Category: Chicago-esque

Chicago related, duh

CTA Apple Stop

Seth Anderson0 comment

Apple store

Apple has so much cash in their corporate coffers1, they can afford to spend a little money fixing infrastructure. In a country that cared about people more than foreign wars, the Chicago Transit Authority would have enough budget to maintain its own stations, but we don’t live in such a magical place. Infrastructure investment for public transit2 is not a priority, unfortunately.

Nevertheless, I salute Apple for doing this, no matter their motives. I would applaud other corporations for jumping into this breach, and sprucing up other stations, shoring up bridges, etc. Too bad they mostly only focus on naming rights for stadiums.

Even while the neighborhood took on a high gloss, the CTA station looked the way it had for decades — like the stop closest to the poverty of the Cabrini-Green housing project.

Now this woman stood gawking at the Apple Store and the plaza that linked it to the station.

“The plaza just knocked my socks off,” she said. “A plaza, with seats. Like these guys weren’t so terrified of homeless people sitting down that they weren’t going to let anyone else sit down, either. And a fountain, that instant supplier of peace. It made me want to sit down on a nice day with a cup of tea and a book. OK, in gratitude to Apple, it should be an iPad, but whatever. I say thank you to Apple.”

Exactly the effect Apple intends.

There’s reason to be grateful to Apple for the metamorphosis of this patch of Chicago. Apple has not only built a store more stylish than anything nearby, it has invested close to $4 million in the North/Clybourn station.

It’s the equivalent of mowing the neighbor’s weedy lawn — and paying the neighbor to let you.

Outside, the station has clean new brick, big new windows and a sleek new look, partly 1940s and entirely 2010.

The inside isn’t stylish, but it’s improved. Someone has scrubbed the red concrete floors, brushed red paint on the old railings, tried to wipe the grime from the escalator stairs.

(click to continue reading CTA station is the apple of computer giant’s eye, Mary Schmich says – chicagotribune.com.)

Apple Logos

Footnotes:
  1. over $50,000,000,000 last time I looked [↩]
  2. Amtrak, CTA, et al [↩]

Doris Lessing comes to town

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Roger Ebert carted around Studs Terkel and Doris Lessing in 1969 – that would have been a blast, I’m assuming.

A flutter of memories

Sinking into an overstuffed chair in Studs Terkel’s apartment with her legs curled beneath her, Doris Lessing looked small, vulnerable (and in the best sense) catlike. It was Sunday afternoon and she was sipping brandy and listening to stories about Studs’ trip to South Africa. And you thought: So this, after all, is Doris Lessing. And the next moment you thought: Of course.

Doris Lessing is the sort of novelist the Village Voice is inspired to describe as a “cult author.” That is completely wrong, but it proves a lead. For 20 years, and especially since the publication of “The Golden Notebook” in 1962. Ms. Lessing has given voice to a postwar generation which has reopened questions of politics, sexuality and personal identity.

…

Out of some misguided sense of modesty, I suppressed an element in this story. When Studs gave Doris Lessing the tour of Chicago, I was the driver. That was because Studs, the quintessential city-dweller, had never learned to drive, and wanted me to drive them around. For three days, Studs showed Chicago to Lessing, and to me.

This was one of the great experiences of my life. We saw the hotel at Grand and Wells which Studs’ mother managed, and where he was raised. And the Biograph Theater, where John Dillinger was shot. And one afternoon we drove through Washington Park.

“Stop here!” Studs said. “You see that tree over there? That’s where Studs Lonigan kissed Lucy Scanlon. That’s where I got my nickname — from ‘Studs Lonigan,’ the Chicago novel by James T. Farrell.”

We got out of the car and walked into the park.

“This is where he kissed her, all those years ago,” Studs said.

(click to continue reading Doris Lessing comes to town :: rogerebert.com :: People.)

