1,001 Chicago Afternoons

The zodiac was ringed with a neon circle. The glass had silhouettes of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque painted below listings of services like tarot and palmistry. By the door on the corner storefront on Western Avenue there was a gigantic painting of a hand, marked with all the creases and folds, bracelets and mounts the woman [...]

I own a copy of “The Jefferson Davis Coloring Book.” Yes, that Jefferson Davis. Yes, the Confederate president or czar or whatever the title be. And, yes, I alluded to it a few stories ago when I plucked it from a North Center dumpster and, yes, I do plan to completely mock its belligerent racism [...]

They gathered in early December at a coffee shop in Lakeview, weeks before the rest of the world knew Gapers Block was shuttering, to discuss what would come next.

In October 1871, a little girl named Bessie Bradwell stumbled through a flame-choked city, clutching photographs of two dead siblings and a book. This is the story of the only newspaper to make deadline after the Great Chicago Fire.

The song of summer 2015 was the theme from “The Munsters.” I mean, not literally of course. It was actually Chicago-area band Fall Out Boy’s hit “Uma Thurman,” which has been following me around in stores, over radios, online, in the Logan Square arcade where a friend and I played video games as retro and [...]

The little abuela got off the North Avenue bus in front of Tip Top Liquors in Humboldt Park. She and her grocery bags shuffled west on the sidewalk, past the liquor store, past a brand of community church noted for taking over storefronts, past the abandoned offices of “Carlos F. Pedrera M.D., Especialidad en Medicina [...]

For all the North Side’s talk of diversity, Albany Park is a neighborhood that really lives it. It’s a place where posters for accordion-drenched Mexican Norteña bands get taped to the sides of Korean-language newspaper boxes. The walk west along Lawrence brings Ecuadorian restaurants, Indo-Pak grocery bazaars, barbershops with signs that say both “Se Habla [...]

A few weeks ago, burlesque dancer Lady Ginger went through her emotional preparation for taking off her clothes in front of a room full of strangers. Now she’s back to tell you a little more.

“Rockford, Ill.—so named because it was founded at the site of a ford across the Rock River—is a pleasant, tree-smothered city 90 miles northwest of Chicago.” – Life Magazine, 1949   “A hardscrabble town in the middle of America, the place is not much more than an intersection of interstates and railway lines…” – Rolling [...]

“You can say, well ‘Fried chicken’s fried chicken’ or ‘A steak’s a steak.’ It’s not. You know. Even if you’re not a chef, you know,” she’s saying. “A steak at Gene and Georgetti’s is going to be different than your steak at Golden Nugget diner on Western and Elston.” She’s walking through a living room, [...]