Chicago Magazine, June 27, 2018 — From epic game dinners (including ibex ham and juniper-soaked bear) to lobster palaces to revered railroad cuisine that took advantage of food available along the journey, Chicago chefs were pioneers long before the city was a food destination. Read the story.
Chicago Magazine website, May 17, 2018 — The ubiquitous plastic vessel has come a long way: from South Side immigrant inventors to big business in Lake Forest, a Toby Keith hit to syndicated TV specials starring its inventor’s wife—and now a galaxy far, far away. Read the story.
WBEZ’s Curious City, April 28, 2018 — Read my interactive online story about some of Chicago’s oddest laws, and listen to the audio story about the city’s oldest laws:
Audio production by Laura Pavin | Illustrations by Nate Otto | Digital production by Katherine Nagasawa | Edited by Alexandra Salomon
Make It Better, March-April 2018 — Read my recommendations for Chicago-area plays.
Playbill, July 2017 — Arts agencies consume a microscopic fraction of the $4 trillion U.S. budget. And yet government funding for the arts is controversial; calls to eliminate it never fully subside. But there was a time when the government did more than just provide grants. For a few years, the government actually had its own theatrical troupes, with Uncle Sam paying actors, directors, and playwrights to put on shows in New York, Chicago, and other cities. …
Photo: NYPL for the Performing Arts
Crain’s Chicago Business, April 4, 2017 — Can a flag improve your life? If your city just happens to have a municipal flag with a cool, eye-catching design that everyone seems to like, will that somehow make your city a better place to live? … Read the rest of my op-ed at Crain’s Chicago Business.
Medium.com, April 4, 2017 — Wallace Rice covered the floor of his living room with colorful rectangles. He’d spent six weeks combining shapes and symbols, trying to find just the right image to represent the city where he lived. He’d come up with hundreds of possibilities for a city flag design, and now he displayed his favorites on that floor. Anytime anyone visited Rice’s home in the Lincoln Park neighborhood — people including the author’s acquaintances as well as delivery boys and milkmen — he quizzed them: Which of these should be the city flag?
Read the article at Medium.com.
Chicago Tribune, January 29, 2017 — Too many of Chicago’s cops weren’t doing their jobs. Slouching in unkempt uniforms, they drank whiskey in saloons when they should have been walking their beats. And they ignored crimes happening right in front of their eyes. These were the findings of an investigation in 1904 called the Piper Report. “Chicago’s police department was given the most unmerciful raking in its history,” the Tribune reported at the time. Read the rest of this article at the Chicago Tribune.
October 26, 2016 — Something on the sports pages caught my eye. It was a headline about a baseball game. A headline about a team called the Chicago Microbes. That stopped me in my tracks. What the hell was that? Read the story on Medium.
WBEZ’s Curious City, August 26, 2016 — My story answers the question: “What happened to the people displaced by the Eisenhower Expressway?” Read and explore the interactive story (with web design by Logan Jaffe) and listen to the podcast and radio version.