16 Miles, Paid in Twenties and Hundreds
Musing about Los Angeles distances recently, I was surprised to learn my mental yardstick had finally changed time zones.
Louisville, No the Other One
This month, my relationship with Ryan becomes my longest ever. And so much for being Chicago Carless. Try as we might, it’s a love we can’t stop re-living from the front two seats of a car.
Looking for Madison
Ever use a GPS-enabled Android phone to circumnavigate both of Madison, Wisconsin’s major lakes searching for public lakefront access? We did. Mostly in vain.
Not My Father’s Cyclone
It took me eight years to finally visit Six Flags Great America. Imagine my surprise to find the Coney Island Cyclone sitting in the middle of the Chicago suburbs.
Milwaukee Tourism Blows It Again in Chicago
Two years ago, I faulted Milwaukee’s tourism office for not understanding their audience: Chicagoans. This summer, Brew Town has once again plastered Chicago’s buses and ‘L’ trains with travel ads. Guess what they still don’t understand?
Stoop-Sitting for Singles
I’m one of the Interweb’s charter bloggers. In 1999 I began scribing the Brooklyn local site for About.com. For most of the following three years, I wrote weekly articles about life in the “Mother Borough.” I used to have an archive of all my old content, but a hard drive crash in the early 2000s put an end to that. Or so I thought.
PR Firms: You’re Never “Anonymous” on the Internet
I’d like to know how an anonymous, scathing comment about my recent criticism of the Visit Milwaukee tourism campaign got on my blog from…the IP address of a PR firm employed by Visit Milwaukee. How about you?
Misery of CTA Riders Has Company: San Franciscans Plagued By Ingrate Transit Union, Too
If you think Chicago is the only place in America where a transit union has angered an entire city, think again. This week, San Franciscans are getting ready to play hardball with their intransigent transit union, too.
Pepsi Challenged
‘I was in a bilevel Burger King, with the dining room squeezed in downstairs from the order counter. I ordered something I don’t remember and a large Pepsi. I really don’t know what happened. A tremor? A foot slip? But there I was walking downstairs watching my soda tumble end over end in slow motion in front of me.’
A Fair to Distemper
Last Thursday, I did the Wisconsin State Fair badly. In my defense, I meant well. But having been to only two state fairs in my life–Arizona’s in 1990 and New York State’s in the Shea Stadium parking lot–I was ill-prepared for the scope of Milwaukee’s century-old annual festivity. Not to mention the heat.