Something very unfortunate happened in the Chicago blogosphere late last week. A popular blogger on ChicagoNow wrote an injudicious blog post, the leader of a major Chicago weekly took very personal–and very public–exception to said blog post, and ultimately, ChicagoNow took the blog post down. Except it wasn’t as cut and dried as all that, and after a weekend of thinking about it I still have no clear answer. But one thing is for sure: things got really ugly.

Last Thursday  Tuesday, Arresting Tales blogger “Joe the Cop” wrote a blog post describing a “Ghetto Shooting Template,” based on his experience as a Chicagoland police officer. In the scenario, a black man with an arrest record is shot and killed by police, witnesses come forward but refuse to divulge what they know, and the family of the deceased files a civil lawsuit. According to Joe, all of that happens again and again in Chicago and even a casual reader of the major dailies would find it hard to argue with the pattern. But Joe did three objectionable things in the eyes of a lot of people. He used the word “ghetto.” (Hurray for a word that isn’t politically correct.) He cited police statistics to point out that 75% of Chicago murder victims and murder offenders are black men. (Hard to argue with official records.)

And…he said of an actual repeat offender shot and killed by police that he would probably be worth more to his family dead, as the subject of a civil lawsuit, than alive. And whether that’s true, it’s a pretty callous thing to say about a recently deceased person whose loved ones might read your words. And they did read, and comment angrily. And so did Time Out Chicago (TOC) editor-in-chief Frank Sennett. Over the course of the week Joe was called a racist for his words. Sennett took to Twitter–were he proceeded to write around one-hundred critical tweets–and on Thursday took to the TOC Blog, in both places lambasting Joe and ChicagoNow and labeling Joe a racist.

I talked to Joe at the ChicagoNow tweetup on Thursday evening and he seemed taken aback at the idea that merely pointing out statistics and observing a verifiable trend would be cause to call anyone a racist. I happen to agree. I don’t even think Joe’s callous words merit a charge of racism. That’s such a kitchen-sink word liberal-minded detractors like to throw about when they don’t like someone telling things as they are.

But just because Sennett and his fellow critics were confusing racism with bad judgment, that doesn’t mean they didn’t have a point. I don’t know whether Joe got their point Thursday night, and even if he did, I don’t know that there was any cause for him to delete his post. In fact, Joe wrote a rebuttal post that night, explaining why he said what he said, in great detail. You can find that post (for now) in the Google cache here. Unfortunately, you can’t find it anywhere else, because over the weekend ChicagoNow decided to take down both Joe’s original post and his follow-up.

ChicagoNow had a point in doing so. They promulgate Terms of Use to all bloggers and reserve the right to take down posts that violate those terms. In general, controversially opinionated posts are okay. But posts that create unnecessary discord are not. From ChicagoNow’s viewpoint, I assume causing needless pain to the family of a man who’s just been killed was the catalyst for deleting the posts. While I don’t agree with their removal, I can understand the reasoning behind doing so which was explained on the Chicago Now Staff Blog.

What I can’t understand, though, is why the leader of a major Chicago weekly decided to set himself up as the Internet police, harass ChicagoNow through an unnecessary stream of angry tweets, champion Internet censorship, and then take credit for doing all of that in the online pages of TOC. Sennett swears he’s not a censor, yet he makes it clear he’s angry Joe still has a position as a ChicagoNow blogger.

Here’s the deal. Take it from a former Internet bully. Regular readers of this blog know that in the past I’ve been highly ad hominem and unfair towards other people because I didn’t agree with their opinions. Though I’ve spent a lot of time lately atoning for acting that way, the fact is I did and though I’m ashamed of my past actions, I won’t deny them. In fact, more than once Sennett, himself, took me to task publicly, on Twitter, for being an Internet bully. So why did Sennett decide to make himself into just that–an Internet bully–last week?

