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April 2008
For Whom the Bell Tolls

My very first beer was a Heineken from a vending machine in a cheap Amsterdam hostel. At the time, I thought the bitter, swill-like flavor was exacerbated by the sweetness of some dried pineapple I was eating alongside it. Turns out that's just Heineken. But a few weeks later, I had my first sips of something truly inspiring, Brasserie Fischer's Adelscott, a complex lager brewed with a secret weapon: peat-smoked malt whiskey. Now that was a beer.

That's not to say I know much about beer—but I'm learning, and I'll be chronicling it here, in a new weekly Web feature called Get to the Pint...

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Pretty, Dilapidated Stuff

Local photog and friend of historical landmarks Carey Primeau has a knack for making crumbling walls and piles of garbage look beautiful (as displayed in our February roundup of Flickr greats with the haunting photo of a deserted classroom from Chicago's Jacob Riis Elementary School).

Primeau recently expanded beyond Chicago's disregarded treasures and traveled through Europe visiting abandoned buildings destined to be forgotten by history...

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Zac Posen Gives Me Career Advice

As fashionable as Chicago thinks it is, it's still a major event when one of the top New York-based designers cruises into town. This week, it was Zac Posen, who brought along a full-on runway show, courtesy of Saks Fifth Avenue.

I blanked completely on the event, didn't dress appropriately, and wandered in the stately Murphy Hall on Erie Street in a full-on turtleneck and a dress I'd accidentally shrunk in the dryer. Everyone else was head-to-toe designer; what do you do? If you're me, hold your head up high and squeeze through the crowd to find Zac Posen for a photo...

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Wall of Fame


I was over at interior designer Todd Haley’s house/design lab to interview him for a story for Chicago Home + Garden, and he showed me a terrific wall treatment he came up with for a hallway. I hesitate to call it a “treatment” because it’s more of just a novel approach to hanging artwork, but it reads almost like paneling, or wallpaper. He framed a portfolio of antique prints in identical black frames and put them up with plain-old carpet tape, butting them against each other to cover the whole wall. It’ll involve some measuring angst, but I think it’s a sharp, tailored look that freshens up what could easily seem too Merchant-Ivory drawing room.

—BRADLEY LINCOLN

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On The Market—Back to Nature in St. Charles
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $1,390,000
The Property: When Kevin Fitzpatrick bought this 12-room hilltop house in St. Charles two years ago, the entire thing was white, inside and out. “It was right out of Raging Bull,” he says...
Plus: A video walk-through with Dennis Read more
The Coolest Spot Ever
By Penny Pollack & Jeff Ruby

Re-Engaged

Dirk Flanigan and Billy Lawless, the men behind The Gage (24 S. Michigan Ave.; 312-372-4243), have secured the 2,000-square-foot space next door, and are moving forward with a new concept. “We are still working on what we want to do,” Flanigan says, “but I can tell you that it’s going to be one of the coolest spots in Chicago—if not the coolest spot on Michigan Avenue. It’s going to be really, really cool...

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Plumbing Issues

So I’m in the shower, and on the way to hot, the faucet falls off in my hand. Literally. I ring the super, who can fix anything and looks like Schneider (it’s like our own One Day at a Time around here at the highrise), but he’s not available. It’s all fun and games ’til you have to venture out into the big, bad world and find a fix yourself. It’s a small part inside the faucet that requires replacement, something—as I learn at Home Depot—they don’t sell separately. “You may have to open the wall,” says the helpful Depot-er. And who makes this fixture anyway? I remodeled the bath, and think it’s Groehe, but there’s no signage, number…nada. The contractor has no record. (Note to self: write this stuff down and keep a file long after the project is complete!). I head to Community Home Supply. The “question desk” is full of crack professionals who are stumped. (Great place to order bath accoutrements by the way.) They send me home to take a snap of the part that remains in the wall. I return. They think they discover a discontinued model that matches. Then, out from the secret and sacred files, comes The Card. I’m directed to the Godfather of all parts, The Faucet Shoppe. One step inside the store and Norman Miller, third generation “shoppe” keeper, has found the part (in an opened and thus discounted box to boot) for $40! His warehouse is filled to the rafters with replacement parts from toilet covers to vintage fixtures. May not seem like a sexy stop on the interior decorating tour, but for me, it’s heaven!

– BARRI LEINER

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Housing Bulletin— More Homeowners Using Short Sales as an Alternative to Foreclosure
By Dennis Rodkin

Hoping to avoid foreclosure, some financially strapped homeowners are taking advantage of what until recently had been a little-used option. When they find they can no longer afford their homes, they negotiate with their lender to accept a short sale—a transaction where a bank or other lender allows the house to be sold for less than the amount owed on it.

According to the records of Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED, which until recently was known as the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois), at least one of every ten houses that sold in the Chicago...

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The Rezko Refund
By Esther Kang
For 17 lucky charities, political contributions collected by Tony Rezko have been the gift that keeps on giving. Read more
Didgeridoo-Over

I wish I could say it was a conscious choice to stay at a grungy youth hostel like the one we picked in Sydney ("Yeah, man, we're keeping it real on this trip"), but the truth was we didn't have the money for anything better. Australia is ridiculously expensive, and this is a long trip, and I'm a journalist, and Sarah's a teacher. That's how we ended up at the Footprints Youth Hostel right downtown.

It honestly hadn't occurred to me that we were too old for youth hostels until we checked in. Techno music blasted in the lobby, and the heavily pierced girl behind the desk took one look at us with our baby and our masses of Stuff, and tried not to smile...

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