The Properties: July started off with a bang on the North Shore, and that’s not a reference to the many fireworks displays hosted by towns and country clubs. Two separate lakefront mansions sold for stratospheric prices: on July 1st, a Kenilworth estate went for $9,710,913, and two days later, one in Wilmette went for...
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It’s summertime, and the grilling is both easy and stylish when you take this Laptop portable charcoal grill from Design Within Reach on a walk to the park. It folds up to be a little more than a single inch thick, weighs 9 lbs., and has a handle that makes for easy transport. With a spaceage portable cooktop like this, everybody’s going to want to get ALL up in your grill.
—BRADLEY LINCOLN
It’s Quebec versus France in a battle royale of weekend whimsy: While Canada’s Cirque du Soleil continues to camp out in the parking lot of the United Center, Paris’s Compagnie Transe Express stakes out some prime lakefront airspace. In the latter’s free spectacle, Maudits Sonnants: Celestial Carillon, performers suspend themselves...
When the new CB2 catalog arrives in your mailbox this month, you’ll probably find yourself either perfunctorily or obsessively (depending on your mood) perusing a bunch of sleek-looking sofas, beds, and tables set against backdrops of exposed-brick walls decorated with bold-colored prints featuring either Andy Warhol-esque urban scenes or tree branches. Sound about right? Well, this month, at least a few of those prints—one featuring the Sears Tower and others some local tree branches—will be by Chicago artist Matthew Lew. Somehow the fact that these are images of Chicago branches and Chicago buildings shot by a Chicagoan makes me like them all the more.
—Gina Bazer
1. Relive the 1990s, Peach Pit-style. Bucktown's Silver Cloud goes back to Beverly Hills, 90210 tonight, July 10th, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. when tapered jeans-clad servers deliver liquid nostalgia in the form of sex on the beach shots ($3) and neon coolers (Effen vodka, Sprite, and a Jolly Rancher, with a glow stick; $6). On the tube: 90210 reruns, classic Bulls games, and throwback flicks like Pretty Woman.
2. Chicago's premier eco-conscious lounge has gone even greener. Mark Klemen just completed an earth-friendly cleanup of his...
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