 

No Sense Of Time

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No Sense of Time

Better in Lightbox

Both Metra and Amtrak use these rails to link to Union Station and the Ogilvie Transportation Center so they are quite active with trains. Shot with my Nikon 18mm-200mm lens, and converted to black and white in Photoshop using the Alien Skin Exposure 3 plugin. If this area of the West Loop wasn’t so fouled with diesel smoke, I’d set up a tripod here, and get a better, long exposure shot, maybe even a photo that included a CTA train in the track in the upper right of the frame, but it is, and I’m impatient anyway.

Caught Without A Ticket

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Caught Without A Ticket

I know I’m probably repeating myself1 but the shadows under the El tracks were just too richly inviting to ignore. Franklin Street, Little Hell2 area. Shot using a Tokina 12mm-24mm lens, converted to black and white in Photoshop with the help of Alien Skin’s Exposure 3 plugin.

better in Lightbox

Footnotes:
  1. I repeat myself under stress, I repeat myself under stress [↩]
  2. aka River North [↩]

Montgomery Ward Park

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Convergence

a view of the eastern part of the newly named park at Kingsbury and Erie1

It took him two decades to win his personal battle to get rid of the seedy stables, railroad sheds and other eyesores along the lakefront to turn it into what would become Grant Park.

It took Chicago nearly a century to name a park in his honor.

A Montgomery Ward Park was officially dedicated Monday at 630 N. Kingsbury.

It’s named for Aaron Montgomery Ward, the retail catalog pioneer who famously declared that Grant Park should be “forever open, clear and free.”

“Based on his civic contribution, this honor is long overdue,” Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said.

(click to continue reading An honor a century in the making :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State.)

Photographers at Montgomery Ward Park

probably waiting for the various dignitaries to arrive2

Montgomery Ward Park

another recent view of the park.

Today Ward is recognized for his hard work, generosity and vision.

“[He] pulled out his checkbook to pay for lawsuit after lawsuit,” Tranter said.
“We wouldn’t have had Grant Park to fight over … were it not for A. Montgomery Ward’s efforts to protect it,” Reilly said.

Significantly, A. Montgomery Ward Park, formerly called Park 511, is on land once owned by the retailer.
The park, on the corner of Erie and Kingsbury, features rolling hills, small trees, a riverwalk and a playground.
Reilly said “some modest improvements” to the playground and riverwalk are in the works because of the park’s growing popularity. “In the summer months, you can’t find a blade of grass,” he said.

Footnotes:
  1. I always have called it Erie Park, but apparently until this week, its official name was the generic sounding Park 511 [↩]
  2. Mike Riordan, president of River North Residents Association; state Rep. Ken Dunkin; Erma Tranter, president of Friends of the Park; Ald. Brendan Reilly, and former Ald. Burt Natarus. [↩]

Kass Is A Bit Clueless

Seth Anderson1 Comment

John Kass has a point in his passionate defense of the Chicago Tribune; I have no doubt most reporters just do their jobs without resorting to Clear Channel-esque frat-house shenanigans, and admonitions to “show yer tits” as Tribune executives allegedly did. But his tired cliche about bloggers shouldn’t have made it past the editors. It was a cliche ten years ago, and even more so these days. The folks who are professional bloggers1 are just as much part of the 21st century media as ink stained wretches at daily newspapers.2

Looking up at the Chicago Tribune

I told you what the Chicago Tribune is not. Now let me tell you what it is. It’s reporters, photographers and editors, analysts and designers, and others who help us with the work. Our newspaper is just one part of Tribune Co., and what the corporate bosses do is separate from what we do.

Chicago Tribune reporters work in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. They do not blog from mommy’s basement, cutting and pasting what others have reported, while putting it under a cute pen name on the Internet.

(click to continue reading Kass: Frat house atmosphere in the Tribune? Not in the newsroom. – chicagotribune.com.)

Randy Michaels is going to leave the Tribune, by the way, and while the New York Times recent story was probably the catalyst, there certainly were non-basement-dwelling bloggers involved too.