I’ll tell you from deep personal experience, when you’re really angry, and you have an axe to grind, and you have a public pulpit, it can be intoxicating to go on the attack and it can be very hard to realize how you’re coming across to other people, or that you’re even being unfair at all. I really hope that’s the explanation for Sennett’s actions, because I think harassing a colleague publication and a rank-and-file blogger in the way Sennett did last week is just not becoming of the editor-in-chief of a prominent Chicago weekly.

What’s more, just because Sennett decided he was the Internet police, ChicagoNow didn’t have to agree with him. I respect their decision and reasoning for taking down Joe’s posts. (And if you’ve been with me awhile, as you might imagine I’m letting go of past criticisms because it’s just not my job to try and “fix” ChicagoNow, and I’ve made my amends for personal attacks made in February.) But I can’t help but see it as self-censorship on a platform that hangs its hat on being a home to open debate. Couldn’t ChicagoNow have worked all of this out in the relevant comment threads, in a follow-up post, or perhaps even in a special community forum or live discussion on the issue? That’s how controversies of all sorts are generally worked out on the blogosphere. It’s very rare a post actually gets pulled. (For example, in the five years I’ve written Chicago Carless, I’ve pulled down a grand total of one post, and that’s out of more than 600.)

At this point, I think it’s very much to ChicagoNow’s credit that they’ve left up posts by other CN bloggers who have protested the deletion of Joe’s posts. Dissenting posts have come from very popular blogs, too, including District 299, A League of Her Own (which quotes a lengthier explanation from CN staff), and Chicago Muckrakers (which reposts some of Sennett’s tweets.) ChicagoNow should leave these posts up to underscore that open, unfettered community debate is still alive and well in its virtual pages. In fact, I think the best thing to do would be to republish Joe’s original posts. As the Google cache demonstrates, it isn’t as if they’re not still out there.

As for Joe, himself, I don’t think he needs to do much more than keep being honest and open about his words and motives–as he very much was in his follow-up post–except maybe to think a little more about the compassion quotient in his posts. Next time he names names on his blog or anywhere else, it would help to try and put himself in the other person’s shoes first, to get some perspective on how he may be coming across to others. Take it from me.

You too, Frank.

]]> http://www.chicagocarless.com/2010/09/27/chicagonow-you-see-it-now-you-dont/feed/ 0 http://www.chicagocarless.com/2010/09/22/pork-bun-dressing-with-a-hungary-chaser/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pork-bun-dressing-with-a-hungary-chaser http://www.chicagocarless.com/2010/09/22/pork-bun-dressing-with-a-hungary-chaser/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 01:26:14 +0000 Mike Doyle http://www.chicagocarless.com/?p=3954

A couple of weeks ago, a reporter in the social-mediaverse asked me if I knew of any local eateries represented on Twitter who took customer comments seriously when they arrived via tweet. I had to think hard about that one. I see lots of local businesses tweet out specials, but the only one that I personally engage with–and on a consistent basis, too–is @BaoMouth. That’s the talking steamed pork bun character who tweets for Wow Bao, LEYE’s small but popular local chain of Asian bun storefront eateries. I shouted them out to the reporter on Twitter, sure the Mouth would prove me right and shout right back.

After a couple of hours of crickets, a contrite BaoMouth shouted back, which probably didn’t help my case with the reporter, but I’ve seen Wow Bao’s Twitter account at-reply thoughtfully more than enough times to know the delay was an aberration. The Mouth didn’t really need to be all that contrite anyway. I’m a big fan. I used to practically live on their Thai Curry Chicken bao and rice bowls when I lived at Marina City, across the river from the State/Lake location.

So they knew I’d be an easy mark when the Mouth and RedEye “Social Mediaologist” @ScottKleinberg asked me to ask you to consider making a fool of yourself for their co-sponsored WOW in Bao Contest. Details are after the contest link (or here), but the idea is Wow Bao and Red Eye want to know what you would do to “put the WOW in Wow Bao.” You know, like “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” only meatier. You can tell them by leaving a comment through Friday (9/24) under the contest announcement linked above. The Grand Prize is a party at Wow Bao for the winner and 50 grateful friends.

