We're not very good at this rah-rah patriotism stuff sometimes. Especially when it seems like there's so very little to be patriotic about. Day in and day out, we're bombarded with information about our dysfunctional County Board, our crumbling mass-transit system, a stumbling economy, a dismal federal government and a long-term embroilment in a far-away sandbox, so on and so forth, fill in your own blank here: _________________ So when we take these few yearly......

Angels will get their wings this Saturday night at Custom House. From 6-9 p.m. Shawn McClain's South Loop steakhouse is hosting a fundraiser to benefit Blue Sky Inn. Frequent shoppers at area farmers markets might be familiar with Blue Sky Inn for the work they do with their transitional work program, "A Taste of Success." The program hires and trains homeless youth in baking pastries, which are then sold at farmers markets and through catering......

Home for Kitty?...

A few days ago we unwittingly created a monster when we expressed our frustration about having to wait to see the schedule for this year's Chicago International Film Festival, which runs October 4-17. Well, we finally have a copy of said schedule in our hot little hands. What follows is a very brief, cursory summary of what you can expect this year (the full schedule will be online within the next few days). Regardless of......

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......

As we briefly noted in the Extra, Extra last night, two homeless men were shot in Uptown over the span of 24 hours last week. Sadly, early on Monday morning, yet another person was added to the list of those who have been murdered in recent days in the neighborhood. To give a recap of the tragic violence that has occurred: Phillipi Larrnarri, 32, was sleeping on a park bench when he was shot in......

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......

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......

Here are some other news items of note while we're at Millennium Park enjoying Muhal Richard Abrams and Reginald Robinson: The U.S. attorney's office has joined an ongoing Cook County probe into the rogue actions of an elite squad of the Chicago Police Department . Blue Line passengers can expect (more) delays starting this weekend. The sculptor who created Berwyn's spindle claims that the shopping plaza where it sits is "prostituting" the sculpture under......

Remember growing up, there was that one graveyard you just didn’t go into? You weren’t sure why, but something about the place just gave you the creeps at any time of day. Chicagoist recalls wistfully (maybe not wistfully; more like hysterically) one dare-fuelled drive into Barrington's famed White Cemetery, where two of our friends wouldn’t even breathe the open air, opting instead to cover their mouths with their shirts. And when the car became mysteriously......

We don’t know about you, but Chicagoist always feels healthier just by walking around a farmers market. And that’s even before we get home and sample any of our beautiful bounty. That’s especially true at the Green City Market, which features products from local, small-scale, certified organic/sustainable vendors twice at week at the south end of Lincoln Park. Perhaps it’s the colorful array of produce, soothing live music, pristine flowers and giggling kids here that......

A few of us have some pretty refined tastes here at Chicagoist. Among things we've probably overpaid for are dinners, movie screenings, concerts, sporting events, and computer equipment. But $600 for a makeup job? We don't even think the girliest girl on the staff would spend that much. Yet that's what Governor Blagojevich did as recently as March, when he went to Crystal Lake-based makeup artist Deborah Lee for a touch-up prior to giving his......

This morning three relatively young men were charged for viciously beating a homeless man with chains and a sign. The only provocation for the attack was apparently when the man bumped into one of the men as they were walking out of a bar near Randolph and Wabash. Because of an accidental run-in, 40-year-old Franklin Hayden ended up in Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious condition with the possibility of losing an eye. To be honest,......

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless estimates that 166,000 people experience homelessness in Chicago. We aren't going to try to imagine how difficult it must be to be without a place to come home to, and we certainly don't know what it is like to be so hungry you would dig through garbage for a bite to eat. We've led a pretty charmed life, so far, and so we try to give back where we......

Chicagoist knows one shouldn't get Ditka angry. A former player, especially, should know better. But then, we know Dave Duerson isn't exactly one of the classiest guys. To be honest, we don't even know how he is one of six trustees overseeing retiree benefits as part of the NFLPA benefits committee. Duerson's role on the NFLPA retiree board currently pits him against Mike Ditka, who has been working lately to help disabled retirees to get......

While we won't get into Chicago's homeless situation, we have to believe the city's vagrants are 97% responsible for the tantalizing aroma of urine that permeates our street corners and mass transit system (the other 3% is made up of drunk bar patrons). While we try to look away, we can't help but be smacked in the face by that indefinable musky pungency that carries in the cool morning air. Since apparently everyone is......

More bad cop news. An officer shot an unarmed man in front of CTA cameras and instead of getting fired he got promoted. In a previous post, sparky suggested that Kruesi might be hired for the Olympics. He may have been right. After Daley and Kruesi announced Kruesi's CTA retirement they got on a plane to Washington for a meeting on the city's Olympic bid. The homeless woman who set the 4-times fatal Wrigleyville......