 

Randy Michaels, Tribune Co.’s embattled chief executive, has decided to resign his post at the Chicago-based media company and intends to leave the company before the end of the week, sources close to the situation said.

He will be replaced by a four-member office of the president that the sources said would comprise Eddy Hartenstein, president and publisher of the Los Angeles Times; Tony Hunter, president and publisher of the Chicago Tribune Media Group; Nils Larsen, Tribune Co.’s chief investment officer; and Don Liebentritt, chief restructuring officer.

The development comes after weeks of turmoil at the bankrupt company, brought on by assertions that Michaels and his management team displayed boorish behavior and fostered a sexist, hostile work environment. Even as the Tribune Co. board met Tuesday to discuss Michaels’ fate in light of the crisis, new complaints by current and former employees were emerging.

…

Michaels’ departure may have become inevitable when the New York Times newspaper ran an unflattering report earlier this month that colored the company as a sexist “frat house” increasingly populated with former Michaels associates from the radio industry.

That perception seemed to be confirmed several days later when Lee Abrams, whom Michaels handpicked as his chief innovation officer, sent all employees an e-mail containing a link to a video of a newscast parody with nudity and profanity that he labeled “Sluts.”

(click to continue reading Tribune’s top exec poised to resign – chicagotribune.com.)

 

Footnotes:
  1. most decidely not me, nor any of my ilk, but the bloggers who write seriously [↩]
  2. another cliche, of course, no journalist gets their hands dirty changing typewriter ribbons any more [↩]

Landmark status for former Schlitz taverns

Seth Anderson0 comment

Strangely enough, we just linked to the history of these Schlitz sponsored buildings a few days ago.

Schlitz 1995

City officials want to assign landmark status to eight former Schlitz taverns that opened more than 100 years ago, a group of buildings that includes the popular Lakeview nightspot Schuba’s Tavern. Adorned with distinctive Schlitz globes, the structures are reminders of an era when beer makers like Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. owned and operated their own saloons, a foreign concept to barhoppers today.

Built in the late 19th and early 20th century in Queen Anne or Baroque style, so-called brewery-tied houses “convey important aspects of the ethnic, social and commercial life of the city’s neighborhoods,” a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Zoning & Land Use Planning writes in an e-mail. The city Commission on Chicago Landmarks will consider a preliminary recommendation to designate the properties as landmarks at a Thursday meeting. It’s the beginning of a process that could take a year, ending with a City Council vote on the proposal.

(click to continue reading Landmark status on tap for former Schlitz taverns | News | Crain’s Chicago Business.)

Good, I hope the city officials follow through with this initiative. I realize the past is not sacrosanct, but personally am of the opinion that some history of a city, especially a city as architecturally aware as Chicago, should be retained against the onslaught of developers seeking to raze all in their path.

Schlitz on Tap - Bucktown

Abandoned Schiltz Sign on West Grand

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Abandoned Schlitz sign on West Grand

Taken with the newish Ina’s 1935 film addition to Hipstamatic. Located on a wall at the southwest corner of the Damen/Grand intersection. There are apparently less than ten of these Schlitz globe signs still existing in Chicago. Most are better preserved than this one. In fact, some might even be given “landmark” status.



The Schlitz brewing company of Milwaukee was the most prolific builder of tied houses in Chicago. Designed by the architectural firm of Frohmann & Jebsen, Schlitz tied houses are generally executed in a revival style such as Queen Anne or Baroque with varying levels of accuracy and detail. One common factor in most Schlitz tied houses are the distinctive globes encircled by a belt, as if Schlitz had a stranglehold on the world. Another common feature is the alternating red and cream face brick which can be found in different patterns.

(click to continue reading Tied Houses | Forgotten Chicago | Chicago History, Architecture, and Infrastructure..)

