It looks like President Barack Obama is a card carrying member of the iPhone nation now, because the hippest leader of the free world joined the Instagram photo sharing service this week. The service boast over 15 million users and has taken the art of taking cell phone photos and adding a layer of nostalgia via various filters, thus allowing even the crappiest photographer to create something slightly less crappy. Ah, sentimentality, your powers are strong. more ›

It's Friday and we know none of you are really into thinking too hard right now (and that you're probably looking forward to an extended liquid lunch) so let's keep things breezy here. This week we're kind of into maps and artistic representations of where we're from. We're self-centered like that! Let's enjoy some art, shall we? more ›

Oh. My. God. When K-Rob sent this our way we just knew we HAD to run it. more ›

Flickr user mister_scantastic discovered this in an abandoned factory recently and thought it was worth snapping a photo of. Personally we wouldn't be entirely surprised if this flyer was seeded by one the same hipsters it purports to be railing against, primarily because of the Knee Deep Vintage reference, and not an actual longtime resident of the neighborhood. Either way, discuss. Politely, please. more ›

Of course something called the Portland Cello Project would do something like cover Kanye West's "All Of The Light." Why wouldn't they? more ›

Give a hipster a hay bailer and he'll turn himself into a giant Shredded Wheat. (NSFW some nudity) more ›

No one knows - yet - how many tons of food were collected during the local mobile food drive known as the Chiditarod this year - but more than 500 participants spent a damp Saturday afternoon hauling at least 25 pounds of food per team over the finish line. more ›

At last week's Life During Wartime dance party at Hideout we made a shocking discovery: HIPSTERS DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE HIPSTERS! Seriously. Which we admit frightens us a bit, because we don't think we're hipsters but now ... well, how can we know?! more ›

Hey, just a quick note to folks who might be suffering from the same syndrome of restrictive pocketbookitis a.k.a. anorexic wallet that we are. Tonight's edition of Rehab at evilOlive features free Sparks (with RSVP) from 9 until 10. That, plus guesting female DJ-duo Rocktapussy, makes for a compelling reason to get out and shake it on the town tonight. more ›

Saturday's Girl Talk show was so much fun it was ridiculous. We've read a few negative reviews but we think those particular curmudgeons must not have fully thawed from the sudden cold snap left by Obama's departure to D.C. We kid, we kid. We're not fans of The Congress as a venue, and Gregg Gillis a.k.a. Girl Talk's set-list was similar to the one we heard a few months ago ... but who the fuck cares? It's all about having a recontextualized dance party using insanely guilty pleasures, underground oft-forgotten gems, and killer hip-pop beats straight from Sugar Mountain. Plus Nirvana. What's up with all the Nirvana we've been hearing again lately? more ›

We recently told you that palindrome proficient club evilOlive is the Monday night hot spot. Hipsters flock there (maybe because it’s so ironic to get loaded on a Monday?) to knock back PBRs and get down to the indie-rock dance party during the club’s weekly Rehab program. more ›

This one goes out to all the ladies in the LS. If someone has the MP3 to this song PLEASE send it to us. more ›

We HATE the term Black Wednesday. more ›

In yesterday's Tribune, John Kass discovered the existence of "freegans." Like Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens trying to describe the Internet, Kass ridicules the movement as "equal parts youth, privilege, guilt and Al Gore's wackier environmental pronouncements mixed with bits of what your socialist professors told you in college but you can't remember, exactly" while theorizing (via his assistant) that most freegans embrace the philosophy because "(i)t's all about getting dates." more ›

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market... more ›

by Jonathan Safran Foer. But no longer are we among those unhappy few. Honestly, our main deterrent was the hype. It was the "new cool" hipsters' book, so smug. That and the back cover looked ho-hum (yeah, we're shallow), so we kept declining on principle. But it was a bad decision. Finally a friend convinced us to read it while on a roadtrip, and after we got past the first thirty pages, we couldn't stop reading — or highlighting — our friend's copy. more ›

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom... more ›

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a... more ›

The weekend is here, and for many that means packing up the available vehicle and getting out of the city. If camping or fishing or what have you aren’t your style, make a city-to-city musical jaunt up to Milwaukee. Kick it off with a mix of solid Mil-town artists like the Violent Femmes, The Promise Ring, and The Obsoletes for the 90 minute ride and get ready to discover that Milwaukee’s music scene proves that... more ›

We have a confession to make: we've never been to Pitchfork before. Considering the festival's only been going on officially for two years, it's not all that surprising. Still, being music lovers, we wanted to shed the "Pitchfork virgin" connotation and take the plunge. The only other big music fest we've been party to was the Touch & Go 25th anniversary at Hideout last year, along with the occasional street fest. We picked Saturday for... more ›

The Hideout plays host tonight to two of Chicago’s brightest independent collectives, Skybox and Plane. The latter have been on the Chicago and national radar since their 2004 album Shake My Ground debuted at #42 on the CMJ charts, but the going wasn't as smooth after that. Fans and critics alike were puzzled by the alternatingly hooky pop and quizzical experimentation on 2005’s follow up EP, Hello More. Never fear, however – Plane has clearly... more ›

We think even our grandfather knows The Police are playing Wrigley Field tonight, and he lives in South Texas. Their two-night stand in Chicago certainly wins the award for most hyped show of the year (and we've definitely been guilty of adding to the pre-show buzz). Even though tickets have long been sold-out, enough people bought extra tickets ahead of time in hopes of making a profit that the re-sale market for tonight and tomorrow's... more ›

Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village have no shortage of places where Chicagoist can satisfy its sweet tooth. We love Alliance, Milk and Honey, Letizia's and Bleeding Heart Bakery, to name a few of our favorites. But one thing we've learned is that there is never too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to desserts. When we heard Sweet Cakes, a new bakery on Damen and Augusta was open we went over... more ›

Phantom Hidden, by ninjagrl more ›

Well, the list started leaking last week for the (far superior) North Stage at this year's Wicker Park Summerfest, and now we have the full line-up. Not bad ... not bad at all. We're looking to sipping beer with the hipsters AND the yuppies that weekend. more ›

We’re not feeling bad about missing Coachella or Bonnaroo or Virgin or any of the other music festivals going on this year, because Chicago continues to be ground zero for ass-kicking musical fun in the summer sun. Continental, open barely a year and already the all-night hangout for hipsters all over the city (full disclosure: we spin there occasionally) is leveraging some of the goodwill they’ve formed with local DJs and bands to benefit a... more ›

Attention: All you shoe-loving rap fans, all you jobless hipsters ... Time to put down the Cristal. Time to take off the ice for a minute ... As Miles Raymer reported yesterday on Crickets, Redman is scheduled to do a DJ set and a meet-and-greet from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at St. Alfred in Wicker Park. So you know, if you don't have anything to do on a Wednesday afternoon, you might as well... more ›

We are growing here at Chicagoist, recently adding some new faces to the group so that we can provide you with plenty of mind candy. That's why we are sad to report that one of our satellite offices is closing down. The Chicago Journal, via Gapers Block, reports that Filter, in Wicker Park, is closing. Swank Frank, our favorite place to get a fried twinkie at 2 a.m. will also be closing. Bank of America,... more ›

This photo shows what you do not want to see when you look out the CTA train's window. There was a "small track fire" on the Brown Line tonight. More» more ›