The 2011 season of food-focused bike tours curated and guided by Dimitra Tasiouras and Sharon Bautista of Fork and the Road is shaping up to be epic. Now in its fourth year, Fork and the Road connects the dots between some of Chicago's most exciting and delicious dishes by creating themed bike tours that touch far-flung neighborhoods and tap into rich culinary veins. more ›

If you haven't yet started planning your summer adventures around the city by bike, the Active Transportation Alliance can help. The nonprofit released the 5th edition of its extensive Chicagoland Bike Map today with the tag line, "You can go anywhere in Chicagoland by bike." The updated map features "expanded coverage to the north (up to Lake Geneva) and south (all the way to the Midewin Prairie in Grundy County), more trail and on-street biking networks for you to explore, icons for all the bike shops in the region, and historic military sites." It's $10 non-members, $5 for members, and free for new or recently renewed members. more ›

Reader Pasquale snapped this photo of a "Free to Park!" bike sign someone's putting up on parking meters around the Wicker Park area. We assume they're meant as a joke, commenting on the increasing parking meter rates but if you have more info, let us know! more ›

It's almost spring, the season for bicycle commuting, leisurely weekend bike rides, longer bike trips - and sudden afternoon rainstorms. In these situations, you have three choices: suck it up and get wet, leave your bike wherever it was and seek shelter, or haul yourself and your bike onto a CTA bus or train. Here's a handy-dandy list of rules and some tips for all of your emergency biking needs this spring and summer. more ›

For five years, one bike rider tracked his movements via GPS as he rode all over Toronto. The resulting map is like an etch-a-sketch of awesome. Now we're waiting for someone to do this with Chicago. Joe M500? Chuck? Anyone? I'd do it, but it would simply track my movements between my house and the ice cream place a few blocks away. [via] more ›

Not a big surprise here: authorities say that bike theft tends to pick up during the summer months. Although trends are not different than those from previous years, there are ways to detain thievery, like investing in a good lock, locking your bike through both the wheels and the frame, and always locking your bike when not in use (seriously). This won’t altogether prevent theft, but registering your bike with the city of Chicago can help with recovering and returning bikes to their rightful owners. more ›

More hang-ups on Chicago’s bike sharing program: apparently no one can agree on who will be responsible if someone gets hurt. more ›

So what’s the status on that city-wide bike-rental program that the Mayor’s office was touting late last year? Chicago is actively looking to imitate the structure of Paris's Vélib program, which is financed by private advertising company JCDecaux, but has not yet been able to settle on a contract. From the Sun-Times: more ›

Looks like a ghost bike, now with flowers, courtesy of bhaggs.... more ›

This list is really warming the cockles of our heart. Heh. Cockles. Anyway: more ›

Barry Bonds was indicted this afternoon for perjury and obstruction of justice. Dennis Hastert resigned today, which means there'll be a special election in his district. Open office plans turn out to suck if you like privacy. No kidding! Is Lollapalooza going to Philly? Police have identified one of the two women whose remains were burned on the South Side. She was Theresa Bunn, 21. Workers paving a bike trail near Lemont discovered the... more ›

The cover story to today's Sun-Times food section deals with inexpensive substitutes for fancy kitchen tools that you can find at the hardware store, which is something we've been down with since we started using the kitchen for more than beer-pong and a mechanic's station for bike repair. We typically use paint brushes to marinade roasts and meats, to butter pastries and to clean out the coffee grinder. We also have a mini-propane torch for making creme brulee and meringues and have been known on occasion to use a rubber mallet as a meat tenderizer when our standard one just isn't enough. more ›

It's time to make sure your bike and biking gear are ready for winter. Bikes by wvallen.... more ›

Eeeeverybody's talking the Complaints Choir of Chicago this week — Daily Herald, Sun-Times, the Trib, Time Out, 848, even UPI — and with good reason. The Complaints Choir is rad! How do we know? Er, Chicagoist is in it. And so are a bunch of Chicagoist readers. But we'd think it was awesome anyway! Really. We've covered the choir before, but as a quick refresher: Finnish performance artists and husband-and-wife team Oliver Kotchta-Kalleinen and Tellervo... more ›

First it was the boxers, then it was the other boxers, now it's this bike messenger Zinferno spotted outside his office. It's a jungle out there, friends. Be careful. more ›

Luis Buñuel once wrote, "A film is like an involuntary imitation of a dream; as in dreams, images appear and disappear through dissolves and shadows, time and space become flexible, shrinking and expanding at will." A film is like a dream ... or a nightmare. Why do we, as viewers, sitting in the dark, voluntarily subject ourselves to disturbing images and sounds? Do the horrors of the real world help to explain the popularity... more ›

As several commenters pointed out, Second City Cop has been on the CTA identity theft case for a few days--and the story there is that a reverend who's on the CTA board attempted to keep the arrest quiet. The only reverend on the CTA's board of directors is Charles E Robinson. Our call to the Board's main office was not immediately returned. Jeanette Sliwinski's psychiatrist testified today that she "didn't see any psychotic symptoms"... more ›