Like this one:

Schlitz Trade Mark

Oprah and her nakedly avaricious audience

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Won’t miss Oprah when she ends her show; I’ve never been a fan, and have become less tolerant of her diva-isms as they become more pronounced.

O

It was like “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire,” but without all those nettlesome questions separating people from their prizes. By now, it’s got to the point where an audience that doesn’t score any booty goes home crestfallen.

Viewed charitably, the car and technology and pajama handouts amount to an immodestly rich and successful woman letting some of the wealth trickle down. But a skeptic might classify them as almost a form of bribery: Keep loving me, baby, and I might buy you that diamond necklace.

And the shows’ nakedly avaricious nature — audience members were virtually quaking with excitement as Winfrey teased out the prize announcement Monday — threatens to overshadow some of the good, and serious, work Winfrey does.

(click to continue reading Steve Johnson: Oprah one-ups herself: Free flights for audience – chicagotribune.com.)

and I loved this

Oprah Winfrey’s…studio audience — stocked with “ultimate” fans the way George W. Bush used to stock his speeches with partisans

Banksy half-assed

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Banksy half-assed
Banksy half-assed, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

I think Chicago got less interesting work than other places.

www.nileguide.com/blog/2010/05/27/on-the-stencil-trail-fo…

Embiggening

From an interview with First District Alderman Joe Moreno:

Who’s getting tagged in your ward? The tagging is mostly happening to small and independently owned, women-owned, minority-owned businesses: boutiques, restaurants, and clothing shops. Our community is an artists’ community, but we don’t want to have people putting their own paint on small business owners’ shops.

I moved to Wicker Park 14 years ago because of the artists, and I want to preserve that. But in my mind, tagging isn’t permissible.

What if a super-famous street artist like Banksy, who paid us a visit not long ago, created a piece on one of your constituents’ facades without asking? Would you make an exception for Banksy? Permission has to be granted. I would hope he’d work with a pro-art, progressive alderman like myself, and we could have his art displayed. And he could perhaps even get paid for it.

How would that happen? Well, I’ve been taking on this issue in two ways: the illegal removal side, and also in promoting spaces for street artists to show their work off and get paid for it. I’m working with various parties to make their walls accessible to street art. Brooklyn Industries also has an initiative for artists to use their exterior wall for street-art purposes that would be traditionally seen as graffiti.

How many of these specially designated wall initiatives have you worked on since becoming alderman? There’s two right now, and I’m working on two or three others to get permission. But I’d like to expand it. I’m also working with a gallery to do an art installation on the el platform.

(click to continue reading Even Banksy Has to Follow the Rules in Proco Joe’s Ward | The Blog | Chicago Reader.)

Alderman Fioretti- Daley Being A Child

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Pretty funny actually. And is Daley running or not? Lots of people are speculating, even people who don’t live in Chicago city limits.1Mary Bartelme Park

[Mary Bartelme Park, aka Adams and Sangamon Park]

Second Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti says he hasn’t yet decided whether he’s running for mayor next February, but his flirtation with the idea appears to have gotten the attention of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

At least that’s Fioretti’s take.

Daley told Fioretti and community groups this morning that he’s planning to dedicate a new park Thursday at the corner of Adams and Sangamon on the near West Side. The only problem is that Fioretti and the groups had already planned a dedication ceremony there for this Saturday, and the alderman thinks the mayor is simply trying to upstage him.

“He must be very frightened of something,” Fioretti said. “That or he’s just being the child that he is.”

Rosa Escareno, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said Fioretti is flat wrong. The mayor’s office has been planning to dedicate the new park for weeks, she said, but because Daley has a conflict Saturday they decided to hold a ceremony tomorrow.

“The mayor has numerous park dedications we’ve been trying to get on his schedule,” Escareno said. “We had this time open up.”

Martha Goldstein, executive director of the West Loop Community Organization, said community leaders have worked on the park with the Chicago Park District and city officials for nearly a decade. She said she didn’t know anything about the mayor’s event until today but planned to attend.

