Governor Pritzker Sells Thompson Center to Himself, Plans Giant Loop Mansion
In a widely-anticipated move, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker today announced the fate of the former government office building known as the Thompson Center. He’s going to buy it himself. In a Zoom news conference, the governor stated, “This is an important day for Illinois. I have forged a unique public-private partnership between myself and myself, relieving the taxpayers of the burden of maintaining this terrible...
Video: Playing Pac-Man with Heavy Construction Equipment
You love construction equipment, and we love Pac-Man. Together, we’re a match made in Public Relations Stunt Heaven. Screenshot of the action (via Caterpillar) Earth mover maker Caterpillar marked its 95th anniversary by digging a 30,000 square-foot Pac-Man maze, and populating it with remote-controlled skid steers. If you remember the 80’s, you’ll remember that each character in Pac-Man each had its own...
TBT: Designing Architecture for Magic Space Wizards
It’s not exactly a secret that there is considerable overlap between the group of people known as “architects,” and the group of people known as “Star Wars enthusiasts.” Chances are you know someone who is going to see the new Star Wars Rogue One movie either tonight at midnight, or at least over the weekend. With that in mind, we set the wayback machine to August of 2015, when the architect of the Death...
Slice of Life: Are You An R KEY TCT?
You know what architects love more than ice cream and puppies and slide rules? Being an architect. And that enthusiasm for the profession has overflowed onto one Chicagoland architect’s license plate. Our reporter Bill Motchan ended up behind this R KEY TCT’s Audi in the South Loop recently. Perhaps you recognize him? Maybe he’s your boss?...
Slice of Life: Will Somebody Save Ferris Already?
At the annual Chicago Air and Water Show, we caught this “Save Ferris” sign written in the sky by the GEICO Skytypers. For those of you who aren’t up on your aerospace technology, skywriting like we remember from Looney Tunes is passé. These days five small planes fly in formation and computer signals each to let out a little fart of smoke to spell words for all to see. It’s like God’s dot matrix...
Shit Chicagoans Say
For your weekend amusement, I found this over on Taste the Bacon: Shit Chicagoans Say.
Slice of Life: Coffee and Puppies
A North Clark Street coffee shop uses humor to attempt to get its customers to control their...
Even Buildings Aren’t Safe From Microsoft
One of the tech blogs I frequent, called The Daily WTF, recently posted this interesting photo from our neck of the woods. It’s a sign outside the new condos at 3300 West Lawrence Avenue. But if you look closely, you’ll see the word “can’t” has been mangled. My guess is that some real estate office sent the sign company a Microsoft Word document. Word, and its other Microsoft siblings, are notorious for...
Slice of Life: This is a Lawn
Found this down in Washington Park one day. The one part of the lawn that isn’t the lawn is a metal manhole cover indicating “Lawn.” Yes. Yes it...
A Taste of Chicago in Tokyo
If there’s one thing I’ve learned roaming around the world, it’s that you never know when you might run across the word “Chicago.” From Dan Ryan’s Chicago Grill in Hong Kong to this “Chicago”-branded used clothing store in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. In some places, I’ve found that people don’t even realize that Chicago is the name of a city. They think it’s...
