Slice of Life: Why It Keeps Snowing in The Loop
Have you ever wondered why it snows so much longer in The Loop than in the rest of the city? Leaving your apartment in Rogers Park on a perfectly clear morning after a snowy night, you find out that by the time you get to Huron Street, the flakes are falling fiercely. Blame it on lake winds and flat roofs.
Main Section of the Chicago Riverwalk About to Become a Thing
A couple of days ago, 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly sent out an e-mail letting his constituents know that another link in the chain of parks that will eventually make up the Chicago Riverwalk will inch toward reality just in time for the onset of winter. The e-mail claims that the Chicago Department of Transportation is going to begin construction on the portion of the riverwalk along the heart of the main channel of the Chicago...
Campus Building Sails Through Floodwaters
Here in downtown Chicago, the Great Flood of 2013 was mostly a curiosity. The Chicago River was high enough that watching tour boats glide underneath was worrisome. There was some talk of reversing the river’s reverse flow. But mostly, it was just a rain event. Not so in the northern suburbs, where the constant rain pushed the Des Plaines River out of its banks and into the living rooms, garages, and man caves of...
Slice of Life: Kind of a Weird Morning
Something about several hundred miles of flat land jammed up against a great lake and punctuated with skyscrapers gives Chicago the ability to take on all kinds of unusual shapes and colors when the weather is right. The city is blessed with epic sunrises and sunsets, bluer skies than any acrylic at Utrecht, and pretty much every form of cloud from little scud poppers to mighty thunderheads to wispy bits of white filament. And then...
Video Slice: Spring at Chicago’s Osaka Garden
Spring has stubbornly refused to spring in Chicago. But in some parts of the city, the flowers are pushing forth anyway. Here are some photos and a video we took at the Osaka Garden in Jackson Park last week. Think warm thoughts! ...
Autumn Comes to Millennium Park
The leaves are changing. Get out there and enjoy the season before we’re up to our nipples in snow again. Here are a few shots from Millennium Park....
Slice of Life: Wood and Glass
A row of trees check out their reflections in a Chicagoland building.
Slice of Life: The Cancer Survivors Garden
The first big bloom of the season at the Cancer Survivors Memorial (399 East Randolph Street).
Mother Nature: Spring is Here
I’ve been keeping my eye out for the past few weeks — watching the tulips and crocuses push through the bark mulch of Chicago’s medians and parkways. I made a phone call to Mother Nature, and these two on South Clinton Street are officially the first two tulips to bloom in Chicago this season. It happened at 6:42am this past Saturday (April 9), so let the annual riot of Chicago floral color begin! (And let’s...
Slice of Life: Ducks in the Drink
We don’t do much from the suburbs on this blog, so here’s a pastoral scene of some ducks (look like mallards to me) enjoying a day at the Chicago Botanic Garden (1000 Lake Cook Road), which isn’t actually in Chicago at all — it’s way up in Glencoe, and not exactly convenient to public transportation. Unfortunately, it is convenient to I-94, so there is the constant hiss of freeway traffic in...