“We’re excited he’s coming,” she said. “We were disappointed when we’d heard he wasn’t coming Saturday.”

(click to continue reading Alderman: Daley Being A ‘Child’ / Chicago News Cooperative.)

and a classic Daleyism, for your pleasure, even if it was uttered by a staffer

Escareno said Daley isn’t available Saturday—she said she couldn’t say why—and so his schedulers were planning something for the middle of next week. But when they learned about Fioretti’s plans they decided to move the mayor’s event up.

“It didn’t make sense to dedicate a park that’s already been dedicated,” she said.

But now that’s what Fioretti will be doing Saturday. Escareno says he’s welcome to attend the mayor’s event tomorrow. “The alderman is invited, and we’re hoping to have him on the agenda.”

“Less than 24 hours notice for this?” Fioretti said. “This is just unfortunate.”

Inflated Importance Toned

[former buildings at Adams and Sangamon]

and from the Chicago Journal a few months ago:

 

The two names usually used as shorthand for the West Loop’s new park are the Chicago Park District’s administrative-feeling Park #542 and the more informal (and geographic) Adams-Sangamon Park.

Recently, Ald. Robert Fioretti’s office pitched an official name for the space to park district superintendent Timothy Mitchell.

The honoree: Mary Bartelme.

Born near Halsted and Fulton in 1866, Bartelme became the first female judge in Illinois in 1923 and the second female judge in the nation, according to a biography of Bartelme written by Brian Hays, Michael Levy and Gwen Hoerr McNamee and included the Chicago Bar Association’s 1998 book, 125 Years of Women Lawyers in Illinois.

After being admitted to the Illinois bar in 1894, according to the biography, Bartelme began her legal career as a probate attorney with Barnes, Barnes & Bartelme.

Her practice, however, ultimately focused on the plight of children and young people during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Chicago was industrializing and immigrants were filling the city. In 1897, she was appointed Public Guardian for Cook County, the first woman in the country to fill that role. She used the post to improve the lot of teens and children in Chicago who needed assistance. It was a role that brought her into close contact with such renowned social reformers of the era as Jane Addams, the founder of the Hull House settlement house on the Near West Side.

(click to continue reading Fioretti pitches name for West Loop park | News | Chicago Journal.)

Wikipedia entry on Ms. Barthelme:

Mary Barthelme was born in Chicago, the daughter of an Alsatian immigrant Balthasar Bartelme and his wife Jeannette. She had two sisters and a brother, and attended West Division High School. She graduated from Chicago Normal School, a teachers’ college, and taught for five years, before deciding to attend law school, at the age of 25. In 1892, she enrolled at Northwestern University Law School, from which she graduated; she was admitted to the Illinois Bar by 1894.

Known as a social reformer, during the Progressive Era, Mary Bartelme devoted much of her life to the reform of juvenile laws and the welfare of children. In 1897, she was named Cook County Public Guardian, the first woman in this post.

She became known throughout Illinois as a tireless advocate for children; her compassion for the girls who came before her earned her the nickname “Mother Barthelme.”  She would later acquire another nickname– “Suitcase Mary,” because when she sent girls to foster homes, she always provided them with clean clothes, packed in a new suitcase.

Bartelme believed that there was dramatic social neglect of girls, that parents must speak frankly with their daughters about sex, and that poverty was the main cause of delinquency. In May 1912, she was named an Assistant Judge in the Juvenile Court of Cook County.

Then, in March 1913 Bartelme convened a special Girls’ Court, which heard cases of delinquent and dependent girls, many of them prostitutes. All personnel in this closed court were female, which was felt to encourage a more open discussion of sexual and other private matters. Bartelme later established three Mary Clubs for girls who were not able to return to their parents, supported by volunteer services, as an alternative to state institutions. The first two clubs, which started in 1914 and 1916, accepted white girls; the last one, started in 1921, accepted girls of color. More than 2,000 girls passed through these group homes in a space of ten years.

