Above, from left: Joliet Slammers; Chicago Dogs; and Windy City Thunderbolts Photos: (Slammers) AHJ Photo; (Dogs) Daniel Boczarski; (Thunderbolts) Gary Middendorf/ Daily Southtown Sure, Chicago is blessed with two major league franchises. But if you’re looking to catch some baseball on a budget — or just want to see the game up close — there … Read more
A cheat sheet to five of the most charming downtowns
Downers Grove/La Grange/Naperville —Anderson’s Bookshop hosts more than 400 events a year at its three locations. Known for boosting local luminaries in the making, as it did with Veronica Roth (Divergent) and former Chicagoan John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), the minichain is also a must-stop for international megastars: J.K. Rowling made one of … Read more
A trip to Hala Kahiki solves a childhood mystery.
A chat with Roger Ahlgrim of Ahlgrim Family Funeral Services in Palatine, quite possibly the world’s only funeral home with putting greens
Rules 1 through 3: Rehearse, request, repeat
Volo —No, you won’t find Pee-wee Herman’s bike in the basement of the Alamo. That’s because it’s at the Volo Auto Museum, a time capsule of all things — well, just plain all things. Here, five highlights. Oprah’s “Biggest Splurge Ever” The talk show host gifted herself a $365,000 1996 Bentley Azure on her 42nd birthday so … Read more
Take a driving tour through the oeuvre of a trompe l’oeil master.
Batavia —Ever wondered about the artistic possibilities of advanced accelerator technology, dark matter, and colliding neutrinos? No? Well, the people at the Fermilab Art Gallery have. The exhibition space at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has been showing the work of artists with backgrounds in science — or those with practices conceptually linked to science — for nearly 40 … Read more
Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto Bartlett —Don’t get too distracted by the topiary animals or actual peacocks casually roaming the grounds: The real stunners of the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir are the carvings on the Hindu temple’s façade, created by roughly 3,000 artisans in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan. All told, the massive, multidomed place of … Read more
