Chicago
Today, Devyn Caldwell's Looper photoblog celebrates its second anniversary. For the past two years Looper has focused intently on downtown Chicago, featuring edgy, insightful, and often unexpected images of the city's urban core for a loyal and growing audience. Browse Looper and see for yourself wh
Getting Around
Would you like 'L' delays and cram? Not during rush hour, Frankie man. I do not like them on the 'L'. I do not like them very well.
Getting Around
Throughout the CTA's Brown Line reconstruction project, it's been no secret that the agency planned to reduce north side service on the Red, Brown, and Purple lines from four tracks to three during construction at the Belmont and Fullerton stations this spring. However, even for the CTA, the ineptit
Life
Spiritual awakenings take by surprise reluctant souls and lead them on unexpected journeys. A truism so simple, no elative adjectives needed. For reluctant souls, any spiritual journey at all is, by definition, an extraordinarily, very, very unexpected one. God knows, I was surprised.
Media
Today, my boyfriend, Devyn Caldwell, was quoted in the New York Times regarding the Homeland Security cameras that he and I helped get removed from their former home--smack on top of Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain in Millennium Park.
Marina City
In October 2006, Allstate Insurance filmed a TV commercial in and around Marina City. Based on the famous car-chase scene from the 1980 action film, The Hunter, Allstate recreated the famous fall of an automobile off one of Marina City's 18-story parking decks and into the Chicago River, below.
Marina City
The Marina Towers Condominium Association signed a little-known but publicly available legal agreement in 2003 promising never to seek or support landmark status for Marina City. Who knew? (And...why?)
Urbanism
Ah, the power of the blogosphere. As of 11:00 a.m. this morning, the City of Chicago has removed the security cameras from the top of Millennium Park's Crown Fountain. Good riddance. Devyn and I blogged about the offending cameras and got the Chicago Tribune to write an article on the issue--and art
Media
Today, the Chicago Tribune quoted Devyn and me regarding the horrendously misplaced Homeland Security cameras that now sit atop Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. We found the cameras over the weekend and immediately contacted the newspaper to complain. Why? Surveillance cameras don't
Urbanism
There are many good places to put security cameras in Chicago's architecturally brilliant Millennium Park. Smack on top of Jaume Plensa's hyper-popular Crown Fountain is not one of those places.
Media
I wrote an essay about the lessons I learned pitching bloggers for the national '7 Days @ Minimum Wage' employment-rights video blog project. Now, Chicago's Community Media Workshop has published that essay on their website as part of their grassroots training library. Here's what I learned in a nut
Chicago
If you thought you heard a citywide refrain of 'I told you so' yesterday, you weren't imagining things. According to a report in Wednesday's Chicago Tribune, Federated finally admits feeling financial pain over a hardcore group of former Marshall Field's shoppers who decided to quit shopping the cha