Half of Chicago Traffic Aides Kicked to the Curb
The ranks of the city’s TMA take about a fifty-percent cut. It’s a dangerous job and a scorned position, but is it worth the money? No one seems to think so, but no one seems to know, either.
Ad Categories: City Life
Historical Best of Chicago: Fear and Loathing in 19th-Century Chicago
Poverty tourism, opium-smoking, prison museums, panoramas of suffering, and other sordid entertainments for Chicago tourists at the end of a century.
Studs Terkel on How to Interview Someone
Listen; prepare, but have a conversation instead of conducting an interview. Plus: Terkel with Nelson Algren, and talking about Richard J. Daley.
Chicago's Budget Deficit: Notes on the Impending Crisis
The Emanuel administration presents a bleak picture of the city budget, as sacrifice and competition for city services appear to be in our future. But one of the biggest factors in the city’s expenses, employee health care, is the victim of greater national trends… and as a result, a tremendously difficult problem.
Quinn Appoints Ed Burke's Daughter to $117,000 Post—What's the Difference Between Him and Blago?
With one Illinois governor in prison and another waiting to go, the current gov, Pat Quinn, seems remarkably tone deaf to charges that he is rewarding his political benefactors with cushy board jobs. His appointment on Wednesday of 41-year-old attorney Jennifer Burke—daughter of Alderman Ed Burke, next to Rahm the biggest foot in city politics—to the Illinois Pollution Control Board seems utterly over the top, even reckless…
Joe Walsh, Child Support, and Other Debt Problems
A must-read Sun-Times report finds the upset 2010 winner has been sued for $100,000 in child support payments, just as the suburban rep has established himself as a voice of his caucus on television and in the House on the debt-ceiling debate. Which isn’t going any better.
Barack Obama: The Conciliator In Chief
James Warren argues that Barack Obama will come out of the debt-ceiling negotiations as the “adult in the room.” But right now the kids in the room seem to be winning the debate.
The Hill's '50 Most Beautiful People' List—Locals Who Made the Cut
It’s often said that Washington is “Hollywood for ugly people.” With that caveat, and given the agonizing stalemate over lifting the debt ceiling, it’s a nice distraction to look at the “50 Most Beautiful People in Washington” list, published annually since 2004 by the oh-so-serious The Hill, which covers D.C. in minute detail. At number five, the highest ranking local is…
A Flickr Trove of Old Chicago Photos
Stumbling across a well-organized archive of pictures of downtown Chicago, Lawndale, Pilsen, and more throughout the decades leads me astray for an afternoon.
The Class Divide on Chicago's South and West Sides
Salim Muwakkil of In These Times takes a look at how the widening income gap manifests itself within Chicago’s African-American communities, and the cultural divides it exacerbates.