Food flew the same week the Mouth and Kleinberg asked me to show their contest some love. Someone who showed me some love recently, OutsideIn’s Esther Ildikó Brown (@estheribrown), told me about their foodie blog. Brown interviewed me for a September 1st blog post on OutsideIn that let me start to make amends with my blogging community (with my heartfelt self-pointed advice, “don’t be a dick” when you blog.)

Brown, herself, is blogging her way through her family heritage at Y’all Hungary?. The North Carolina-born daughter of a Southern father and Hungarian mother (she calls herself the “Budapest Belle”), Brown says on her new blog she intends to “cook my way through my family tree, from gulyás to grits.” Good luck, Esther. When you get to the gulyás, send samples.

I was overjoyed when occasional PR client and leading urbanist blogger Aaron Renn (@urbanophile) republished my recent tourism post, Meet Me in St. Louis, Not Milwaukee: How Not to Oversell Your Urban Tourism Campaign, on his Urbanophile blog. I was a little taken aback when “Dave,” an anonymous commenter, left a scathingly ad hominem response in both places (here and here.) Whereas I think the current tourism campaign of Milwaukee’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, Visit Milwaukee, is overblown, “Dave” thinks it’s just fine. He also thinks I’m a rotten writer, Renn’s an egomaniac, and that neither one of us has enough standing to opine on urban issues.

As our readers know, that last part is ridiculous on the face of it. But what’s even more ridiculous is where the anonymous comment seems to have come from…within the walls of Visit Milwaukee’s own PR firm. Earlier today, a Wisconsin blogger contacted me about a suspicion that “Dave” might actually be a Visit Milwaukee insider. I doubted that could be the case–what CVB or PR firm would ever allow a staffer to discuss company business in an anonymous, attacking manner? Especially by leaving an anonymous comment regarding public criticism of the public PR work of a firm’s high-profile, publicly accountable client?

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever browsed the Internet that when you merely visit a web page–much less leave a comment on one–you leave a trail behind you. That trail is the IP address from which you’re connecting to the web. For home users, that address is often a dynamic one–it may change every time you go online. For many business users, however, that IP address is static–i.e. permanent. Fixed. Unchanging. To paraphrase John Carpenter’s cinematic masterpiece, Halloween, IP addresses stand where man passes away.

I bet you can see where this is headed.

“Dave” signed his comment with the spoof email address, “no@gmail.com.” However, my blog’s content management system recorded his I.P. address: 67.52.198.230. According to this IP trace, that address turns out to be the static IP of a business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin: “NOISE-INC.”

Doesn’t that name sound like a PR firm? It should. In fact, Noise Inc. is not only a PR firm, it’s the PR firm with the Visit Milwaukee web-brand contract. They say so right here on their site. But don’t just take their word for it, the Milwaukee Business Journal says it, too. Just as curious, a simple Google search associating the firm with the name, “Dave,” returns on the very first page a LinkedIn listing (which out of respect I won’t link here) for a…get this…”Social Media Evangelist” of the same name, living in Milwaukee, and employed by none other than Noise Inc.

The only thing missing from the jaw-dropping adventure of Googling all of this today was a bag of popcorn and a stadium seat, folks.

While I can demonstrate the “Dave” comment came from the IP address of Noise Inc., I cannot say that it was an employee of theirs who left it, even the one noted above. It could have come from a third party using a computer of theirs or perhaps signing into a Wifi network they may operate. And even if the comment did come from a Noise Inc. employee, that doesn’t mean Noise Inc., itself, condoned it.

But honestly, an ad hominem comment responding to a blog post critical of the Visit Milwaukee ad campaign that’s written like a love letter to the campaign and was submitted from the IP address of a PR firm associated with the campaign? How much more like a duck does this story have to walk and talk before someone throws it back in the pond?

