Ad Categories: City Life

The state continues to labor under budget deficits, debt service, and unpaid bills extending far off into the future. And the drivers of those debts are increasingly difficult to rein in.

Out of all major U.S. cities, only Los Angeles compares to Chicago in the number of gang members—and Chicago may well have more than the nation’s second-largest city. It has considerably more than New York. What went wrong, and what can be done to address it?

The magazine that fomented the Occupy movement in the first place expects 50,000 strong in Chicago this May. But neither G8 nor NATO is the sexy, controversial target that Wall Street and the WTO have been. Will the summits, and the protests, underwhelm?

A map of Chicago using geotagged tweets shows the corridors of travel from one point to another, based on who’s tweeting from where. It mostly looks like you’d expect, with one mystery.

The USDA released new school-lunch guidelines today, which define how much tomato paste on a slice of pizza is equivalent to a vegetable, and doesn’t restrict potatoes… though the National Potato Council is still concerned that their prize product is considered a “second-class” vegetable.

After a long two years of trying to court the center with frustrated attempts at centrist bipartisanship, the White House tries a stump speech for the SOTU. The trick to the center? It’s not a “center.”

Twitter users: they’re just like us! And Chicago twitter users react to public trans just like everyone everywhere does, complaining when something goes wrong and tolerating the rest.

Newt Gingrich’s constant flogging of the Alinsky name has brought the legendary organizer back into the zeitgeist again. But it’s a clumsy attempt to tar Obama, not least because the Tea Party has found much more interesting uses of Alinsky’s legacy.

Chicago’s high hit-and-run rate, considerably higher than the national average; how the city’s most expensive restaurants rank; how our expensive El repairs rank; and more.