Results tagged “lists”

We've long been fans of the books put out by the folks from The Onion and the newest book from The AV Club is no different. Inventory is a collection of lists. That's all it is. But it's a pretty damn funny and comprehensive, if a bit random, collection of lists and it's the randomness that we dig. In a sense, it's the perfect coffee table (or bathroom) book that you can pick up whenever you feel like and read through in any, well, random order. From the profane ("16 Tragic Instances of Movie Masturbation") to the auteur ("15 Moveis With Great Dialogue-Free Scenes") to the just plain warped ("9 Classic Instances of Animal Snuff for Kids"), the lists keep us turning the page to the next one.

So we're already the most stressed city in America and the worst city to drive through on Labor Day weekend. Now IBM has ranked Chicago fourth (tied with Boston) on its "Commuter Pain Index" list. You can check out the full report here [PDF]. We move up from our fifth-place tie with San Francisco last year. Los Angeles is number one, followed by D.C. and Miami. According to IBM's press release, there are 10 factors that go into their list:

From the "calm the fuck down" department: Jeff Ruby's list of his 30 favorite burgers turned the echo chamber at LTHForum up to 11, much of it centered on why Patty's Diner (3538 Main St., Skokie, 847-675-4274) didn't make Ruby's cut. Some samples (emphasis ours):

Why is Emmy so happy? Because she knows that Our Town is a damn good place for a pet to live. Rent.com sent out a press release (via) naming the top 10 most pet-friendly cities and Chicago came in second to New York. They cited "canine cruises across the famed Navy Pier, as well as pet-welcoming patio restaurants throughout the city. Chicago is also home to an assortment of pet resorts and boarding kennels."

Mado, Rob and Allison Levitt's hyper-local Wicker Park restaurant with the constantly updated chalkboard menu, gets more love from the East Coast. Mado made Bon Appetit's upcoming list of the 10 Best New Restaurants in America (see the full list here).

S. Pellegrino's list of the worlds 50 best restaurants was released today. Alinea was recognized as the 10th best restaurant in the world, its first entry into the top ten, an 11-point rise over last year. (h/t Nagrant)

Travel & Leisure magazine announced their list of 50 Best New American Restaurants. Stop us if these four local entries to the list sound familiar; L2O, the Publican, Perennial and Urban Belly. L2O and the Publican also made the "Hot Tables" list at Conde Nast Traveler.

Ahhh, remember the day of speakeasy passwords? If you do, well, we're glad our readers span the decades. Lots of alcohol to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition. WOOT! Check out some upcoming events below:

According to the latest basically meaningless yet weirdly post-worthy list from Forbes Magazine, Chicago is the most stressful city in America. The rankings used housings costs, cost of living, a city's air quality, the number of sunny days per year, and population density. So wait: Expensive, crowded, stinky, grey cities breed stress? Blink blink. Sayeth Forbes: "Chicago has a 7.3% unemployment rate, the eighth most polluted air in our ranking and in city where everybody drives to get around, a gallon of gas costs a nickel under $4 dollars." (Everyone here drives to get around?) We also had the second-highest population density. Hear that, person who lives so hilariously close to me they can see my computer screen from their house? The other stressful cities are, from most to least, New York, Detroit, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Cleveland, Sal Lake City, Providence and Philadelphia. [Forbes]

Today's brisk temperatures are a sure sign that fall is almost here. At at the Chicagoist home offices, most of us are excited. Here's what we're most looking forward to before winter actually sets in:

OUT has named what they deem to be the 100 Greatest, Gayest Albums of All Time, and we didn't see a single Chicagoan on the list How could they overlook R Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet" saga? We call foul!

Lately we've been pretty big on lists around these parts, and with good reason. We love coffeehouses, as well as people, places and things that get us going.

The Tribune today listed Seattle's Best (you know, those cafés you tend to forget are located inside Borders bookstores) as having the best iced coffee in the city. In making such a bold proclamation. In doing so, they prove that one can apply words and phrases used for wine or beer reviews such as "fragrance," "bold but mellow," "smooth," and "nutty" and still not know what one's talking about.

The Sun-Times, probably regretting that they're still on the hook for Conrad Black's attorney fees and Jay Mariotti's salary during a recession, has been on a frugal kick this week. Every day they've run a story on families saving money on groceries, usually involving shopping at Aldi's, cutting coupons, or selling the extra car and biking.

All About Beer magazine (via) listed their "top 125 places to have a beer before you die" (a nice arbitrary number, by the way). Five local taverns made the cut: Hopleaf (#24), Clark Street Ale House (#43), Map Room (#47), Goose Island (#84) and John Barleycorn, which makes the cut ten spots from the bottom at #115.

Foodandwine.com just announced their "Go To List 2008," where they list their top ten restaurant cities in the world, ten up and coming restaurant cities, and 300 dining destinations around the world. It should come as no surprise that our broad-shouldered city ranked #8. That's behind Tokyo, Paris and New York, but ahead of Stockholm and Vancouver. Credit where credit is due, Vancouver still has better skiing and gentlemens clubs.

Esquire Magazine's "Best Sandwiches in America" article is a must-read, if only for us because it gives us a checklist of places to hunt down the next time we're on vacation (btw, Katz's pastrami on rye is really all that). Although we have to question the inclusion of the McRib sandwich, we have no qualms with seeing Chick-Fil-A make an appearance on the list.

So many movies, so little time. How true. Unless you're a professional cinephile, there's no hope of seeing even a fraction of what looks interesting in any given year. We actually tallied up the numbers and between theatrical releases, film festival screenings, and DVDs we've seen 175 movies this year — barely any at all. And with the industry's practice of backloading releases, a veritable midyear drought suddenly giving way to an avalanche of multiple releases at year's end, it's harder than ever to keep up.

If you've ever wandered past the ever-under-construction mass of steel and concrete at the corner of State & Kinzie, that's the Museum of Broadcast History, the same group that put out the list of Top 125 American Political Broadcast Moments earlier this week. And, being as that lists are made to be pulled apart, dissected, shredded and argued over, who are we to get in the way of such rich tradition? There are some entries...

An 8-year-old boy was mauled by a pit bull on the far South Side today. Police say he's in very serious condition. The Stacy Peterson madness continues. Illinois state police served Drew Peterson with a new warrant so they can keep his cars and the eight guns they seized as part of the investigation for longer. And divers searched Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in Romeoville and Lockport today for any clues to Stacy's disappearance....