Two and a half hours ago I emailed Noise Inc.’s three top officials regarding the comment, including most of the links I shared above (and the LinkedIn one as well.)  As listed on the company website, those I contacted include chairman and chief creative officer John Sprecher, chief executive officer and partner Milissa Sprecher, and president Mary Parodo. As of this writing, I have not heard back from the firm. That’s fine. All I really have to say on the matter is in this post.

To wit: Noise Inc. owes itself–not to mention the Milwaukee Convention and Visitors Bureau, which I doubt would find the offending comment as amusing as “Dave” did–to figure out how that comment got on my blog from their office. If it was written by a third party, the company should be more careful about whom it allows to access its network. If it was written by an employee–especially a “Social Media Evangelist”–perhaps they should find another employee (and this time, one who actually understands social media.) And if, on the off chance, they happen to condone the comment, then perhaps the Milwaukee CVB should find another PR firm.

I hear St. Louis has a good one.

It wasn’t the first time, nor has it been the last, that local mediaphiles have taken me to task for questioning the lockstep status quo that sometimes seems to define the Windy City’s deeply intertwined blogging/reporting/PR fishbowl. (See posts here, here, here, here, and most recently, here, and additional comment threads here, here, and here.)

Admittedly, I can be a firestorm in and of myself. No one ever needs to wonder where they stand with me, or where I stand on an issue. That clearly is the New Yorker in me, and it’s a nature borne of a previous life spent in a city where fishbowls of every sort tend to be transparent. Whether you’re writing about politics, the press, local nonprofits, or anything else, everyone there has an opinion that they’re willing to share, and no institution or official gets a pass on explaining their actions and the motives behind them.

That, of course, is the opposite of the way things work in Chicago. We elect politicians–and their children–for life in this town and county. We don’t talk back to our elders–or our foundation funders. And we certainly don’t question whether The Powers That Be could perhaps, just a little, Be doing things a little bit better. That’s just the way it’s always been. It Is Written.

And that’s where many Chicago locals leave it. Turn off the ol’ brain, let the neurons fire down, keep a low profile and let the way things are stay that way. Or else you’ll be cleaning your alley and dragging your trash to the dump on your own. And, of course, as is the multiple mantra of many similarly fearful Chicagoans, “You’ll never work in this town again/get another contract again/get anything moved through city council again.”

There’s truth in all of this. From Daley pere through Daley fils, city administrations have never taken well to disagreeing subjects citizens. And I’ve been in more than my share of PR meetings watching nonprofits and community groups speak of local grant funders in the same tones of fear, reverence, and fealty ordinarily reserved for God. Or the mayor, for that matter.

It’s all a great setup for keeping people in their place and keeping things keeping on exactly as they are. It’s a terrible state of affairs if, however, things aren’t as good as they could be, because without dissent there’s no viable way to make change happen. In systems like Chicago’s, people don’t just refrain from rocking the boat, they do their best to keep anyone else from rocking it either, to make sure they don’t get collaterally splashed by the damaging waters of a funding cut-off or a municipal blacklisting.

I have personal experience in this regard. There is a specific local nonprofit I used to champion (and who just last year championed me) whose own powers that be avoid me now because I had the audacity to question the grant decisions of one of their funders. (See: fear of collateral damage.)

And that’s fine. In the end, as a blogger, a Chicagoan, and a human being, I don’t owe allegiance to anyone else’s funders, nor to the public officials from whom they may be seeking approval or the blog networks with whom they may be partnered. I take my cues from my sense of what is fair and what is not. If some others think concepts like fairness, or justice, or (oftentimes in Chicago) honesty are less important than keeping themselves clouted, so be it.

