Interior design magazine House Beautiful is bringing a unique scavenger hunt to town this weekend. They'll be dropping off pink chairs throughout the city tomorrow, Sunday and Monday, donated by a wide array of companies. If you follow House Beautiful on Facebook or Twitter and are near where one of the chairs is dropped off, if you get to it first, it's yours. The chairs that they're giving away range from $10 cheapies you can buy at the Container Store or Target to the $3,750 Grange Lady Chair pictured in the post. more ›

Venus Zine, the Chicago-based magazine focusing on women in music, culture, fashion and the DIY scene, is ceasing print operations. Editor-in-chief sent out an e-mail acknowledging the move and her impending layoff, saying that finances are the reason behind the move. more ›

While promoting the Friday opening of Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel at the Siskel Film Center, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told Metromix's Matt Pais that it's likely Playboy enterprises will consolidate all of its operations to the West Coast. more ›

Now why are you still reading this? Get on over to our meet-up at Goose Island Clybourn! more ›

Friend of Chicagoist Robert Loerzel tipped us off to this blog, run by Steven Lomazow, M.D., a neurologist out of New Jersey. Lomazow, who attended medical school right here in Chicago, posts covers of old magazines and publications but his a collection that goes beyond old issues of Time or Sports Illustrated. It's a fascinating site that's easy to get lost in (even if it's just the standard Blogger.com layout). It's certainly worth visiting and above are scans of a few publications that hit close to home for us. For more reading, Lomazow is interviewed here about his collecting interests. more ›

Sad news food writing wise on two fronts today. First comes news that the venerable Gourmet magazine will be shutting down operations as part of a cost-cutting move spurred by a decline in ad revenues by parent company Conde Nast. A Gourmet byline is a holy grail among food writers and, under the editorial leadership of Ruth Riechl, some of the magazine's content was simply poetic. The loss of Gourmet's print concern leaves a void. A Conde Nast memo indicates that Gourmet's tv programming, book publishing, and recipes on epicurious.com will remain unchanged. more ›

One of the best stories on the newspaper industry I ever read was in Thomas Frank's The Baffler, the Chicago based magazine for thinkers that leaned unapologetically to the far left without ever resorting to histrionics. It was also famous for stiring up the local and national arts scene and just generally being a wickedly intelligent and entertaining read unafraid to take chances. more ›

Business Week has launched its latest title: BW Chicago. And the first story heralds Mayor Daley as "The CEO of City Hall." At Business Week, this is high praise. According to story, Mayor Daley is hugely popular with business leaders because he gives them huge tax breaks and privatizes city operations. Quoth Charles P. Carey, vice-chairman of CME Group (CME), parent of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, "[Daley] takes a... more ›

While some comic books still strive stylistically for the muscled-up, spandex-wearing men and women of comics' heyday, the image of heroes is beginning to change—in lots of ways. more ›

Hopefully, you already love Found, the magazine and series of books created completely out of found items submitted by readers. The Found magazines and books play on a voyeur mindset of peeking at all the things that are none of your business. Items within the series, include a list about a budget with $600 set aside for crack, and other more poignant items, such as a letter found attached to a floating balloon addressed to... more ›

This is part of Chicagoist's continuing coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival. A sobering statistic from Chicago filmmaker Darryl Robert's new documentary America the Beautiful: Although the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world's population, its residents are exposed to 40% of its advertising. Roberts argues that one major effect of that hypersaturation is an obsession with a certain kind of "perfect beauty," an unrealistic ideal that leaves many women feeling unhappy with... more ›

Good news, women of Illinois: We're in good company! Four of the top ten most powerful women in business are based here (or run companies that are). Irene Rosenfeld, chairman and CEO of Kraft Foods, comes in at number 5, thanks to acquiring a $7.2 billion "global biscuit business." Pat Woertz, chairman, CEO, and president of Decatur–based agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland, follows her at 6 because she brought in $44 billion in revenue. Number... more ›

Every so often, we get an undeniable desire to craft. Inviting a few friends over, we set out with a goal of creating a clever present or fun piece of decor. However, a few hours after setting out with a lofty craft goal, our plans to create a card made from old magazines or a personalized iPod cozy are generally little more than a distant memory, replaced by a few bottles of wine and some... more ›

About 17,000 union members, along with their friends and their families, filled the south end of Soldier Field for a debate, hosted by the AFL-CIO, among the Democratic contenders. A sweaty sea of union members in colored T-shirts, representing everyone from the Service Employees International Union to the United Steelworkers, from the AFSCME to the IUPAT, drank cold bottles of water and listened to Democrats talk about how their administration would work for working families,... more ›

