Buddy Guy’s Legends “One of the last things Muddy Waters told me,” Buddy Guy has said, “when I found out how ill he was, I gave him a call and said, ‘I’m on my way to your house.’ And he said, ‘Don’t come out here, I’m doing alright. Just keep the damn blues alive.’ They all told me that if they left here before I did, then everything was going to be on my shoulders. So as long as I’m here, I’m going to do whatever I can to keep it alive.” At the age of eighty-six, the blues icon is winding down his touring, but his downtown music club, Buddy Guy’s Legends, has been going strong since 1989. And if we’re lucky, he’ll keep up his tradition of playing virtually all of the sold-out shows in January. (Vasia Rigou) 700 S. Wabash, buddyguy.com
Chicago Sky Games The best place to feel the possibility of Chicago is the Wintrust Arena during a Chicago Sky game. In the middle of summer. I became a Sky season-ticket holder a couple of seasons ago. Women’s basketball is more democratic than today’s men’s game. But the beautiful part of the experience has been to be part of a diverse audience. Many times more than forty percent of the Sky crowd are people of color, gay, straight, families, girl dads, and everyone else. This is unseen at other Chicago sports venues. I dumped my Cubs season ticket after thirty-three years because I wanted to support a league that prioritizes social commitment and equity. I have not been disappointed. (Dave Hoekstra) 200 E. Cermak, sky.wnba.com
The Big Baby If you don’t live on Chicago’s Southwest Side, you’ve probably never encountered the Big Baby. This hyper-regional burger is served at several area restaurants, like Nicky’s The Real McCoy on South Kedzie. This Chicago-only creation is a double cheeseburger with griddled onions on the top patty, cheese in between top and bottom patties, and pickles, mustard and ketchup on the inside heel of the bun. The Big Baby is a testament to the inventiveness of Chicago’s street-level chefs who find new ways to deliver deliciousness with the most common foods. (David Hammond) 5801 S. Kedzie, nickys58kedzie.com
Kingston Mines The world-famous blues nightclub in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood has been a staple since 1968 for a reason. Family-owned for over half a century, Kingston Mines’ two stages feature alternating blues musicians playing back-to-back till the early morning hours. On the wall: “Dancing aloud” serves as one’s moral compass and “Illegitimus non carborundom,” a mock-Latin aphorism, translated as “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” provides an after-hours life lesson. (Vasia Rigou) 2548 N. Halsted, kingstonmines.com
Chicago Architecture Center River Cruise There are a lot of ways to experience the city’s legendary architecture but nothing beats a tour from the best seat in the house—the Chicago River. Providing an entirely different perspective, the almost two-hour long boat ride is sure to leave one in awe of Chicago’s cultural history as well as its promising future. Thriving in diversity, much like the city itself, the urban skyline is a distinct collection of world-renowned buildings. The architecture tour provides a behind-the-scenes look at the city’s evolution through time but also into the stories of the legendary figures who designed it. (Vasia Rigou) architecture.org/tours/detail/chicago-architecture-foundation-center-river-cruise-aboard-chicago-s-first-lady/
Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool Tucked between Lincoln Park Conservatory and a grove of trees along Cannon Drive lies a tranquil oasis, arguably the best spot for solitary reflection, silent hand-holding or a stolen kiss from April to November. A gate of wood and stone on Fullerton Parkway opens onto a serene garden encircling a peaceful lily pond, designed in the prairie style by landscape architect Alfred Caldwell. The historic landmark is one of the best-kept secrets in bustling Lincoln Park and one more reason to look forward to spring. (Sharon Hoyer) 125 W. Fullerton, lincolnparkconservancy.org
2010 Cover Illustration: Paul Hornschemeier
The OI Indiana Jones. Heard of him? He was likely modeled on James Henry Breasted, the intellectually and geographically pioneering American anthropologist. In 1919, Breasted founded this museum dedicated to the ancient cultures of Fertile Crescent, a term, by the way, that Breasted coined. (The place is rethinking its name now and asks its public to refrain from calling it the Oriental Institute.) He also ran the expeditions that filled the institute’s hall with some of its most celebrated pieces. Some date back to 80,000 BC. (You read that right.) In addition to the giant sculptures from Egypt and Babylon, thousands of objects get us close to the day-to-day lives of the ancients. Small clay models of Egyptian workers are charming and full of life in ways that defy one’s view of Egypt as death-obsessed (though the figures did come from tombs!). Many visitors breeze past the cases of cuneiform tablets and wheels and walk straight to the “Striding Lion from the Processional Avenue North of the Ishtar Gate.” Give the cuneiform a chance. IO scholars know what they mean, the museum tells the rest of us. The messages are charmingly transactional and disappointingly short on incantations that might otherwise have lured Dr. Strange. (Ted C. Fishman) 1155 E. 58th (on the University of Chicago Campus)