Daley thinks the General Assembly should increase CTA funding. Check out the Sun-Times' new look. Some new ballistics analysis disputes accounts by Chicago cops about what happened in a 2005 shooting of an unarmed man. A dog near Prairie Isle Golf Club got bit by a rare Eastern massasauga rattlesnake. No charges will be filed in connection to the Chicago cop/DC cop bar brawl. A homeless woman has been indicted on murder and aggravated......

We hope you're reading this weekend's blotter on a laptop outside somewhere. A homeless woman is being questioned concerning a fatal fire in Wrigleyville Saturday morning. Around 7 a.m. a fire broke out in a three-story apartment building at 3553 N. Fremont in a stairwell, quickly spreading throughout the structure. Three unidentified men and one woman, 24-year-old Jennifer Carlson, were found dead. Witnesses saw an unkempt woman hovering around three smaller fires the previous night......

When Ditka speaks, Chicago listens to what Da Coach has to say. Does the same go for the NFL Players Association? While Ditka has certainly done OK for himself financially since his playing days — coaching the Bears, opening a successful steakhouse, TV football analyst gigs — not all former NFL players are doing so well. Back in the day, they just didn't get the ridiculous contracts today's players get. Careers in the NFL are......

Playing a little catch-up this week after our first round of reader contributions. There's no overriding theme this time other than a general lack of foresight. To paraphrase Gov. Rod's campaign commercials, "What were they thinking?" The municipal elections offered their fair share of the ridiculous. We'd like to thank Arenda Troutman, the campaign volunteers in the 16th and 24th wards, and supporters of Bernard Stone for their special contributions. (Thanks Jerry) A Chicago man......

Poor widdle Redwalls. Time Out has reported that The Redwalls have been dropped from their major-label deal and are now homeless urchins dusting about in the musical wasteland. It's funny, because we were just talking to a friend of the band about their forthcoming new album. We were arguing that the band has never moved beyond its roots as a Beatles cover band, but our friend insisted the new disc was great and could very......

We can only imagine that a person threatening to jump off of a crane in the middle of rush hour ranks up there with bank robbery hostage situations and Jack Bauer-style terrorist demands on a list of a police negotiator’s dream day at work.   This morning around 7 a.m. a jumper closed down most of State Street in the north Loop. The man was threatening to jump off of a crane at the construction......

Here in the land of journalism — take that how you will — there exist trials and tribulations among the benefits. None of us here at Chicagoist are safe from the slings and arrows of our readers (Helen Schiller, anyone?). Luckily, as we are an online medium, the most we usually have to suffer is an occasional tongue-thrashing and virtual mailboxes groaning at the seams with hate. Some journalists are not so passive in their......

Streetwise is celebrating its 15-year anniversary this year, and they’re having a big party at the Garfield Park Conservatory with drinks and prizes and dancing. Streetwise — the newspaper that has homeless people as its vendors — is a pretty good deal at a dollar a copy. We like Streetwise, we think it feels better for all sides to get something of value in return for our dollar, and the calls of "Streetwise!" in the......

Although it's pretty much a given that Daley will coast to re-election at the end of next month, by no means does it mean that his time is office has been an unmitigated success. In a report card scheduled to be issued today by a coalition of interest groups and local activists called "Developing Government Accountability to the People," Daley received low grades in many areas, including economic development, transportation, education, criminal justice and ethics.......

As with the previous two playoff games, Mayor Daley will make a food-related wager with his counterpart in Indianapolis on the upcoming Super Bowl that'll see our Bears and their Colts face off in Miami. Chicago, with our great gastronomic traditions, always offers up a smorgasbord of culinary delights — deep dish pizza, Eli's cheesecake, Vienna hot dogs, Ann Sather cinnamon rolls, Italian beef, Mexican foods, etc. But typically Chicago gets the short end of......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Blago's office is being sued to release any subpoenas related to corruption. The Chicago Department of Human Survices (CDHS) needs volunteers to help them conduct a one night, point-in-time count of the homeless in shelters and on the street on January 25, 2007 from 9PM to 2AM. For more information or to volunteer, Dominique Bell at 312-742-1552 or DH0608@cityofchicago.org. A Chicago woman is suing for court costs after she was robbed by a police......

It doesn't take much wandering around in Chicago to see a lot of homeless citizens. Even though the city is in its fourth year of Daley's 10-year plan to totally eradicate the problem, the average person might not see that much of a change. Well, a study just came out that made one thing clear — the problem with homelessness is much, much worse than you think. The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless released a......