sporting perspiration-darkened underarms on their shirts. The soundtrack was the constant whine and chime of cicadas. Online, my friends celebrate the start of September, pledging allegiance to and posting stati longing for summer’s dark mistress, the [...]

She wasn’t so much sexy as stylish. That’s the characteristic I figure they hired her for. Some people can be decked and drizzled with the hautest of coutures and step out into the world looking like a kid in a Halloween costume. The Gucci, Versace, Dolce and/or Gabbana fits and clings in all the right [...]

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.

I saw four rabbits the other day.

It’s a music venue. Bars on upper and lower levels, food for those who want it. Dark wood, concert posters and great acoustics, the latter so you can hear the band It wasn’t a band that filled Lincoln Hall on Monday, but witches and warlocks, practitioners of a Halloween-time black magic more powerful than hexes [...]

“Growing up, the scariest thing I ever heard was La Llorona. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that.” I hadn’t.