In the 1980s, I saw a TV special in which a comedian roamed the streets of Chicago asking passersby: “Do you ever toddle?” The comedian couldn’t find any toddlers. It’s been a century since Chicagoans toddled, but when they did, no city toddled more. The toddle was a partnered dance consisting of a series of … Read more
The Bears were the NFL’s worst team in Ryan Poles’s first season as GM. Can he turn them into winners?
Some of Chicago’s most iconic buildings are made of Joliet-Lemont limestone. Now the last quarry that supplies it is closing.
You may have seen that map, “A New Yorker’s Guide to Chicago.” It attempts to superimpose the five boroughs of New York City onto their analogues here in our city. Manhattan is the lakefront, Brooklyn is the Northwest Side, Queens is the Bungalow Belt, the Bronx is the South Side, and Staten Island is the … 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.
The architect, 74, on the Chicago Riverwalk, why design matters, and the joy of being pushy