But it sure would be a lot easier to make change happen in Chicago if the knee-jerk reaction even from the people who might benefit from such change wasn’t so often, “We know, but please keep your voice down.” It’s a little like the  “If you don’t like it, leave!” that some particularly mindless Chicagoans spout whenever anyone not born in a local area code dares to suggest things could be better here.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had bloggers, reporters, and nonprofit professionals tell me they wish they had the courage to publicly take some of the same stands I’ve taken here on Chicago Carless, say some of the same things I’ve said about local funders, or local officials, or local blog networks. Even if I could count them, I couldn’t tell you who they are. But there have been many.

If ever they all decide to tell their funders, officials, and readers what they actually think about things instead of just quietly telling me and each other all the time, Chicago’s media space would be a lot more transparent. But knowing this landscape like I do, I fear that would be expecting too much from it.

And who really wants thirty-foot weeds in their back alley, anyway?

(Photo: Macy’s State Street July 4th flag. Credit: jodola.)

I laughed out loud for real when Todd Allen, author of the Drew Peterson-themed satirical graphic comic, Division and Rush, sent me the following link. It’s an April article from the New York Times questioning whether unpaid social-media internships are legal. I laughed because when I questioned the internships, myself, here on Carless back in February, more than a few Chicago media wonks warned me quietly not to rock the boat. So it’s always nice when none other than the U.S. Department of Labor makes you feel vindicated.

Written during my controversial exit from ChicagoNow, in my post, The Economic Damage of Social Media Internships, I pointedly questioned how a business relationship where workers were the ones imparting expertise to companies–and not the other way around–could be considered an internship. I wrote in part:

“Organizations are supposed to add value to interns, not the other way around. If social media interns–good ones–are bringing to the table critical skills and knowledge that will qualitatively improve the organizations that engage them, they should be paid fairly for their services. In this case, that means whatever the going local rate is for professional Internet marketing services in the private sector.”

I also lambasted the Chicago foundation scene for coaching cash-strapped nonprofits to offer social-media internships as a way to gain institutional knowledge about Internet community-building from young underpaid experts. To be frank, I was talking about the Chicago Community Trust–which did not go unnoticed by them, since I was already on their radar screen for having publicly questioned the worth of their consultant-managed 2009 Community News Matters grant awards. My continued criticism led my outgoing ChicagoNow editor to warn me that not marching in step with the Trust probably meant I’d “never work in nonprofit in this town again.” (Hurray, I thought at the time. Maybe I’ll finally have a job with health insurance.)

Turns out I was on to something. As told in the Times article, the U.S. Department of Labor has been scrutinizing unpaid internships all year. And as far as Uncle Sam is concerned, unpaid internships require that the benefits accrue to the intern, not the company offering the internship.

A June article from CNN/Money makes things clearer, specifically laying out the criteria the federal government uses when deciding whether an internship is really an internship. Among them:

• The working environment must be a learning environment for the intern;
• The experience should be for the benefit of the intern;
• Interns should not displace regular employees; and perhaps most important of all
• Companies should derive no immediate, bottom-line benefit from an intern’s activities.

If any of the above criteria are not satisfied, the federal government will automatically recognize the worker as a regular employee–requiring them to be paid market rate for what, as it turns out in actuality, are their professional services.

And I can’t think of any way that asking an Internet community-building expert (read: every college student in America) to work for your nonprofit or commercial business for free or very nearly in order to build or manage a highly added-value corporate social media presence can satisfy any of those criteria. Can you?

Or to paraphrase the CNN/Money article, a company can’t exploit you even if you agree to let them do it. Which, of course, is exactly what I said about unpaid social-media internships five months ago. Yes, that’s an “I told you so.”

I can live with it.

(UPDATE: Thanks to everyone reading about my Foursquare journey through Chicago. Please feel free to follow me on Twitter at @chicagocarless, or subscribe to my blog or other social media presences via the neat little icons in my right sidebar!)

