You'll remember the story of Dave Warwak, the middle school art instructor in Fox River Grove who put down the paints, chalks and paste to passionately talk to his students about the virtues of the vegan lifestyle. If by "passionately" we meant "beat the kids over the head about how all hot dogs are sketchy-assed." When he was busted for doing that, he took the concept of "keeping it real" to Chappellian levels, demanding that... more ›

Dave Warwak was just another mild-mannered middle school art teacher in Anywhere, USA (actually Fox River Grove Middle School in McHenry County). Then, in January, he switched to a vegan diet, sold his boat and fishing tackle from his side job as a fishing guide, and became politicized on the issue of animal rights. Last week Warwak handed his students a book by John Robbins titled The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save... more ›

Oh. My. God. It. Is. Cold. Outside. Here’s what’s gonna motivate us to don seventeen layers of protective cold-weather gear and frequent the local clubs. Tonight the seventy-eight person (okay, we exaggerate slightly) orch-pop outfit The 1900’s begin their Practice Space residency at Schuba’s. We’re expecting to hear them work through new material over the next few weeks, so it should be interesting to see how each Monday’s set-list differs from the last. This is... more ›

Wow, it's been an interesting week for local Internet startups. Earlier, FeedBurner completed its first acquisition, and we heard last night that 37signals picked up some investment cash from Jeff Bezos. (Bezos is the guy who founded and runs Amazon; 37signals is a local company offering project management and organization tools over the web.) What's interesting about this investment is that 37signals claims that they didn't need the cash: Since we launched Basecamp we’ve... more ›