Magic Inc. Magic may be the most abstract of art forms, as it is seen but then disappears with no recording, book, painting or evidence that it ever existed. Magic Inc. has been dealing in these illusions since the days of Houdini. In fact, its former co-owner, Frances Ireland, began an organization called “Magigals” with Bess Houdini. Opened in 1926, its heyday was during the 1950s and sixties when magicians dominated bars and clubs along North Lincoln. Now on Lawrence, the store continues to be the place to go for vanishing coins, ink, cards and other mysterious marvels. (David Witter) 1838 W. Lawrence, magicinc.net
Dat Donut Been hood and in-the-‘hood since before Cottage was a Grove. OK, that might be a little exaggeratory but for close to thirty years Black folx’s “Krispy Kreme” has been serving out Big Dats (their signature donut) like Oprah used to give away cars. And thirty years from now, owners Darryl and Andrea Townson (peep the “DAT” initials), or their successors, will still be doing the exact same thing. (Scoop Jackson) 8251 S. Cottage Grove, datdonut.com
2004 Best of Chicago item
Chicago Theatre Built in 1921, the Chicago Theatre is interwoven with the city’s history. One of the first large, lavish movie palaces in America, it was the flagship of the Balaban and Katz theater corporation and the prototype for all others. Architectural highlights include neo-baroque interiors, an extravagant grand staircase, Steuben glass fixtures, and an original grand Wurlitzer pipe organ. Its exterior features a miniature replica of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe sculpted above its State Street marquee—a six-story-high illuminating sign reading “CHICAGO” that is a landmark in itself. Having hosted stage plays, magic shows, comedy, speeches, literary and sporting events, popular music concerts and everything in between, it is, to this day, a place to experience excellent acoustics with a dash of nostalgia for a time when women wore furs and men wore tuxedos to conform to the sophisticated dress code. (Vasia Rigou) 175 N. State, msg.com/the-chicago-theatre
Delmark Records Delmark Records and the Jazz Record Mart were, in many ways, the successor to Chess Records, recording and distributing Chicago jazz, blues and folk music around the nation and world. Just a few of the major recordings and projects that Delmark and the late former owner Bob Koester produced include Junior Wells and Buddy Guy’s “Hoo Doo Man Blues,” the groundbreaking work of the AACM, and works by Sun Ra, Magic Sam and The Art Ensemble of Chicago. But most of all Delmark and the JRM recorded and sold the music of uncommercial artists whose work would never have been heard otherwise. Delmark has passed on to new owners, who are celebrating the label’s seventieth anniversary with new releases. (David Witter) Delmark.com
Alex Kotlowitz Author. Filmmaker. Broadcaster. Teacher. Chicago has boosters; Chicago has critics. Over the last four decades, Alex Kotlowitz has chronicled the city as it is, in depth, with heart, with outrage and with love. Raised in New York, he came to Chicago where, writing for the Wall Street Journal, he covered stories about the city’s struggling residents, and especially its children, that turned averted eyes to troubles of fellow citizens and institutional abuses hidden in plain sight. “There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America” remains a touchstone for the conscience of the city and the nation. In two other books rooted in the city, including his most recent, “An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago,” Kotlowitz continues to make Chicago his grand character, revealed to us through increasingly powerful and poetic storytelling. In Kotlowitz’s “The Other Side of the River,” he tells the story of an achingly sad and violent death to illuminate the emblematic economic and racial divides between Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, Michigan, towns many Chicagoans will know as proximate to the vacation communities. Kotlowitz’s films and award-winning radio documentaries are no less moving or sparing. Through his classroom teaching, at Northwestern and other universities, Kotlowitz has made writers out of a long train of students and is an essential, generative center of the city’s arts and letters. (Ted C. Fishman)
