Please donate whatever you can into the alien pumpkin head on your left,” said the voice actor as he threw candy at the audience. “And remember, diabetes is the real killer!” Continue reading
Bridgeport
Bridgeport
STEPHEN URCHICK
Bridgeport on a Sunday morning: a seating queue winds snugly around the corner of the organic eatery Nana, its outdoor café space buzzing both with young brunchers and the bees that dive-bomb them from the planters. There’s a sidewalk sale assembled on the stoops of Jackalope Coffee and Tea House, attracting a crush of folks who are perhaps too cool for you. Continue reading
Best Kept Secret: Filbert’s Old Time Root Beer
ROBERT SORRELL
I don’t sit behind a desk and count all the money,” joked Ron Filbert, fourth generation Filbert and present owner of Filbert’s Old Time Root Beer and its additional twenty-nine varieties of pop. “Even though I’d like to be able to do that,” he added, on his way to bottling a batch of ginger beer in the back room. Dressed casually in a t-shirt and shorts, Filbert radiated boyish joy when talking about his products. With a contagious grin across his face and a look in his eye that could only be called a twinkle, Filbert doesn’t seem too let down by the absence of cash counting in his life. Continue reading
Without a Paddle
A stalled boathouse and the city's commitment to the South Branch
COURTESY OF STUDIO GANG
Rahm Emanuel noted in a 2011 press release that if Lake Michigan was Chicago’s “front yard,” then the Chicago River ought to be treated as the city’s “backyard,” and embraced as its “next recreational frontier.” In the press release, the mayor announced another step in the city’s decades-long attempt to completely revolutionize its riverfront: that is, to transform a vein of water so polluted that it has earned the nickname “Bubbly Creek” into a friendly and accessible destination for city residents. With $1 million in EPA funding, the city would construct four boathouses at various points along the riverbed, split evenly between the South and North Sides. Continue reading
Fight Over Flight
The vicious debate over the Halsted heliport
HANNA PETROSKI
At 2420 South Halsted Street, a heliport is set to break ground. Perched on the border of Bridgeport and Pilsen, the project is not alone—less than two and a half miles away, a Vertiport has begun to sprout thanks to sponsorship from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. That port will be built near Stroger Hospital, and will be used mostly for medical needs, although the city plans on opening it to corporate charters as well. Continue reading
Girl’s Night In
Chicago women’s art collective Artemisia comes together one more time
Ten years after the end of its thirty-year reign, the Chicago women’s art collective Artemisia Gallery presented its legacy of artworks by sixty female members at the Bridgeport Art Center in the exhibition “Artemisia after 40.” Continue reading
Portraits of Desire
“Fixation” at Zhou B Art Center
STEPHEN URCHICK
It’s the Madonna meets the Joker. Trapped behind the canvas’s glossy finish, a naked clown cups her breast with a gloved hand. Continue reading
Cakes, Brains, and Comic Books
“CAKE FRAME 2” at the Co-Prosperity Sphere
Within minutes of the doors’ official opening, most of the crowd had assembled. They stood in bunches in the open area near the projector screen, moving to look through rows of artwork or to find a good seat. Continue reading
Looking In, Looking Out
Project Onward’s “Smile With Your Mind” at Bridgeport Art Center
ELIJAH ALVARADO
When I first met Blake Lenoir, he was hesitant to speak to me. After I introduced myself, he looked at me for a long time before tersely telling me his own name, age, and background. Our initial conversation was marked by long pauses and short answers. Continue reading
South Side Stories
An interview with Andrew Marikis
ISABEL OCHOA GOLD
Story Club, a nonfiction read-aloud, began in a Wrigleyville bar as a way to combine disparate forms: the freshness of the amateur and the consistency of the professional, the personal prose of the stand-up and the eloquent emotion of the slam poet. Continue reading