Even before the team was officially up for sale, there has been a great deal of speculation about who the next owner of the Cubs might be. While the media -- Chicagoist included -- has focused on the likes of Donald Trump, Ernie Banks and Mark Cuban as possible new team owners, if MLB commissioner Bud Selig gets his way the new owner will be less well known to most of us. Fortune magazine is... more ›

The Comas have been at this shit for a while now. Originally formed in Chapel Hill, NC in 1998, their blistering brand of psychedelic-soaked garage rock has left a steady stream of sweaty, melted faces in its wake for nearly the past decade. They’ve collected some of the most desirable accolades an independent-spirited band can hope for, including contacts with North Carolina tastemakers Yep Roc and (currently) Vagrant Records, shoe shines from Pitchfork Media, Rolling... more ›

It's now (sort of) official: Robert Redford's Sundance Cinemas has signed a lease to open an eight-screen theater on the site of the former Fannie May candy factory in the West Loop. The last time we reported on this story was way back in 2005. But as anyone waiting for a Dominick's to reopen in lakeview can tell you, real estate development often moves about as quickly as a glacier. (Tangental rhetorical question: whatever happened... more ›

The world of jazz lost another titan in pianist and composer Andrew Hill last Friday at the age of 75. The cause of Mr. Hill's death was lung cancer. more ›

Nell Taylor and Emerson Dameron, Founders of Chicago Underground Library more ›

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Our spring rush has netted a fresh new class of pledges for our interview beat: Keidra Chaney, a self-described pop-culture nut, joins us from Lincoln Square, by way of Englewood, West Pullman, and Wisconsin. When she's not interviewing people like the folks at the A+D Gallery for Chicagoist, she works at DePaul, and she freelances for magazines like Venus Zine, Bitch, Friction, and Colorlines. Karl Klockars is also a Chicagoland native, growing up in the... more ›

Chicagoist wants you all to go to this story and look at the expression on CTA Board President Carole Brown's face as she rides a bus this February. Classic. The picture accompanies an article detailing Brown's plan to have the CTA's Office of Inspector General do an audit to see if buses and trains are cleaned as often and thoroughly as they should be. At a board meeting Wednesday, Brown was given the party line... more ›

...are condemned to repeat it. more ›

We'd like to start this week's run-down by wishing a very happy birthday to parent blog Gothamist, which turned four on Friday. If it wasn't for them, the rest of us wouldn't be here. They celebrated their birthday by nabbing an interview with Entourage star Adrian Grenier, who misses NYC public transportation when he's working in LA. They also reported on NYU students protesting a band whose name is also known as a slur,... more ›

Starting this Sunday, Snake Punch Union will play for 3 Sundays at The Playground Theater. Nicky Hilton is getting sued by a Chicago development group for breach of contract. Interficio (Mobile Assassins) are coming to Chicago. Knowing our luck, we'd be targeted by someone with a real gun! What else could we sell to make some money for the city? Oh, how about Midway airport? On March 25 from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.,... more ›

We're not sure if she got the idea from the teens who were on NPR or not, but state senator Carol Ronan is taking on the "alcopops". more ›

Of Fortune Magazine's pick for the 100 best places to work, Illinois companies showed up three times. We're not positive if any of them are somewhere that you work, or that you plan on working when you're done making ends meet with waitressing and bartending jobs, but it's still a nice nod from the wider world of money-making. The three companies listed were CDW Corp., Vernon Hills (technology solutions); Jones Lang LaSalle, Chicago (real estate);... more ›

If you don’t hear much from the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau in the next couple of months, don’t be alarmed. The bureau, which drives sales for McCormick Place and Navy Pier, is on the road, trying to find work. It will be stopping in 10 cities to try to convince corporate and association meeting planners to book their conventions here. Why all the palm-pressing? "Our new emphasis is back-to-the-basics, face-to-face sales and marketing,"... more ›

We hate sitting here in our castle, trapped like that long-haired slut, Rapunzel. Would someone come get her already? Her singing is driving us nuts. In two days, we’re supposed to go to The 2nd Annual Printers' Ball, and we don’t have a darn thing to wear. We got ash and cinder all over the dress we were SUPPOSED to wear, and our stupid stepsisters (they smell like fish), keep asking us to clean the... more ›

Strolling through our neighborhood the other day, we noticed this t-shirt in a window display. While we were a little put off by the lack of nuance and somewhat obnoxious tone of the shirt, turns out, Naperville may not be such an awful place after all. more ›