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January 2008
Week 33: Pink Void, the Wall

Now that my wife's organs have the population density of Hong Kong, the kicking in there has begun to feel less like kicking and more like small jabs from elbows and knees. That's good. Some women get totally freaked out by what they consider a lack of movement inside of them, and rely on something called "fetal kick counts"—or FKC to the pros.

What they do is pick a time of day when the kid is most active, take a piece of paper, and make a hash mark every time they feel a movement in there. Hiccups don't count. According to experts, the fetus should move about ten times in four hours...

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Wicker Park Bubbles Up
By Rebecca Little
Clean and Cozy

It’s rare for a bath and body store to so effectively blend the masculine and feminine, but the newly opened Wicker Park boutique Pour Vous (1750 W. Division St.; 773-698-6024), with its brown and blue décor, flat-screen television, and river rock fireplace, somehow manages it. Owner Tonja Legittino left a corporate job as an insurance broker to open her relaxation haven, stocked with soaps, lotions, bath bombs, robes, and pajamas. Soaps from Splash come in enormous slabs that she cuts down to individual bars. The brand’s light soufflé body lotion ($16.95), shower gels ($9.25), bath bombs ($2.95 to $6.95), bubble bath in grown-up scents such as lavender or “island fever,” and massage bars ($8.95) are reasonably priced because of the no-frills packaging. Or try the Oliba organic soaps ($6.25) and lotions ($6.95) in lovely scents such as papaya mango and ginger pear, or the powder soaks from Biggs and Featherbelle; Legittino discovered both lines at the Renegade Craft Fair last summer. Try the sugar and salt exfoliation scrubs in...

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Something Sketchy

I've been wrestling with the whooping cough, so Coda has been silent. (No one, I'm sure, wanted to read my musings on Ellen reruns and French existentialist writers--my main activities when I was bedridden.) Fortunately for you, Web editor Esther Kang and her pal, local writer Jackie Ostrowski, hit the annual Sketchfest in my absence and came up with a must-see: a local group called Bri-Ko. Read the review, view the photo gallery, and catch Bri-Ko again this Friday, January 11th, at 11 p.m...

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Sale of the Week—A Lincoln Park Queen Anne
By Dennis Rodkin

List Price: $1,879,000
Sale Price: $1,879,000
The Property: The brick, limestone, and wood façade of this Queen Anne-style home is a flirting coquette among matrons on an east Lincoln Park block where the neighbors are all fine homes, but not as confidently decorative as this one. From its painted wooden gable front and cornice supports down through the carved limestone tablets above some windows and a hefty wood-and-glass front door, the exterior is enlivened by an array of textures and colors.

Inside, the seduction continues. Built in 1895, the house has ten rooms on three floors, plus a...

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