Behold the coolest trick bike...ever? Chicagoist spotted Travis D riding this bike down the street on Saturday, and we couldn't help ourselves: What's up with crazy bike, we asked? He told us it was a custom mod so he could do flips. Curiosity swept over us, and we begged for a demonstration. Like any street performer, Travis requested a modest fee, and we happily complied. He strapped himself into his contraption—which took him 120 hours to build, he says—and told us to walk down the block a little. Then he rode by us and flipped forward in one smooth, graceful motion. Totally wild. Another two pics of the crazybike after the jump. more ›

Tonight kicks off a fest that's all about the ladies. Wait. You've heard of this concept before? Innovative or not, the festival appeals to the large number of people out there who feel like women need to continue to form communities and alliances within the art world and that females are not always represented as prominently as men. Ladyfest began in Olympia, Wash., seven years ago and has since spread to 50 cities worldwide. The... more ›

While we're pre-mourning the loss of basically all forms of public transit near our apartment if the CTA "doomsday" plan goes into effect in January, we never stopped to think about the true victim in this situation: Missed Connections. With fewer buses running, trains will inevitably be more crowded, eliminating the chance to make eyes with that guy with the Timbuk2 bag and iPod during your morning commute. The humanity! more ›

There are three Cocina Cocula locations in Chicago. The closest one to us is a short — and, for yesterday, hot — bike ride away where Pilsen blends into Little Village. We've often passed Cocula on our way to our favorite haunts in La Villita, but with the sound of sirens in the air all around yesterday, we figured it would be as good a place as any to cool down and have a nosh.... more ›

LAist began the month with a new food series exploring the popular and unknown late night eats around town. If a Top Chef winner opened up a late night spot in Los Angeles, denizens would flock it, yet the LA Times and other media might be wary. Turning to sports, the Dodger season was quite memorable in the way that it imploded and the LA County Sheriff's Department made some games of their own... more ›

Ah, Monday. Time to reflect on the weekend that was ... and what better way to reminisce than to scour Craigslist Missed Connections? We're trying out a new weekly feature here at Chicagoist called "Monday Missed Connections," where we dig through the postings from all those lonely hearts out there and highlight the most deserving, interesting, funny or fantastic MCs. This week we're going to keep it music-centric, and we've searched for the weekend's concerts,... more ›

The Hood Internet DJs STV SLV and ABX's band that plays actual instruments, May Or May Not, is releasing their second album tonight, and they've decided to post the whole thing online for a short period of time so everyone can check it out. We've heard it and would say it's well worth buying, so you'd be a fool not to grab it for free right now. May Or May Not spends a lot of... more ›

Every day, we walk along a stretch of Madison Street in order to get to work. Outside a certain Dunkin Donuts west of Wells, we frequently spot a bike with a trailer on it filled with blankets and newspapers. That particular bike belongs to an aging, mild-mannered man and his large yellowish dog, who squat in alcoves and under awnings, looking for handouts. We’ve seen plenty of people who take a couple minutes out of... more ›

Former WKQX-FM 101.1 radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller filed a lawsuit Tuesday against his former employer, saying radio officials disparaged his show and blocked him from getting other work. We are getting pretty sick of the cell phone drivers, but we are always amazed at the cell phone bikers (not in a good way). Yesterday, an 19-year-old woman who was struck and killed by a garbage truck on the Northwest Side, was apparently talking... more ›

SHOOTING: Two homeless men shot in a 24 hour span in Uptown -- they appear to be unrelated. In more shooting news (why is there so much?!): Police have two "persons of interest" in custody Sunday morning after two teenagers were shot in a playlot on the South Side in the Woodlawn neighborhood, blocks from the University of Chicago campus. TRAINS: Our dear friend warns us: This is why you NEVER put headphones in... more ›

We've all been talking about the CTA, their budget crisis, and what exactly will (or will not) happen if they CTA doesn't get some help from their governmental parents in the Illinois legislature. While the CTA isn't ruled by the IL government, we think this is a little like the college kid who keeps drinking hard, wasting her money, and wondering why she keeps getting into situations that don't have great consequences — thereby necessitating... more ›

We've gone around and about a lot of times about a couple key subjects: How relevant losing Marshall Fields is in the grand scheme of things, Hipster/Yuppie, where does Whole Foods play into the life of a person looking to eat healthy and live on a budget? But another topic that never fails to get someone's ire up is that of biker vs. driver vs. pedestrian vs. driver vs. biker. Most people realize that there... more ›

We noticed a short Fran Spielman piece today reminding us about Daley's globe-trotting and found something we didn't expect — bikes! When we first read about Paris's new bicycle initiative, Velib, we salivated. The city peppered the city with more than 20,000 heavy-duty rental bikes in an effort to become a city of bikes. The program almost seems too good to be true. The bikes can be rented from 750 stations throughout the city, free... more ›