You have nothing to lose.
from 2006, on Milwaukee Avenue near Ashland
Tag: Chicago
Playboy Magazine Outsources Business Duties
An iconic Chicago magazine is seemingly in its death throes
Playboy Enterprises Inc. has agreed to outsource most of the business operations of its namesake magazine, as it seeks to stem losses and restore the cachet that helped embed the brand in the popular culture.
Under the deal, reached last week, Playboy will turn over all the magazine’s operations except the editorial ones to American Media Inc. AMI, of Boca Raton, Fla., publishes more than a dozen titles, including Star and Men’s Fitness. The five-year partnership will help return the magazine to profitability by the end of 2011, said Scott Flanders, chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises.
Playboy and AMI wouldn’t disclose the financial terms of the deal. What it costs Playboy will be based in part on advertising sales, which AMI is taking over. But the partnership will significantly reduce Playboy’s costs, Mr. Flanders said. Playboy has roughly 30 full-time employees working in these areas, and while some will be offered jobs at AMI, most will be let go.
[Click to continue reading Playboy Magazine Outsources Business Duties – WSJ.com]
Doesn’t bode well for those who read Playboy “just for the articles”, editorial operations will be the next to be downsized.
Death Comes RSVP (White and Black version)
Photoshop B&W inversion
this mural didn’t last long, at least that I noticed
Top of the World 2007
Update of this photo of Jeff Zimmerman’s mural
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/4284838/
Now, there is a single story structure (going to be a bank, or a fast food restaurant, or similar) blocking the mural
have to swing by over there, and see what happened.
Reading Around on November 18th through November 19th
A few interesting links collected November 18th through November 19th:
- North Branch Railroad Bridge Chicago and North Western Railroad Northwestern Historic Bascule Bridge – Sitting south of the Kinzie Street Bridge, this railroad bridge is always in the up position and is no longer used by trains. …On aesthetic terms, this strange movable bridge is one of only a few bascule bridges in Chicago where the counterweight is above the ground. Like the Lakeshore Drive Bridge, this bascule set records when it was built. At the time of its completion, it was the heaviest as well as the longest bascule leaf in the world! The bridge was built in 1907, with its design being provided by Joseph Strauss, who was an important person who worked to develop the bascule bridge designs, and would often be angry at Chicago since he felt the designs the city was using were to close to his patented designs. The steel superstructure was fabricated by the Toledo-Massillon Bridge Company of Toledo, Ohio. This rail-line was owned by the Chicago and North Western Railway until Union Pacific bought them out in 1995
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- Senators’ Statements — National Geographic Magazine – “To help kick off Geography Awareness Week, National Geographic invited all 100 U.S. Senators to draw a map of their home state from memory and to label at least three important places. Here’s the gallery of maps from the brave Senators who took the challenge. The maps reveal home-state pride, personal history, and even some geographic humor.” Some Senators link everything to their own history, some link to the history of the state itself.
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- Foodie Rant – Properly Sauced? Try Properly Ripped Off. – Chicagoist – Sometimes, one expects to be overcharged. If you’re having a drink at the Signature Room, you’re renting space at the top of the world. If you order a martini at Charlie Trotters, you probably don’t care about the price. On the other hand, when I walk into an average 2-star restaurant and get charged $14 for a martini, I want to go beat the bartender over the head with a bottle. If the martini is bad, as it often is, the situation deteriorates. A decent $14 cocktail is a mild insult; a bad $14 cocktail is a slap in the face.
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This American Life-307: In the Shadow of the City – Act Three. Yes, In My Backyard.
The story of the government cracking down on smokestack emissions at a city factory … even though the residents LIKE the emissions. We hear from Jorge Just, who explains the one, magical, special secret about Chicago no one outside Chicago ever believes is true, from Brian Urbaszewski, Director of Environmental Health Programs for the American Lung Association in Chicago; and from Julie Armitage, Manager of Compliance and Enforcement for the Bureau of Air at the Illinois State EPA. (9 minutes)
- Ebook statistics | swanksalot | LibraryThing – ebooks available – much more than anticipated, many of them free, public domain books. If you are a Library Thing member, this link will link to your bookshttp://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/ebooks
City Farm
Division and Laramie, or nearby.
www.resourcecenterchicago.org/70thfarm.html
Schiff Residences building in the background with what look to be wind turbines for generating electricity
Dwell Magazine write-up about the building:
www.dwell.com/articles/all-aboard-concepts.html
Homage to George L. Kelling
Broken window theory in action.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Windows_Theory
Building owned by the CTA has had a broken window for several years now.
and still has broken windows. You’d think some city official would have noticed by now
The Least of Faiths
Van Buren
stumbling home
Daley Wants to sell Chicago down the river
Ok, headline writing is not my forte, but if Mayor Daley sells Chicago’s fresh water to private corporations, there just might be rioting in the streets.
