How do we celebrate a city in the second year of a still-raging pandemic?
This was the challenge we contemplated when planning our twenty-ninth Best of Chicago edition. In normal times, we’ve offered hundreds of recommendations of places to eat, to shop, to experience.
But these are not normal times. Our experience of life over the past year, if we’ve managed to survive, has been collectively so similar—we’ve stayed home, we’ve worn masks, we’ve gotten sick, we’ve gotten shots—but our response to that experience has been so different. Some have dropped out of unfulfilling jobs and changed careers, while others have developed a heightened appreciation of the things they cherish, whether friends and family, the natural world or that little mom-and-pop restaurant on the corner that has managed to make it through so far. Not taking life for granted is imprinted on us all, likely for the rest of our lives.
It’s just so personal.
So for this edition of Best of Chicago, we decided to make a radical break from our usually highly structured format and invited fourteen writers to share their “personal Best of Chicago.”
Writers had complete freedom on how to approach the subject; they could write about one or two dozen places and things, things big, or small, idiosyncratic or obvious. Some wrote childhood reminiscences that still inform their favorites decades later; others shared their favorite things about Chicago. And some wrote longer essays on single subjects of particular personal passion.
Rather than organize the issue around categories like food and drink, or culture and nightlife, we organized it by writer, with stories appearing in the order they were submitted.
We asked our art director, Dan Streeting, to use the same approach to the visual identity of the issue, giving him the charge to express his personal best of Chicago in the imagery he’d create for this edition, including the cover.
What you’ll find within these pages is something special: a collection of voices expressing their city in their own very personal ways, that together offer universal insights into what we all cherish about our life in this place.
But that’s just my personal opinion.
Brian Hieggelke
Look for Newcity’s November 2021 print edition at over 300 Chicago-area locations this week or subscribe to the print edition at Newcityshop.com.
IN THIS ISSUE
Waste Not? Artists grapple with sustainability at the Hyde Park Art Center
Best of Chicago This time it’s personal with: Kerry Cardoza Ted C. Fishman David Hammond Dave Hoekstra Sharon Hoyer Scoop Jackson John Moss Ray Pride Vasia Rigou Robert Rodi Dan Streeting Kekeli Sumah David Witter Tanner Woodford Michael Workman
Editor's Letter: November 2023 This feature story is about the past and present of the Fine Arts Building. With an appreciation for fine vintage things, like majestic hotels, classic cocktails and historic buildings, this in-depth story reminds us of Joseph Mitchell's McSorley's stories from the New Yorker, circa 1940.
Editor's Letter: March 2021 The interplay between print and digital publishing is one of the satisfying travails of this profession.
Editor's Letter: September 2021 What stands out this fall is the number of institutions that have undergone major transitions in leadership or even transformations that involve not only changes in management but in some cases new spaces or even a fundamental rethinking of how things are done.
Editor's Letter: June 2021 I absolutely loved my time in Ciudad de Mexico, …nothing was more memorable than my visits to Casa Azul.
