In the last few hours before the blizzard hit last Tuesday, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, the Grammy-winning rapper who is now running for alderman in Chicago’s 20th Ward, drove me around his neighborhood. The ward has over 30,000 vacant lots (most of them city-owned) and hundreds or perhaps thousands of foreclosed homes (there is no accurate count available), many of them boarded up…
@pennypollack: Loved the vanilla crème brûlée @ Prix Fixe but would kill for more of the brown butter shortbread cookies that came along. PRIX FIXE: 4835 N Western Ave; 773-681-0651
The pasta carbonara @ Prix Fixe actually tastes green and almost healthy. Must be the parsley pesto. PRIX FIXE: 4835 N Western Ave; 773-681-0651
The cranberry bean broth @ Prix Fixe was a simple pleasure—piping hot and loaded with al dente beans. A sprinkle of salt helped. PRIX FIXE: 4835 N Western Ave; 773-681-0651
Days after Rahm Emanuel left his job as chief of staff on October 1st to return here to run for mayor, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote the “The Soft Side.” The column was weirdly worded—“Flawed like all of us, [Rahm] is a full human being, rich and fertile from the inside out”—and provided plenty of easy laughs for Brooks/Rahm detractors. Today, Brooks did it again…
How a federal government program helped fund the renovation of Chicago’s lavish Blackstone Hotel; Mayor Daley proposes a fix to the city’s popular identity; Cinkus violations are this month’s residency requirement; and more
I like talkative bartenders, don’t you? Well, at least the semitalkative ones who tell you a little something you wouldn’t have thought about otherwise, then slip down the bar to polish a glass or two, leaving you to mull over this tidbit before ordering your next round…
Divine Deals
Seeking to offer Chicagoans with a more lavish option on how to clear out their closets, lifelong friends Lindsay Segal and Brielle Buchberg recently launched Luxury Garage Sale (847-609-5012, luxurygaragesale.com), an upscale consignment service…
Big Brother was watching Motorola’s Xoom tablet ad during the Super Bowl to make sure it didn’t borrow too much from George Orwell’s 1949 classic. But Big Brother owes his existence to other people’s prose…
Have you ever seen a piece of art in a movie or on TV and absolutely had to have it, only to never find it again?…