In late 1923, she was elected Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, and she was re-elected in 1927.   After a distinguished career, she retired in June 1933. Prior to her official retirement, in May, more than 2000 well-wishers honored her with a luncheon, at which she was praised for her many achievements.

(click to continue reading Mary Bartelme – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

 

Footnotes:
  1. Chicagoland is a big area, but most of those folks don’t vote in the municipal elections, right? [↩]

Chicago – My Kind of Technocracy

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James Warren has lived in Chicago many years longer than I have. I moved to Chicago right as Congressman Rostenkowski was being drummed out of office, so I don’t have many memories of the old Chicago. I of the new Chicago, the Chicago built upon information, upon technology, upon the characteristics that James Warren describes more eloquently than I can.

Urban Archeology

DAN ROSTENKOWSKI, a gin and porterhouse kind of guy, surely would have felt out of place at the Chicago restaurant where President Obama celebrated his 49th birthday the other day.

Mr. Obama went to the celebrity chef Graham Elliot Bowles’s eponymous new joint, which has featured risotto with green apple, Wisconsin cheddar and Nueske bacon, and foie gras dusted with Pop Rocks. It’s one of many dining spots that make this city a destination for foodies, with the now-defunct Gourmet magazine tagging one, Alinea, as America’s best.

Who knew?

The disjunction between the city’s national image and reality was underscored by homages to Mr. Rostenkowski, the longtime Congressional titan who died last week at age 82. He was recalled as a tough, master dealmaker without a college education who brought home the pork and used his link to the city’s Democratic machine to create an imposing don’t-mess-with-me aura.

It played to an overriding caricature of Chicago: bad winters, Al Capone, slimy politics, the lovable loser Cubs. It can be found in the lame narrative advanced by critics of Mr. Obama and his top aides, which portrays them as products of a nefarious, indigenous “Chicago way” of politics in which backstabbing is a fine art.

Lost in the Rostenkowski coverage was this: He came from a very different Chicago than that of Mr. Obama, whose Harvard pedigree, sophistication, itinerant past and cerebral cool are far more in sync with the reality of this new, little-understood city.

(click to continue reading James Warren – My Kind of Technocracy, Chicago – NYTimes.com.)

Sean Parnell Knows His Drinking Trivia

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For future reference…

Rainbo Club neon

or most of 2001, I got paid to stumble from bar to bar for a book called The Official Chicago Bar Guide. At the time, I fancied myself Chicago’s top authority on the subject, but the city’s ever-shifting nocturnal scene—and a sudden glut of listings online—rendered my book irrelevant almost immediately. One of the 11 or 12 people who bought it was a Wrigleyville resident named Sean Parnell, who’d been doing his own research for Chicago Bar Project, an exhaustive online bar encyclopedia that kicked my little book’s ass all over the city. I never met him and never forgave him.

Until this past May, that is, when Parnell released Historic Bars of Chicago. One look at the book, which overflows with adoration for Chicago’s taverns and the implausible legends that haunt them, and I knew I had never been anything more than a nightlife dilettante. When I finally met Parnell, 36, over Guinness pints at Brehon Pub (731 N. Wells St.), I was embarrassed to find that he knew every word of my book and had never realized we were at war. He told me about the most underrated bar in town (Cody’s Public House, 1658 W. Barry Ave.); a pub that got its name because it once siphoned beer into its taps directly from the brewery next door (Schaller’s Pump, 3714 S. Halsted St.); and a place where patrons drink shots from an inflatable sheep’s rectum (Friar Tuck, 3010 N. Broadway). But it wasn’t until Parnell quizzed me on bar trivia that I grasped the truth: I’d never known bars—or loved them—quite the way he does

(click to continue reading Chicago Bar Project’s Sean Parnell Knows His Drinking Trivia – Chicago magazine – August 2010 – Chicago.)

