Lincoln Park Zoo What to do at the zoo? You can watch a gorilla watch you, and think about your respective fates. You can paddle a swan boat on the lagoon, laughing with your sister. You can watch a toddler chase squirrels and pigeons, and point at lion cubs in their freshly improved habitat. If you’re in love, you can sit outside the Café Brauer, eat ice cream, look at the decorative windows, and dream about how much it would cost to hold a wedding there. If you’re out of love, you can eat popcorn alone while listening to a busker and watching leaves fall. You can rest in quiet contemplation in the blueish-dark of the penguin house. Every day at the zoo is a different day— but it’s always beautiful. And always free. (Mary Wisniewski) 2001 N. Clark, lpzoo.org
Independent Bookstores It’s a city of both churches and independent bookstores, and they serve many of the same needs. They’re places to gather, listen to stories and talk with strangers about the world beyond the mundane. Chicago book lovers are fiercely loyal to our independents—with their sleeping cats and hand-lettered, exclamation-marked staff picks. Favorites include Volumes Bookcafé (closed and then reborn with the help of fan donations), The Book Cellar, City Lit, Women & Children First, Uncharted, Sandmeyer’s, Unabridged, Quimby’s, Powell’s, 57th Street, Open Books and Armadillo’s Pillow. (Mary Wisniewski)
Enclosed Wooden Porches Though they don’t get the same love as their deck brethren, I have an affection for the distinctive vernacular architecture that is the enclosed wooden porch. It’s like having a treehouse or fort attached to your home, offering unexpected views on the city, musty, woodsy smells, and a space by turns private and public, given your neighbors can pass through any time. Sure, use it for storage, but spruce it up with a table, chairs, a bit of art on the walls and you’ve got yourself a low-key three-season hangout. (Alison Cuddy)
Edith Farnsworth House The Edith Farnsworth House, designed and constructed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe between 1945 and 1951, is one of three houses the architect completed in the United States. Set on a sixty-acre wooded estate along the river in Plano, Illinois, its architectural significance extends well beyond its time: from a Chicago doctor’s tranquil retreat it became a house museum—a masterpiece of modernism that is as relevant today as then. Balancing the old and the new, Edith Farnsworth House has been meticulously restored and provides an otherworldly backdrop for unexpected exhibitions across all design realms. One of these was “Geometry of Light,” a collaboration between designer Iker Gil and Luftwerk, featuring a three-night light-and-sound art installation that projected a grid of red lasers onto the house turning it into a scene from an alternate dimension like the Upside Down. (Vasia Rigou) 14520 River Road, Plano, edithfarnsworthhouse.org
Miller’s Pub In the shadows of the Wabash El tracks, Miller’s Pub shares a gap-toothed greeting of “LER’S PUB” on its partially lit neon sign. “Family Owned & Operated Since 1935,” the reader board below states. Don’t be fooled, though: this is a lively, timeless joint. A 2018 remodel added chandeliers and knocked down the south wall to expand the dining room into what had been a florist’s shop. Celeb photos no longer adorn the booths, but some are preserved along the west wall as well as on a column near the bar. Where else are you going to see signed glossies of a young Martin Short and an old Margaret Hamilton? Only murders in the pub, my pretty. On the north wall, oil paintings of solitary drinkers still hang behind the long, beautiful bar. A bartender told me the owner started picking them up in the 1950s, adding, “A customer once asked me, ‘What was the inspiration for these paintings? Something about the way he asked made me respond, ‘How the hell would I know? I didn’t paint them.’ He didn’t appreciate the response, but the couple sitting next to him sure did.” That’s the vibe, friendly with a side of joshing. Many people know Miller’s for the exquisite Tom & Jerry’s it serves from Thanksgiving through the first week of January, but there’s no bad season to stop in for a craft beer or a well-made $14.50 cocktail. Miller’s pushes its ribs on exterior signage, and they are good, but I usually order the homemade chicken pot pie—if it hasn’t already sold out for the day. If it has, I opt for a Reuben with its sweet, creamy slaw. “The coleslaw is amazing,” the bartender agrees. I’d stay for another round, but my pot pie is ready. (Frank Sennett) 134 S. Wabash, millerspub.com
