Metro/Smartbar Metro has been fundamental to Chicago’s evolving music history since Joe Shanahan founded it in 1982. The music venue, originally built in 1927 as the Northside Auditorium Building—think: amazing acoustics!—has been hosting local and national musicians and bands for forty years, serving well-rounded and comprehensive music education to the once-sketchy neighborhood that now buzzes with life into the late hours of the night. A fun fact: Metro’s downstairs club Smartbar, one of the preeminent dance clubs in the nation featuring world-famous DJs and flamboyant drag queen performances was once a reggae club called Cool Runnings. (Vasia Rigou) 3730 N. Clark, metrochicago.com, smartbarchicago.com
The Seminary Co-op/ 57th Street Books Seminary Co-op, along with its smaller sister store, is indisputably one of the nation’s top bookshops for serious readers. Many shoppers are authors themselves. One cannot help but think that the enticing collection of titles on the shop’s famous front table will be fodder for books that are currently germinating. Both of these stellar Hyde Park bookstores newly work under a not-for-profit umbrella. Building community is now part of its core mission, and the stores want you reading their titles, even if you place your chosen books back on one of the tables as you leave. (Ted C. Fishman) 5751 S. Woodlawn and 1301 E. 57th, semcoop.com
Mario’s Italian Lemonade This 1950s lemonade stand is closed for the season as of September, but once May hits the lines will form down the block in Little Italy with families, students, everyone and their mother, patiently waiting for one of the city’s most refreshing drinks on a hot summer day. Founded in 1954 by Mario “Skip” DiPaolo’s father, Mario Sr., who immigrated to Chicago from Italy’s Abruzzo region, the story starts with a hand-cranked lemonade machine and a well-kept secret recipe. Nostalgic and delicious, Mario’s Italian Lemonade definitely stands the test of time. An insider’s tip: it might be frozen, but don’t call it “ice.” (Vasia Rigou) 1068 W. Taylor, marioslemonade.com
Architecture The Art Deco of the Carbide and Carbon Building or the staircases inside the Rookery Building or the “no house is the same” build-out of the dwellings in the Jackson Park Highlands or the “WTF was Bertrand Goldberg thinking” that goes through your mind every time you look at the 600-foot cinder blocks we call Marina City or the undeniable beauty of what is still called the Pullman Clock Tower, the “form follows function” of the city’s architecture won’t stop. Ever. (Scoop Jackson)
The Hawk Word the Lou Rawls: “I was born in a city called, ‘The Windy City.’ And they call it ‘The Windy City’ because of ‘The Hawk.’ All mighty ‘Hawk.’ Talking about Mr. Wind kind of mean around winter time… ” The winters and the wind that accompanies it only does two things: Exposes the bitch inside of us all or builds our character. Either way, as long as Chicago winters exist we’ll all be walking with that ever-famous Chi-town forward lean. Trying to survive. (Scoop Jackson)
The 2008 Chicago Parking Meter Deal Politicians have long made corrupt deals to line their pockets at the expense of citizens. But the best worst deal of them all has to be Mayor Richard M. Daley’s seventy-five-year lease of Chicago’s parking meters to a corporate conglomerate (CPM) led by Morgan Stanley. The city used the $1.15 billion to plug a short-term budget gap and has been losing ever since. Parking rates have gone from twenty-five cents to as high as seven dollars an hour. The city still loses millions per year and is now looking to casinos to pay its ballooning pension debt. Meanwhile, as of 2022, CPM has made back its initial investment with a mere sixty years to go on its contract. (David Witter)
2004 Cover Photo: Anna Knott |Cover Design: Zach Dodson
Deep Dish Pizza Much maligned by snooty New Yorkers, and even Chicagoans who disdainfully say it’s for tourists, deep dish pizza is a Chicago original. I’ve been eating Uno’s and Malnati’s (though admittedly maybe only once a year) since I was a teenager. A monument to the American tendency to overdo everything, deep dish is best enjoyed like A5 Wagyu: you don’t want a huge slice, just a modest portion, a salad and a glass of wine. (David Hammond)
The Row of Architectural Gems on the South Side of the Midway on the University of Chicago Campus, Hyde Park Many Chicagoans travel to Columbus, Indiana to see the buildings designed by a Hall of Fame of architects. That’s a trip worth making, but there’s a row closer to home that is just as worthy. It’s on The Midway, full of historically significant buildings and newer entries from some of the most celebrated architects of the last century. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe! Edward Durell Stone! Eero Saarinen! Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects! Diller Scofidio + Renfro! ‘Nuff said. Their entries are gorgeous and the shady Midway parks across the street makes a stroll lovely in both directions. (Ted C. Fishman)
Malört Chicago’s history and culture infuse the city’s most controversial liquor, the infamously bitter Jeppson’s Malört: Tracing its roots back to the 1880s, when Carl Jeppson emigrated from Ystad, Sweden to Chicago and produced the wormwood-based digestif, initially sold as a medicinal product, Malört has become interwoven with the city’s essence. Case in point, the Chicago Handshake, slang for a drink special involving a shot of Malört paired with an old-school Midwestern beer like Old Style. You can’t go more Chicago than this. (Vasia Rigou)
1998 Best of Chicago item
Field Museum of Natural History The Field’s origins date back to the end of World’s Columbian Exposition when there was a need to find a home for thousands of objects—some natural, some cultural or anthropological, some both—brought to Chicago for the great exhibition. Today the museum is a great time machine, and transporter to distant places. Among Chicago museums, it is also the greatest teacher. Many of the collections have new homes in galleries that are visually modern and full of approachable narrative detail that puts the objects on display in context. In an era when the provenance of the objects in museums must be carefully considered, the Field has worked hard to connect to communities with historic and cultural links to its collections. That makes its more recently revamped galleries, such as the Native North America Hall, more attuned to the cultures their displays are rooted in. The museum’s commitment to the vital present of native communities also enlivens the halls with contemporary music (even hip-hop), art and modern takes on traditional craftwork. And, as everywhere in the Field, the objects are stunning. (Ted C. Fishman) 1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore, fieldmuseum.org
Green River There’s nothing quite like Chicago when it comes to a proper St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Honoring a decades-long tradition, the city turns its namesake river green—in-your-face, can’t-look-away, perfect shamrock green. Courtesy of Mayor Richard J. Daley and his Irish American descent, the Chicago Plumbers Union Local 130 has been dropping about forty pounds of vegetable-based powder dyes via boats since the 1960s. (Vasia Rigou)
FACETS From its first flickers as Facets Multimedia in a Lakeview Lutheran church in 1975 to its long-term digs near DePaul on Fullerton (and known today just as FACETS), Czech emigre Milos Stehlik nurtured a strain of films and filmmakers in Chicago alongside the commercial art-houses like the Cinema and the Carnegie, a sibling in cinematic savor. The brick-and-mortar edifice has focused its programming since the passing of founder and artistic director Stehlik in 2019 and the aftereffects of the pandemic, but under current leadership, the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival approaches its fortieth outing this year, and FACETS is spearheading a vital and needed alliance of local kino-forces: over forty film organizations and festivals have pledged to work tougher as members of the Chicago Alliance Of Film Festivals, an initiative which FACETS is administering, with a mission to build the landscape of Chicago-based film festivals, venues, film schools and industry creatives, enrich local communities, and to sustain cultural and economic vitality. (Ray Pride) 1517 W. Fullerton, facets.org
