(April 24, 2011)–I’ve written Chicago Carless since June 2005. My blog began as a look at life in Chicago–especially downtown Chicago–through the newcomer eyes of a non-driving, expatriate New Yorker. I’m a former urban planner, and there’s a lot of big-city boosterism on here. There’s also a lot of navel gazing–on this blog I’ve chronicled years of hopes, self-doubts, bad dates, good boyfriends, ADHD foibles, coffee roundtables, and endless tries to answer the question why I left New York in the first place.

But in 2010 something happened that changed me and, ultimately, my blog. I began a journey of conversion to Judaism, and sealed the deal in 2011. It’s the most significant decision I’ll ever make, and I’ve decided to make that journey and the beginning of my life as a Jew-by-Choice the new focus of my blog. I’m sure I’ll still write about all the other mishigas of my life, but I just can’t make a decision like this and not explore it.

After all, like I asked in my conversion essay, how many different ways are there to write that you’ve fallen in love with something that you never knew that you’ve always been? I may try to find out.

Oddly enough, I was once christened a “born-again Chicagoan” by Centerstage Chicago for my deep love of this city. I’m a native New Yorker and always say the only New Yorkers who don’t love Chicago are the ones who haven’t been here. I fell very much in love with Chicago in early 2003, ditched a job–and career–in urban planning, and moved here as quickly as I could. I spent six months in Wrigleyville watching my cat get freaked out by phantom crowd noise from Wrigley Field, a year-and-a-half in Logan Square unsuccessfully trying not to gt mugged, and five years in the architecturally historic yet socially infamous Marina City.

While I’ve cultivated the friendliness of a Chicagoan over the years, I retain the mouthiness and indignant nature of a New Yorker. As a result, since launching CHICAGO CARLESS in 2005, my blog and I have waded loudly into city controversies regarding social justice in Chicago’s public realm, including:

• Helping win the removal of ill-conceived homeland security cameras installed atop Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain;
• Getting Macy’s to replace erroneous wayfinding signage carelessly designed and installed throughout their flagship State Street store;
• Widening the debate on neighborhood noise in downtown Chicago;
• Supporting the Chicago Children’s Museum’s planned move to Grant Park;
• Giving my fellow Chicagoans an insider’s perspective on Marina City’s Gary Kimmel scandal;
• Motivating the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless to monitor the Chicago Transit Authority’s 2008 holiday crackdown on homeless riders; and
• Coverage of alleged price-gouging by Chicago’s Intelligentsia Coffee–including a guest spot on the nationally acclaimed LGBT news-and-features podcast, Feast of Fun.

From May 2009 through February 2010, I also scribed Chicagosphere, the blog-roundup column of the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow group-blogging project (those posts now live on CHICAGO CARLESS, here.) My examination of substandard conditions for rank-and-file bloggers at ChicagoNow during my tenure there (“The Past Imperfect of ChicagoNow“)  remains the most-discussed topic ever on Chicago’s homegrown headline news site, Windy Citizen. I’ve also served as a contributing blogger to Huffington Post Chicago, the regional news-and-features blog, Gapers Block, and until its premature demise in March 2010, the Kenneth Cole “Awearness” Blog.

I honed my media chops at Chicago’s grassroots and thoroughly spectacular Community Media Workshop, and am an occasional contributor to the Workshop’s annual Chicagoland media guide, Getting On the Air, Online & into Print. I’ve also been featured numerous times in local and national media for his blogging on civic and social-justice issues including Poynter’s Romenesko, Jay Rosen, the Chicago Reader’s Michael Miner, the Chicago Tribune (which called me a “Newsmaker of the Week” in September 2006), the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, Time Out Chicago, the Detroit News, NBC 5 Chicago, Chicago Public Radio, WBBM Newsradio, the WVON Cliff Kelley Show, the Chi-Town Daily News, Centerstage Chicago, Gapers Block, Chicagoist, and Rich Miller’s Capital Fax Blog.

I’m also a committed progressive who has done messaging, strategy work, blogging, and online outreach for community groups, nonprofits, and labor unions in Chicago and at the national level. During Election 2006, I received public accolades from the AFL-CIO and Roseanne Barr for my grassroots video interviews shot for the groundbreaking video blog, 7 Days @ Minimum Wage. The project, conceived by Washington, DC-based progressive PR firm Massey Media–with my heart-rending  “Jessica” interview as its centerpiece (part one, part two)–helped win minimum wage increases in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.

Before coming to Chicago, I spent four years on the central staff of the New York City Transit Riders Council, two of them as associate director. Now, I pay the bills as the online communications coordinator for the Greater Illinois Chapter of the National MS Society. But I still have no idea how to drive a car, and as a lifelong transit rider intend to keep it that way.

I’m a traditionally observant Reform Jew, which is not a contradiction in terms. I’m a member of Emanuel Congregation. Our shul is awesome.

Say hi.

Email me: mikedoyleblogger@gmail.com