CSO MusicNOW As the heart of innovation at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the CSO’s MusicNOW series is vital to Chicago’s ever-growing contemporary classical and experimental music scene. Curated by the CSO’s composer-in-residence (this season it’s Jessie Montgomery), the series is as fresh and exciting for the CSO musicians and guest artists who perform as it is for a multigenerational and diverse audience. The composers often chat with the audience before a concert, providing context, insight and humor to open ears. They engage attendees, preparing them to listen from the edge of their seats. It’s the place for music lovers who want to be part of where new music is hatching. (Sara Stern) cso.org
2020 Cover Illustration: Nikko Washington
2020 Cover Illustration: Andrea Coleman
Richland Center Food Court This hideaway basement food court in Chinatown is a dark and marginally clean warren of stalls filled with steam, high licking flames and the clattering of spatulas against giant steel woks. It is also one of Chicago’s best destinations for Chinese-style street food. Cantonese foods are mostly absent. What you get here are soups, noodle dishes and grilled meats of the kind found in the country’s spicier zones and the hearty, thick-skinned dumplings popular in the country’s north. The collection of vendors changes. The more successful ones often move to quarters somewhere at street level. Google Translate may help with the menus, but it can also be hilarious. One ordering strategy for the uninitiated is to take pictures of the items in the posted photos and show them to the proprietor. Come alone and hide behind a plate of freshly formed and fried Dong Bei-style meat dumplings from the booth labeled “A family in the Northeast.” Better yet, come with friends. Portions tend to be large, and a group can sample from several stalls. (Ted C. Fishman) Chinatown Square (Enter on S. Wentworth, a half block north of W. Archer)
Wacker Drive A wildly popular filming location that provides the perfect backdrop for chase scenes and explosions (see: “Blues Brothers” and the Christopher Nolan “Batman” movies), the double-leveled street first opened in 1926. The upper deck was envisioned as a landscaped venue for local traffic, and the lower for through traffic, service vehicles, parking space and storage. A precious shortcut to avoid rush-hour Loop traffic and a Google Maps black hole at the same time, Wacker Drive is among the things that make Chicago unique. (Vasia Rigou)
Tavern-Style Pizza Cracker-crisp thin-crust pizza with a slightly sweet tomato sauce is the most popular pie for Chicagoans and the best culinary invocation of the Chicago grid. This delicious disk was first served in Chicago taverns, given out when you ordered a drink, served in the traditional party cut. Pizza segmented into this grid pattern made it possible for people to grab a bite rather than a big slice—and whet their thirst for more beer. Some of the finest practitioners of this Chicago-style pie are Vito & Nick’s, Palermo and Marie’s Pizza & Liquor, but even places known for their deep dish—Uno’s/Due’s, Malnati’s—offer it… Because we Chicagoans love it. (David Hammond)
2010 Best of Chicago item
Michelle Robinson-Obama Because she’s she, we’re we and even if she could, she’ll never leave us. She too Chi for that. (Scoop Jackson)
Zhou B Art Center Another epicenter on the South Side that is the epicenter of something much greater. Inside the 85,000-square-foot black Bridgeport brick house is not only the home of ShanZuo and DaHuang’s artistic legacy but the host and home of many Chicago artists such as Hebru Brantley and Sergio Gomez. “Curator and Operations Chief” Michael Zhou will continue to make sure that the role his father’s and uncle’s decades-long journey has played in Chicago’s global art conversation will never see the finish line. (Scoop Jackson) 1029 W. 35th, zhoubartcenter.com
Navy Pier Ferris Wheel In the lovingly detailed mid- and post-apocalyptic Chicago-set miniseries “Station Eleven,” several characters secrete themselves in a high-floor condo of the Lake Point Tower, its view effortlessly taking in a panorama of Navy Pier and its nearly 200-foot-tall Centennial Wheel. It’s a landmark, but also a shared hallucination as a passenger jet fails and crashes into the Pier and the Wheel, flames rising, insurgent. It’s shocking because it’s unexpected, even surreal. The wheel must turn! But blink at dawn from so many perspectives of the Lakefront: that Ferris wheel’s still there, slowly turning, likely for decades to come. Built in 1995, reminiscent of the wheel erected in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, it’s a sweetly lazy souvenir among the gems along the water. (Ray Pride) 600 E. Grand
