Ad Categories: City Life

There’s a good chance Chicago will close out 2012 today with an average temperature of 54.5 degrees for the year, breaking the record set in 1921. Cities across the country are breaking that record, as is the U.S. as a whole.

Filmmaker Carlos Martinez interviews Marciala, a Logan Square tamale vendor, about why she came to America, the competitive business of selling tamales, and the spirit of giving.

The homicide rate, the privatization of city services, and the coming political and legal fight over pension reform: a roundup of the stories that will be big in the coming year.

A Michigan judge tosses an Indiana woman in the slammer for muttering frustrated nothings, after she was given the run-around by his courthouse on a traffic fine. It’s not the first time he’s come down hard on someone who didn’t take kindly to his office.

A study of how kids in Illinois view Northern and Southern accents finds that stereotypes take hold early and harden with age. But it’s not regional bias: kids from Tennessee feel the same way.

There was some notable weather this year in Chicago, but it’s notable for its lack of snow, rain, and cold. This year was all about heat and dryness, but it did stay humid enough for us to surpass the city’s mold-count record in August.

It’s a truism that being identifiably part of the Irish diaspora, at least on a ballot, is a huge advantage in Chicago’s provincial, low-information electoral contests. But a look at judicial elections, among the lowest-information of all, indicates that the advantage is barely statistically significant.

Judicial appointments in Cook County are generally considered to be lifetime appointments; no judge has lost his or her job since 1990. But in 1990, we fired seven of them, almost as many as have been recalled in every other election combined. What happened?

When Charles Dickens toured America for the last time, he gave Chicago the cold shoulder, as well as his widowed Chicago sister-and-law. The local press attacked him as a Scrooge and a hypocrite, but the real story was a sad and complex one closer to Bleak House than A Christmas Carol.