Michael Hawthorne writes:
Mayor Richard Daley says any part of city government is up for grabs if the price is right.
But if he is tempted to dangle Chicago’s vast water system as his next lease deal, he might want to first consult Atlanta, which is still smarting from a botched experiment with privatizing a big-city water supply.
Or the mayor could look someplace closer to home, like Bolingbrook, one of dozens of suburbs and downstate communities furious about steep rate increases imposed by a private water operator.
Daley is searching for more jackpots as his administration draws heavily on the money it reaped from leasing parking meters and the Chicago Skyway to ease the city through the recession. The mayor recently told the Tribune editorial board that he has met with consultants who outlined new privatization deals, but he would not provide details.
“Everything is always on the table,” Daley said, though mayoral aides later insisted that nothing immediate is in the works.
If Chicago tried to sell off its water department to a private company, it would be the largest U.S. city to do so. Such a deal also would run counter to movements in dozens of smaller towns across the suburbs and the rest of the nation, where local officials are having second thoughts about private control of public water.
[Click to continue reading Leasing water system could be a risky move for Chicago — chicagotribune.com]
One of Chicago’s great assets is its plentiful fresh water. Why give this away for pennies? And what percentage would be pissed away on corrupt consultants/buddies of Daley?
Chicago’s recent parking meter privatization fiasco is still lingering in everyone’s minds, I’d be extremely surprised if Mayor Daley will be able to push through a water program as easily. The public opinion is already strongly opposed to a water boondoggle, if the internet poll currently hosted at the Chicago Tribune is any indication1.
- currently 97% opposed [↩]
Unitrin Building – Plus-X 125
1 East Wacker, Chicago, IL
sliver of moon noticeable in larger view
Fish head surprise
Whole Foods Lincoln Park
Wonder what John Mackey’s excuse for selling fish1 on the Seafood Watch Avoid list is?
www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_facts…
Apparently Whole Foods sells grouper all over the country (as a brief Google search has informed me anyway)
Footnotes:- grouper [↩]
Random Anarchists
Don’t mind the blemish in the lower right corner of the snapshot.
From a May Day of years past.
beating their buckets to the rhythm of oppression
How would you prefer airlines to charge you more money?
Reading Around on November 11th through November 12th
A few interesting links collected November 11th through November 12th:
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Joakim Noah is the spice in Rick Morrissey’s salsa escapade – TrueHoop Blog – ESPN – “When Noah was drafted, [Rick ] Morrissey wrote a column called “You Must Be Joakim” predicting Noah would be a bust, and promising to eat his column, with salsa, if Noah turned into a good NBA player.
When I finally saw the video, one thing stands out: Joakim Noah is not only there watching, but he’s up out of his chair, cheering and dancing!
After Morrissey’s droning preamble, in which he doesn’t really admit he was wrong, but instead asks Noah about how he got so dramatically better (as if nobody could have possibly foreseen this two-time NCAA champion succeeding — let the record reflect that when Noah was selected, David Thorpe said the Bulls would win a championship with Noah), it gets to eating time.
Noah claps his hands together, shouting “NOW WE’RE EATING THE SALSA! NOW THE GOOD PART!”
Indeed, because of Noah’s energy, this is the good part. ”
- Letters of Note: Please – no preferential treatment – Asimov was a mensch
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- allmusic – Alone Again Or – Written by second guitarist Bryan MacLean in the early ’60s in musical tribute to his mother, a flamenco dancer, “Alone Again Or” is lushly beautiful, but also achingly sad, thanks both to MacLean’s distressed lost-love lyrics and Lee’s high-register vocals, which give the song an off-kilter quality due to the fact (also revealed in the reissue’s liner notes) that Lee’s vocals were originally meant to be simply a high harmony to MacLean’s gruffer lead, but Lee pushed his own vocals front and center, mixing MacLean out almost entirely, during the album’s final mix. In both respects, then, it fits perfectly as the start of Forever Changes, a jaundiced “no thank you” to the supposed sunshine and good vibes of the Summer of Love as well as Arthur Lee’s own Pet Sounds, the album he intended as his personal artistic summation.
Tunnel of Blues sold
Looks as if I sold another photo to the astute folks at St. Martin’s Press for use as a book jacket photo illustration1.
I’m not positive about all the details yet, but I think this is the book: Through the Cracks, by Barbara Fister
More details as I get them2…
The photo is of a viaduct on 24th Street between Canal and Stewart, heading towards our Chinese herbalist.
Footnotes:- earlier this year I sold a photo for Luck of the Draw [↩]
- like when the publish date is, what the illustration will look like, etc [↩]
Ode to Summer Portraits
cross-processed to some degree in Photoshop
Near Evanston, but in Chicago