I know I’ve blogged about the Chicago Bar Project before1, but it is a pretty cool project. Too bad there isn’t a location based iPhone app…

Footnotes:
  1. disclaimer, I think a few of my photos are still being utilized by Mr. Parnell, with my permission of course. [↩]

Brewing up beer, and community in Chicago

Seth Anderson0 comment

Very much looking forward to the Haymarket Pub and Brewery opening. Sounds like my kind of place, a mix of good beer, Chicago history, arts, and ambitious owners.

Micah Maidenberg of the Chicago Journal reports, in part:

Haymarket Riot Memorial 032

With the location in place, planning for the brewpub started in earnest. Crowley and Neurauter found a chef in Chris Buccheri, who was introduced to the pair by yet another mutual friend and recruited away from Three Floyd’s Brewing Company in Munster, Ind., to work at Haymarket.

The brewpub will be split into three areas. Up front near Randolph will be a dining room, outdoor beer garden and the main bar. The middle section — which Bar Louie and Blue Point used as a shared kitchen — will be opened up to showcase glass-encased beer fermenters, a walk-in cooler and the kitchen.

The back room, finally, will accommodate a second bar, seats and a stage for Drinking & Writing, a theater series that explores the connections between imbibing, creativity and literature through readings, personal narratives and audience participation during approximately one-hour performances.

Drinking & Writing will make the location its permanent home, and program the space with monthly shows, according Sean Benjamin, one of its organizers, including the forthcoming “The City that Drinks,” which will examine Chicago writers and their habits with alcohol.

“I think it’s going to be one of the first brewpubs … in the city that integrates a theater into it,” Benjamin said. During performances, Drinking & Writing will take a door charge, while Haymarket makes beer sales.

The back space could also be used for tastings, private events, televised football games and, eventually, for live music.

Evening Lullaby

As one meanders through the space, the idea is to carry a pint with you, Crowley said, and see the process of creation. In the open kitchen, Buccheri will prepare and plate homemade sausage, rotisserie chicken and smoked brisket. In the brewing rooms, Crowley and helpers will turn different grains into fermented, sudsy alcohol. Expect to see steam rising and water flowing, mashing, boiling, scrubbing and cascades of hops, malts and rye.

At any given time, Haymarket will offer 16 house-made beers on tap, ranging from classic Belgians and American pale ales to a rotating European-style lager and beers that combine different elements and flavors.

“There has been a really cool emergence in the craft brewing world of a crossover — we call them contemporary American styles — that might take some aspects of American beers, say IPAs, which are very hoppy, and making Belgians that way,” Crowley said.

From the basement, imperial stouts, barley wines and beers laced with coffee will age anywhere from three months to one year in at least 60 charred bourbon barrels.

Ten “guest taps,” meanwhile, at the main bar will be reserved for Chicago- and Midwestern-based brewers, and the bar will stock several dozen bottled beers from other microbreweries.

(click to continue reading Brewing up beer, and community in Chicago | News | Chicago Journal.)

Wonder if the owners would want any of my photos of the area or of the Haymarket Riot Memorial to display on the wall? I’ll have to inquire…

Mayor Daley pretending to be an Epicure

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The Rise of the Creative Class

Find it hard to imagine Mayor Daley as a gourmet, but what do I know. I haven’t spent enough time in Bridgeport to know if there has been an influx of modern cuisine in the last couple years; my previous trips to the area encountered more hot dog stands and pizza parlors than anything else.

In the Chicago of Mayor Richard M. Daley, the most celebrated foods are more likely to be Kobe beef burgers, a Stanley Cup fashioned from chocolate and sashimi-grade Hawaiian ahi tuna with what Mr. Daley once described as “glacamole.”

The mayor’s pride in Chicago’s growing stature in the world of haute cuisine was on display again this week. After Mr. Daley spent much of last week in Idaho at a conference of the nation’s news media moguls, his next two public appearances in Chicago involved promoting the local gastronomy scene.

