Results tagged “holidays”

             

In case you didn't notice, the Chicago skyline has been showing its Irish pride like everyone else by wearing its finest green outfits. Every few weeks a few brave individuals travel to the tops of the city to change the colors of the lights on the tops of our skyline, but how do they do it? "Magic and pixie dust," he said. Of course, Randy Stancik, building manager of the Sears Tower, was joking. It is actually a manual process, Stancik said. It takes two men about two hours to change the colors, attaching theatrical gels to the tops of the 22 spotlights that illuminate the antennae.

The seven-day African holiday Kwanzaa began yesterday, and celebrations are going on throughout the city. Perhaps the most well-known celebration is the annual Kwanzaa Observance Program at Malcom X College, now in its 14th year. Their program of activities happens from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day and is free. Be sure to check out the full schedule here. Today, from 11:00 a.m until 3 p.m., a Kwanzaa celebration will be held at Kennicott Park (4434 S. Lake Park) which is free and open to the public. Also, the DuSable Museum of African-American History, Bronzeville Children's Museum, and Museum of Science and Industry will all host events over the next several days.

With all the snow falling outside and the Chicagoist Office Holiday Party coming up this week, we're trying our best to fight all the downer news and get into the holiday spirit. And call us suckers, but Charlie Brown always does the trick. Enjoy part one below and finish off your afternoon with parts two and three after the jump.

         

Zoolights is one of our favorite Chicago holiday traditions. Every night, from now until January 4th, Lincoln Park Zoo is filled with bright lights and holiday-themed activities for the whole family. Best of all? It’s free! We visited Zoolights last Friday night to bring you a glimpse of the colorful display.

While we're still working on our gingerbread doublewide trailer with a gravel driveway made of sprinkles, Fruit Roll-ups and pretzel sticks carport, Hot Wheels cars on sugar cube blocks and a snack cracker outhouse, we wanted to share with you this item from yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The one thing the Chicagoist staff — which hails from all corners of the country — has in common with each other is that we all call the City of Big Shoulders home. It's rare to be able to get us in one place together to catch up on things, bond and just enjoy each other's company, but when we do the stories we tell can go on for days. It's no cliche to say that this current staff is one of the tightest knit groups to grace your computer screen. Speaking for myself, I'm thankful to be associated with such a group of inspiring, talented and dedicated people.

You're running out of time to shop--and giganto stores are going to be so butts-to-nuts crowded you'll want to kill yourself--but there are still options. We're partial to the Chicago Architecture Foundation's store on Michigan and Jackson ( 224 S. Michigan) if you still need a gift for someone geeky and awesome. Also, give that person our number.

We promise we love many elements about the Christmas season: the festive decorations, the spirit of togetherness, the delicious foods ... but other elements make us want to stab our eyes out. At the top of our list are awful Christmas songs. While there are some songs that make us reminisce about our childhood (anything from the A Very Special Christmas album is fair game), there are others that almost induce involuntary vomiting. We polled the Chicagoist office to compile a list of the Worst Fucking Christmas songs, and here's what was said. (You can wage your own bets about which Chicagoist writer said what):

Tomorrow night kicks off Metro's "Home For The Holidays" weekend with a veritable who's who of Chicago-based bands that have had big 2007s. We've waxed ecstatic about OFFICE and the 1900s plenty in the past, so now we'd like to direct your attention to our favorite part of the undercard and encourage you to get out there early.

Lucky enough to get a few days off for the Chrismukkah holidays? Several Chicago area music entities have been kind enough to give you time-filling options.

Bin 36 hosted their annual Bubbles Bash last night where 450 revelers ate and drank, then drank ome more, to their heart’s delight. Champagne, cava, prosecco, sekt, and sparklers from a full range of countries flowed for hours making a dark and drizzly Wednesday night into a scintillating celebration of friends, flavors, and holiday festivities.

In high school one of the constants of our Friday nights was a family-sized pizza delivered to the house from La Villa Restaurant and Banquets in Old Irving. We'd fight for a corner slice among our allotment, chase them down with a glass of pop, and head out the house for our other constant: vainly working on our game with every Catholic school girl we could meet.

With the city being overrun by holiday bar crawls, it might be difficult to walk the streets this weekend without being accosted by a drunk dude in holiday vest or run over by a Santa in a hazmat suit. Throw on your best Cosby sweater and enjoy any or all of these weekend delights....

Kids in Peoria built a gigantic Lego menorah, using the big Duplo version of the blocks. We know we're assholes for having our first reaction be "Duplos don't count!" Which is why we need more good things on the list... John Kass is way, way ahead in this "celebrity" ornament auction. His beer can chicken thing is already at $435, but everyone else's piece of crap ornaments--seriously, a little effort, people--are only around $100...

