How do you capture life in a city as big and ever-changing as Chicago? Block by block. A dozen of the city’s best voices reflect on their own special patch of pavement. Read more
As an architecture critic who’s also a South Sider, I’m quick to boast about the stately homes on Bronzeville’s King Drive, say, or Beverly’s Longwood Drive. Read more
In the late 1970s, it was a hodgepodge of aluminum siding, chainlink fences, trampled front lawns, and strange smells from the surrounding steel mills. Read more
As a flâneuse — one who drifts aimlessly for great distances through city streets — I like few pursuits better than setting aside an entire day, ideally no less than eight full hours, ideally with my best flâneur friend and fellow poet, Eric Plattner, to wander observantly from point to point. Read more
I turned west off Western Avenue beneath the railroad bridge that spans 26th Street, drove a few blocks, and then turned right past the Lawndale Gardens row house projects, where shirtless guys were hooping not far from Washtenaw Park. Read more