The mayor made a stop at the French Pastry SchoolFrench Pastry School on Monday to promote its expansion into new teaching kitchens at the City Colleges of Chicago. The school’s chefs had recently visited City Hall to present the mayor with a chocolate replica of the Blackhawks’ Stanley Cup trophy. The mayor beamed below the brim of a tall chef’s hat.

On Tuesday, he joined about 50 chefs from many of the city’s fanciest restaurants at a news conference to promote the third annual Chicago Gourmet event, which will be held Sept. 25 and 26 at Millennium Park, a sort of Taste of Chicago for connoisseurs. Admission to the event, which attracted 3,000 people last year, is $150 a person.

“These chefs, to me, represent the creative class of society,” Mr. Daley said. “We have to realize how important they are to the city.”

The mayor clearly shares the theory, expounded in Richard Florida’s 2002 book “The Rise of the Creative Class,” that cities must attract people whose livelihoods involve imagination and innovation.

The culinary convention, Mr. Daley said, fits well with the city’s strategy of promoting itself as a destination for those seeking fine food and wine.

(click to continue reading Chicago News Cooperative – On Display, the Mayor as Epicure – NYTimes.com.)

Mayor Daley aside, there is certainly a large number of deliciously innovative restaurants in Chicago, which is probably why the Michelin Guide has added a Chicago edition, due for sale in November (not pictured).


Michelin Guide

Michelin will expand its exclusive restaurant and hotel guide series in North America to include Chicago. The MICHELIN guide Chicago 2011, the first-ever MICHELIN guide for a Midwestern city, will be published in November 2010.  The announcement was made today by Jean-Luc Naret, worldwide director of the MICHELIN guide.

The MICHELIN guide, whose rating system is internationally recognized as the height of culinary success, is already published in 25 editions covering 23 countries, and additionally includes North America guides to New York City, which was introduced in November 2005, and San Francisco, launched the year after. The MICHELIN guide also recently launched titles in Asia, including two guides in Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto & Osaka) and Hong Kong & Macao.

The guide will provide a selection and rating, in all categories of comfort and prices, in a reader-friendly layout made especially for the American market and which reflects the region’s distinctive culinary and hotel landscape.

Harold's Chicken Shack #39

“The diversity, breadth and depth of Chicago’s restaurant and hotel scene, coupled with its rich gastronomic history, clearly mark the city and surrounding areas as the logical choice for the next North American title in the MICHELIN guide series,” commented Naret. “As with our recently updated guides to New York City and San Francisco, we are making every effort to produce a comprehensive selection that does full justice to the region’s exciting restaurant and hotel culture and also meets our readers’ expectations.”

During the announcement, Naret described Chicago as unique among American cities, citing its reputation as a world-class tourism destination and stressing the importance of its treasured culinary traditions.

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“We are eagerly anticipating the MICHELIN guide’s entry into this wonderful city known for its cuisine, culture, beauty and innovative spirit,” said Naret.

As part of their meticulous and highly confidential evaluation process, Michelin inspectors – both European and American – are currently conducting anonymous inspections to Chicago restaurants and hotels. They’ve been in Chicago for two years. As with all MICHELIN guide inspections, the process involves test meals or overnight stays at each establishment, in order to assess the level and the consistency of the establishment. And as for all the other guides and all the other countries, the inspectors pay all their bills in restaurants and hotels.

“The Michelin inspectors are the eyes and ears of the customers, and thus the anonymity of our inspectors is key to ensure they are treated the same as any guest would be treated,” commented Naret.

Hawaiian Snapper

(click to continue reading Michelin North America Newsroom.)

A tourist with discerning tastebuds could certainly spend significant time in Chicago, sampling food in different establishments, and not repeat any restaurants. There is so much to choose from, including even some scrumptious offerings from hot dog stands and pizza parlors. Food doesn’t have to be expensive to be good.