Chicagoist recently had a conversation with a friend about our favorite "Christmas albums without Christmas songs," records that remind us of the holiday season without being full of carols and borderline-obnoxious good cheer. Our consensus choice was Richard Hawley's Coles Corner, a sprawling exploration of the warmest, most soothing, and dreamiest echelons of the singer-songwriter tradition.

Dan Smith and Steve McDonagh, best known as local culinary mavens the Hearty Boys, have done it again. Not content with everything else they have going on (the catering and restaurant business and the burgeoning media career, for instance), McDonagh and Smith have created a fruitcake recipe that they say will change our perception on how we view this holiday monstrosity. Additionally, McDonagh reveals some of his family's fruitcake traditions in an accompanying article in...

Train update: "Fire Commissioner Ray Orozco said five people were in serious to critical condition and at least 30 people suffered less serious injuries. That number could rise to 50, he said." The NTSB is investigating. Storm watch this weekend. Cold, icy, rainy, blerg. RIP, Evel Knievel. America's Legendary Daredevil was 69. Check it out: local steampunk wedding. Congrats! Here's our favorite part of this Freakonomics interview with Sin in the Second City author Karen...

It's part of our national schizophrenia as Americans. Every year we bemoan the exploitation of Christmas, and every year we spend more and more money that we really don't have to buy crap to give to each other "in the spirit of the season." There's a great movie to be made about the overcommercialization of Christmas; What Would Jesus Buy? is not exactly that movie, but it still offers a lot of food for...

We're trying not to jinx it, but it looks like legislators might be solving the transit crisis, like, tomorrow. Mike Madigan agreed today to push for a Blago-backed plan that would use the State's share of the sales tax on gasoline in Cook and the five collar counties for the RTA. Even Daley's on board. Are we seeing a unicorn? Last week, Blagojevich endorsed Minority Leader Tom Cross's plan that would send around $385...

In Los Angeles, LAist most definitely celebrated Thanksgiving like no other. After all, one has to keep up all the energy to keep on walking the line at the Writers Strike and fighting the unfortunate return of the wildfires in Malibu, which single handedly destroyed over fifty homes within the first 24 hours. National outlets may be covering the fires, but CNN also found it is easier to buy a gun than fruit and...

We HATE the term Black Wednesday.

In what's become an annual feature here at Chicagoist and a personal favorite, we canvassed the staff for some of their best recipes and put together a potluck of amazing proportions to fascinate your taste buds, amaze your family (even the ones entranced by the football games), and bring about peace on earth - or at least in your family - for a few hours through the miracle of tryptophan, simple starches, and sugar...

We have food on the brain today here at the Chicagoist offices. Now that it looks as though the worst of the bad weather has passed, you should go out and toast its passing by eating a cupcake.

During our six years in the Navy we can remember being away from home during the holidays but not unwanted, thanks to the volunteer families of Adopt-a-Sailor programs in the towns and countries where we found ourselves on duty. Sailors at Great Lakes Naval Station ("Naval Station Great Lakes" in military/Yoda-speak) won't have that opportunity this Thanksgiving. Recent changes in program guidelines by NSGL brass effectively shut out individual families from the Adopt-A-Sailor program. Instead,...

In order to avoid a very scary riot involving grown men dressed up in Santa Claus costumes, Oak Lawn school officials have backed off from their proposal to stop celebrating Christmas and Halloween in the classrooms. The Christmas controversy started when a parent brought to light the fact that Muslim holidays were neglected by the school system. In the spirit of Christmas, board members offered a compromise — holidays for no one! They decreed that...

The “Chicago theater season” is as anachronistic as our Columbia House Record Club membership. August was simply a lull before the crush of Fall openings coming to major institutions and their well-funded houses, who'll receive sufficient ink and column inches in the daily and weekly papers. We’re turning an eye to those less heralded venues doubling as rental space, educational resource, and meeting locale. None of these theaters are named after deep-pocketed donors, but that...

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...

This one is an easy one to celebrate. Step away from your computer, grab some grub, and head into the sunny outdoors, because today is National Eat Outside Day — a holiday we're pretty sure everyone can take part in. This holiday couldn't come at better time because today looks to be gorgeous, as does the rest of the Labor Day weekend. With the temperatures being warm but not unreasonably so, this weekend is...

We always thought it was pretty ridiculous when students at other schools got the second-tier holidays off of school — you know, your Columbus Days and your Presidents' Days. It seemed almost as ridiculous (read: unfair) as when the kid down the street got ten dollars from the tooth fairy while we got a quarter. Why celebrate some presidents' birthdays by sitting at home but celebrate another's when it rolls around? And didn't they "discover"...