Best Gyms Under $80 a Month
Don’t want to shell out for fancy locker rooms, Olympic-size pools, and other frills? Check out these more affordable gyms, ranked in descending order.
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Pond-Effect Snow, Nuke-Effect Snow, or Both?
The arctic air that just moved through the area produced substantial lake-effect snow off the Great Lakes. But both Pennsylvania and Illinois got odd, rare streaks of snow in the vicinity of nuclear power plants: perhaps nuclear-tower snow or nuclear-cooling-pond snow.
Republicans Can Make Progress In Cities When They Stop Fearing Them
The GOP has been losing ground in America’s cities, and the wounds are largely self-inflicted. If it can throw off its Agenda-21 fringe and its instinctual opposition to urbanist ideas that really shouldn’t be ideological, it could make progress—especially in red-state cities that are the new urbanist frontier.
Jay Cutler: Popular Among Liberals, But Polling Softly
Who’s standing by Jay Cutler? Liberal Democrats. Republicans in Illinois are more skeptical of the Bears’ quarterback, at least when they’re not rooting for the Packers. NB: poll results are from the week the Bears beat the Vikings, not their late season collapse, which may have disturbed the electorate.
Illinois Republicans At a Crossroads
In 2006, Illinois Republicans ran a social moderate against an unpopular governor, and lost. In 2010, they ran a social conservative against an even more unpopular governor, and lost. Now Bill Brady has moved to the center, conservatives are moving against their former standard-bearer, and the party has to decide again what sort of candidate should oppose Quinn (or a much, much more formidable foe).
The Sad Life of Peter II, and the Curious Disinterring of the King of Yugoslavia From Libertyville
He fled communist Yugoslavia by crawling down a drainpipe, married a Greek princess, and led a life of declining geopolitical intrigue that frequently brought him to Chicago. Buried in Libertyville, his body remained there for four decades, as his homeland reconciled itself to its monarchic past, aided by a popular American television show and the fall of communism.
A Chicago 'Fixer' Works the Inauguration
David Rosen of The Competence Group is a DePaul grad who’s worked for Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and the DNC… and this week, as a go-to guy for getting donors into the inauguration’s best after-parties.
Barack Obama's Progressive Inaugural Speech and the Timing of Justice
The President sets Stonewall alongside Selma and the Seneca Falls Convention in a plea for equality in sexual orientation: “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”
How Long Does It Take To Defrost a Building? About Four Days
The Fulton Market Cold Storage building, which rose in 1923 in the heart of the beef distribution and racketeering district, had to be thawed out before it can become a mixed-use development.
Chicago's Year Without Snow
In defense of the Chicago winter and the Hawk Wind: it’s a hard kind of awe, but it’s the only awe we have in one of the least naturally wondrous great cities on earth.