Until the past week, I didn’t give Foursquare much though. A GPS game you play with your smart phone, requiring that you “check-in” at businesses and landmarks around your city to earn points and “badges”? What am I, a boy scout? Nothing but a marketing gimmick, I assumed. And it is–business owners often offer discounts to Foursquare users who have checked-in often enough at their establishments to become “mayors.” But now I know it’s also a lot more. For one, it’s really addictive. For two, it’s fun. But most of all, it may be the most effective interactive tourism marketing tool ever.

My new friend, Uptown Boy, introduced me to the GPS game when his use of it got us in trouble at a concert last week. Since then, I’ve spent my time learning that almost every business, bridge, transit station, and most likely bird’s nest in Chicago has a Foursquare listing. First I didn’t see the point of it. Then to my surprise I became the “mayor” of a local park–and my competitive edge instantly decided that all bets were off. As I quickly became hooked on the game, I also tried to learn the etiquette of it–especially since your check-ins can be automatically posted to your other social media accounts. (And my Twitter followers don’t necessarily need or want to know every time I go to Jewel.)

But aside from the fun of the competition and maybe an occasional dollar appetizer or free drink at a local hoodie, I didn’t see much real worth of Foursquare for its users. It’s an insidiously addicting way for commercial interests to collect marketing-research data. But as far as offering anything of real depth to users? I didn’t get it.

And then Uptown Boy put me in charge of picking an adventure for our upcoming Saturday afternoon date. After several hours of wracking my brain (we’ve already been to every museum in town), I came across Explore Chicago’s Foursquare page, and my competitive Scooby Doo ears immediately went, “Hruh?” The brainchild of the Chicago Office of Tourism (find the backstory on Ragan.com), the city’s official tourism arm offers three Foursquare badges that visitors can earn by checking in at locations across town that have historic and cultural importance in the Windy City:

• A Celery Salt badge, for visiting famous Chicago hot dog stands;
• A Chicago Blues badge, for visiting historic sites and clubs associated with the history of Chicago blues; and
• An On Location badge, for checking in at places where scenes from famous Chicago movies were filmed.

Check-ins are required at any five locations chosen from a longer list of eligible destinations to earn each badge, so you get to tailor your own itinerary, and each location has one or more “tips” associated with it written by Explore Chicago staff.  (For a list of eligible destinations, follow the above links.) In addition, the On Location badge requires you to choose a specific movie category (The Blues Brothers, The Dark Knight, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, High Fidelity, or the cringingly named “Chick Flicks in Chicago.”)

Having a full day to spend, we decided to go for all three badges, with Blues Brothers as our movie theme. We figured if nothing else we’d earn a few Foursquare badges our friends didn’t have while passing the time on a sunny day. We started at Wrigley Field at 11 a.m. and ended at Muskie’s burger stand back in Lakeview at 7:30 p.m., eight-and-a-half hours later.  The day took us as far south as 47th Street (9.5 miles from our starting point at Wrigley), required 13 separate ‘L’ or bus journeys on the CTA, and a pit stop at a coffee shop to recharge our phones before we were done.

As it turned out, actually earning the badges was anti-climactic, though I did earn mine on the day. (Uptown Boy didn’t earn On Location until the next day for lack of following Explore Chicago before his first check-in at Wrigley.) No, our big surprise was how much we learned and how many unexpected surprises happened along the way. In order:

• At Wrigley Field (where we didn’t sample the hot dogs), having once lived in the neighborhood, I taught Uptown Boy how to elbow your way onto the Red Line on a game day;
• At the Blues Brothers’ fictional Ray’s Music Store on the corner of 47th and Prairie, Uptown Boy told me he’d never ventured this far south on the Green Line–and the Blues Brothers mural around the corner blew us both away;
• Neither one of us knew that the long-gone Illinois Central depot was once known as the “Black Ellis Island,” and our walk to its remaining stone markers had us talking about how much has changed along Roosevelt Road in the past few years;
  
