Wrigley’s Beer Bat Think ballpark concessions peaked with helmet ice cream? Hold my beer (bat). Introduced at Wrigley Field this season, the $30 baseball-bat-shaped plastic container holds 26 ounces of beer (or frozen margarita, if that’s your thing). Sure, it’s effectively an expensive souvenir cup (a 24-ounce draft beer in a regular cup is half … Read more
Alexa Abaroa of DeEtta’s Bakery Give cake decorator Alexa Abaroa just two things — a short bio of someone you love and 14 days’ notice — and she’ll do more than make you a cake worthy of the Food Network. She’ll sculpt you an edible objet d’art that will evoke as much emotion as any Hallmark card. Her cakes, … Read more
Notre With its understated aesthetic and low-key sales approach, the West Loop boutique has been a go-to for Chicago guys and visiting music industry celebs (Adam Levine, Travis Scott) since 2019. Now it’s embarking on a new era by introducing womenswear. Plenty of it. “We had a lot of guys that would come in with … Read more
Tink’s Thanks 4 Nothing Tink is the prevailing mistress of Chicago R&B, a 28-year-old soprano whose Aaliyah-like head voice you could reasonably call angelic. Over the course of four albums and many online-only mixtapes, she has perfected a delicate balancing act: cherubic sweetness intermixed with saucy chutzpah. After she signed with megaproducer Timbaland’s Mosley Music … Read more
Miyagi Records The Japanese surname Miyagi translates to “shrine fortress,” and that’s how co-owners Nigel Ridgeway and Marco Jacobo see their new record shop, which began as an online-only store in 2019 but opened a brick-and-mortar location in April: a place to both honor and protect the music they love, some of it made not … Read more
Ciprianamía Nelissa Carrillo has designed Nike sneakers for Serena Williams, and she once had her own genderless streetwear brand. But it wasn’t until 2021 that she looked to her cultural roots for inspiration, employing fabrics and sewing techniques representative of her Mexican heritage. The new brand, Ciprianamía, launched quietly, but this year the Chicago native … Read more
Mindy’s Bakery Last August, two years after shutting her treasured Bucktown spot Hot Chocolate, pastry chef Mindy Segal opened Mindy’s Bakery, where she’s churning out old favorites, like Dream Bars, and tons of new creations, such as hot fudge croissants. The menu changes every weekend, which makes it easy to keep going back for vodka … Read more
Come for the smoked fish at Calumet Fisheries, stay for the lifting of the 95th Street Bridge.
In Streetwise Chicago, the 1988 definitive guide to the origins of our city street names, authors Don Hayner and Tom McNamee came up mostly empty on Division: “There seems to be no satisfactory explanation for how this street got its name, but one story is that it was so named because it divides Goose Island, … Read more
Our bike ride continues down the path, from Soldier Field to South Shore Drive, with stops at a prairie and Promontory Point.
