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Packages: Why We Love Chicago

The Beef Wellington for Two at Swift & Sons

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Illustration: Hawk Krall Few entrées announce themselves quite like this Mad Men–chic steakhouse’s showstopper: Two servers approach your table with a dining cart, upon which rests a perfectly medium-rare 12-ounce filet mignon topped with mushrooms, spinach, and foie gras (because why not?) and swaddled in a jacket of burnished puff pastry. Then they expertly slice … Read more

We Made Pet Adoption Chic

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Paula Fasseas with her three rescue dogs (from left): Josephina, Sandra, and Scotty P.  Photo: Dan Busta Twenty years ago, adopting a homeless dog or cat wasn’t a badge of coolness. So in 1997, when Paula Fasseas founded a nonprofit no-kill shelter called PAWS Chicago, she had to work hard to convince her high-profile friends … Read more

The Two-Flat

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A lineup of two-flats Photo: Ian Spula It is Chicago’s answer to the Brooklyn brownstone, the Georgetown row house, and the London townhome. Except the two-flat remains affordable, still performing the duty to which it was first called in the early 20th century—that is, serving as both shelter and source of rental income for striving … Read more

House Music

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Illustration: Hawk Krall For many of us—the freaks and the music nerds and the reckless, shimmering club kids with hours to burn—house music offers a place of escape. House music is home. It was born here in the early ’80s, the faster-paced successor to disco, with its drum machine rhythms, 4/4 beats time, and synthesized … Read more

Great Gardens from a Great Dane

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Columbus Park, circa 1935  Photo: Courtesy of the Chicago Park District “We all need the living green or we’ll shrivel up inside,” the Chicago landscape architect Jens Jensen once said. “To make the modern city livable is the task of our times.” I think of those words when I stroll through Columbus Park, a 135-acre … Read more

A New Poem for Chicago

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When I Say Chicago capital city of the flyover. crown jewel of the jailhouse. a town in love with its own blood, a blood browned on its own history & funk. this hometown of the riot & the riot gear, the gang & the loitering law. misfit blocks of dark skinned cousins & thick knuckled … Read more

The Pier at Loyola Beach

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Photo: Darwensi Clark In a crowded city, a place to be alone should be cherished. Growing up near Loyola Beach in Rogers Park, a queer kid and a loner, I found my relief on this pier. I would walk to the end, look back at the city, and attain peace and perspective. It was like … Read more

We Moved Heaven and Earth for Clean Water

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Deep TunnelPhoto: Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune Chicago is home to some of the greatest engineering feats in the world. Like the skyscraper? Yeah, that. But some of our most impressive technical accomplishments have come not from reaching toward the sky but from wallowing in the muck. First, we had to build a sewer system in … Read more