• The decrepitude of the historic site of Vee-Jay Records at 14th and Michigan was sad, and made us both think about how precious our city’s architectural heritage is;
• While checking in outside the locked Willie Dixon’s Blues Heaven Foundation at 21st and Michigan, former home of iconic Chess Records, an employee drove up and let us inside for an unexpected hour-long documentary and tour–at the same time  a woman from Indiana arrived to explore the history of a newly discovered relative–Willie Dixon, himself;
• The location of the old Maxwell Street Market’s nothing more than a student ghetto now–I’d been down that stretch of Halsted a hundred times and never knew that’s where it used to be–but Uptown and I both marveled at the Eastern European-inspired hot dogs from Jim’s Original around the corner on South Union as we scarfed down their grilled-onion goodness at the outdoor counter;
• A need for another hot-dog check-in brought us back south to U.S. Cellular Field, where I’d never visited before–I tried to imagine how atmospheric Comiskey must have been (see how the Chicago Baseball Museum tells it) as I marveled at how ugly and uninspired “The Cell” is up close;
• On the way back north, we watched a Chicago SWAT team spot check a Red Line train at Sox-35th and mused about racism and police mismanagement–but were brought back on track by a feisty little old black lady who regaled us with tales of the blues musicians she used to know, including none other than Muddy Waters;
  
• At Daley Plaza for a Blues Brothers check-in, after seven years I finally climbed up the Picasso, but it being a Saturday, no one was visiting the Cook County Assessor’s Office (another potential On Location check-in location);
• A check-in at the Blues Brothers location at Michigan and Lower Wacker nicely stood-in for the Assessor’s Office, and allowed me to drag Uptown into the Billy Goat Tavern–a friendly spot which I love but where he’d never been (apparently, for fear of venturing onto Lower Michigan thanks to a childhood viewing of Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer!);
• Walking into The Wiener’s Circle–and smelling the place–told us we’d never eat there;
• The walk through drunken holiday hordes of Trixies and Chads in Lincoln Park as we headed to our last stop in Lakeview told us why we don’t live there;
• And Muskie’s, when we finally got there, was closed, but I told Uptown all about the seasoned burgers–and how much I love Powell’s used bookstore just down the street.

As Uptown Boy and his graphical skills put it the next day, our journey looked like this:

Surprisingly for both of us, chasing the Explore Chicago Foursquare badges turned out really to be about traveling off the beaten path in Chicago, to experience the city and its people in unexpected ways. According to Explore Chicago, that was exactly their intention in creating the badges and selecting the destinations.

Uptown Boy and I both agreed the experience was an eye-opener. Besides being a lot of fun, we both learned interesting, at times amazing things about Chicago that we never knew before. Considering that he’s a lifelong resident of the region and I’ve been here almost eight years, that says a lot. Of course, we’re not alone. The Chicago badges have been pretty popular with locals since they debuted this year. I can only imagine how much fun it must be for a newbie Chicago visitor to go after them, or how much they find out about the Windy City that they might never otherwise have a chance to know.

I also wonder why other cities haven’t rolled out similar Foursquare badge hunts. The free-form tours seem to be a perfect, low-cost way for cities to engage visitors simply by leveraging the smart phones most of them carry around in their pockets and purses. After all, every city of any size anywhere has something cool to see somewhere.

And as our experience showed Uptown and me, the unexpected randomness that fills in the blanks between check-ins can be as fulfilling as the destinations, themselves.

The idea to extend the discussion model beyond news headlines seems like a good one. The Facebook page already has close to 500 members in its first week of publication, and if recent, animated discussions by WC’s more than 2,000 members on Windy Citizen, itself, are any example, in the coming weeks Essential Chicago readers likely can expect fast-paced conversations about diverse local topics to materialize–and potentially storm–there are as well.

At the moment, forum threads on WC’s new Facebook page are concentrating on “best and worst” lists, which may not be the most interesting use of the site’s potential. I invite interested readers to follow the above link to Essential Chicago and wade into–and widen–the discussion a bit. You can find additional news about the Facebook page and Windy Citizen in general on the WC Staff Blog.