June 2011
By Whet Moser
The Tribune looks at the devastating effect the housing bubble had on Englewood, in a piece reminiscent of the paper's 2005 series on housing fraud in the same neighborhood. A look even further behind the numbers is no less shocking. Read more
Move over, Kim Kardashian. Here come some Chicagoans dressed to the nines at Summer Lovin’, our annual mixer featuring the mag’s 20 most eligible singles. The event, cohosted by the Auxiliary Board of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, included a “green carpet” sponsored by Ravinia... Read more
By Amalie Drury
As I walked up yesterday afternoon, a man on a ladder was changing out the plastic letters on a marquee outside the River North bar LaSalle Power Co., spelling the words that will grace the sign from now until the end of October: THUNDER FROM DOWN UNDER... Read more
By Jim Collins
In 1993, Cal Meineke, a doctor with a talent for playing the violin, set out to solve a perplexing mystery: Why do some stringed instruments produce a heartbreakingly beautiful sound, while other, nearly identical instruments do not? After almost two decades of obsessive violinmaking and intense scrutiny, he thinks he has the answer Read more
By Jim Collins
The modern violin emerged in northern Italy in the 1500s, in the cities of Brescia and Cremona. Brescia had the older school, but the Cremona guild perfected the instrument in the workshops of Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari... Read more
By Whet Moser
The president came in with hopes from liberal Democrats that he might usher in a new New Deal. But in terms of governance, temperament, and ideology, he might be more like the Man From Plains. Read more
By Bradley Lincoln
I always meet interesting people at my friends Randee and Al Simon’s parties (she’s a talented artist and illustrator, he’s an optometrist who moonlights as a rockabilly Devil Dog…so there’s that), and at a birthday party for Al last weekend I chewed the fat with Chicago photographer Jennifer Greenburg, who had gifted the hep birthday boy with a copy of her latest book, The Rockabillies. Read more
By Whet Moser
An annotated blog roll of local favorites of mine. Plus: some underrated Chicago books, and brief advertisements for myself. Read more
By Carol Felsenthal
As jury deliberations continue in the Blagojevich retrial, one of the city’s prominent criminal defense attorneys provides insights on the case. He says that Judge Zagel has acted uncharacteristically “screwy” and unfair, leaving open the possibility of a retrial, and that Blagojevich did remarkably well on the stand... Read more