I'm not sure if this is new or just new to me (and tipster Mark), but Google maps now has little block numbers to help you find your way. Wheee.......

View Larger Map The always awesome Kevin Guilfoile put together this map of the Leopold and Loeb case while reading the newly released For The Thrill Of It. ....it really struck me as I followed the geography of this case that, sensational as it was (and still is), this really was a neighborhood crime. The murderers lived within blocks of each other and Richard Loeb lived right across the street from their victim, Bobby Franks.......

Illinois has the 10th-lowest percentage of federal-owned land of any state, with only 1.8 percent of state territory owned by the federal government. Compare that to 84.5 percent of Nevada or 69.1 percent of Alaska. Wow. The federal government controls about 30 percent of the country's total territory. [Strange Maps]......

Author Richard Florida looks at America's "psychogeography" and says personality types tend to cluster—and that understanding those clusters can help us understand the economies and futures of different regions. Greater Chicago is a center for extroverts and also a leading center for sales professionals. The Midwest, long a center for the manufacturing industry, has a prevalence of conscientious types who work well in a structured, rule-driven environment. See the rest of the maps here and......

The CTA has teamed up with Google to help riders plan trips (starts playing a video) with Google Maps, and lo, it is good. Google Maps now has a "take public transit" option when giving directions. We've been playing around with it for a little bit, and it seems to work pretty well. In other CTA tech news, the agency redesigned its website. It's better looking and easier to use than the old one. Um,......

Thomas Jefferson was good for lots of stuff, but Midwest state naming? Let's just say "Assenispia" isn't quite as catchy as "Illinois." This 1784 map shows Jefferson's proposed divisions of the land that eventual came our beloved region. From the amazing Strange Maps: Sylvania would have covered much of present-day Minnesota, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and some of northern Wisconsin. Michigania would have incorporated most of Wisconsin, but nothing of Michigan. Most of Michigan’s Lower......

Who doesn't love the Onion? God knows we do, and hey — even Neil Steinberg sort of likes it. And that guy knows funny! Anyway, there are two big reasons to love the Onion even more: First and foremost, their Google map layer — go ahead and play around with it, above — is twenty kinds of amazing. And the company announced today that they're moving their HQ here. Well, business HQ. While the......

These days, when you’re loathe to drag your ass too far from home, Theater in Chicago has your back. The Chicago theater info source already sorts city and suburban productions by company, neighborhood, production date, and strength of review. Today we got word they’ve just rolled out a nifty Google Map mashup, plotting hundreds of area venues—institution and storefront alike—in one place. The navigation looks familiar enough and the Big G’s search engine allows easy......

Okay, we had so much fun with yesterday's things that were awesome, we figured we'd bust out another list for today. Plus there's a boatload of terrific stuff. Today in awesome: We were going to save this for our annual gift guide, but we couldn't wait. That ridiculously cool maps on the left is from Chicago's own Jenny Beorkrem. Typographic illustration + Chicago maps = time for new pants. We can't stop listening to local......

If there's one thing we brought back to Chicago with us after our six years down south, it's certainly our love for smoked meats. We'd always loved ribs as far back as we can remember, but exposure to true Southern BBQ raised our expectations to a whole new level. We learned that meat is meant to be lovingly smoked for hours in order to achieve the perfect symphony of tastes and textures. When first we......

Monica Eng at the Trib must be helping Chicago win its title of "most caffeinated" city; she tried 32 different coffees for a story in today's paper about which coffees taste the best. Coming out on top are cups of coffee from Metropolis, Intelligentsia, Coffee Beanery Ltd., Whole Foods, Cafe Colao, Illy, Peet's Coffee (our personal favorite), and Julius Meinl. She also recommends picking up the banana cream tart at Fox & Obel to......

Should Chicagoist be worried that the Bulls have opened their season 0-4 after dropping Tuesday night's game to the L.A. Clippers 97-91? Having watched three of their first four in their entirety, we can certainly say that the Bulls look nothing like a team who we'd predict to win 55 games and finish atop the Eastern Conference. Not only have they yet to enter the win column, but they're not even losing to elite teams.......

Nostalgic for the pre-Mapquest world? Do your dogeared city guides and abused atlases sit proudly on your bookshelves? Have we got an event for you. The citywide Festival of Maps kicks off tomorrow, and is a tribute to those simpler, flatter world guides we’d consult constantly before the internets helped us find the best non-highway crosstown routes quicker than you could say "Western Avenue." It’s the first fest of its kind, and is a collaboration......

Add to the preparations plan for future marathons: Hand out more maps and make sure emergency personnel use them. The AP and Sun-Times are reporting that the ambulance driver carrying Chad Schieber, the runner who suffered cardiac arrest and died that morning, made a bad situation worse. The driver couldn’t find the UIC Medical Center’s emergency room entrance, passed by Stroger Hospital, and took the patient to the nearby West Side VA emergency room where......

Marina Café on Jackson Harbor is one of many restaurants on the South side we'd love to recommend to readers without hesitation, but can't. We're convinced that tables without a reservation would be hard to come by if this restaurant was located at Monroe Harbor or North Avenue Beach. We also suspect that, if it were in one of those locations, Marina Café's owners and management would place a bigger emphasis on restaurant basics. As......

Two people have been arrested and police are looking for a third in connection to the dismembered body in Matteson and Alsip. Michael "Walking Mike" Cranston, a developmentally disabled 60-year-old, was hit on Vollmer Road, west of Crawford Avenue in Matteson on Friday. "The impact severed Cranston's body at the shins and catapulted him through the windshield of the car into the passenger seat," according to police. Police are currently looking for Marcus Hampton, 26,......

Twenty new restaurants, including Chicagoist favorite Smoque, (chow pictured) were named Great Neighborhood Restaurants (GNR) today by our favorite (and the only) Chicago-based culinary discussion board, LTHForum. LTH members give the yearly awards to restaurants they believe "contribute to their neighborhoods' and the city's character by offering outstanding food, an authentic experience of their ethnic culture, and/or a welcoming (or in some cases, belovedly cranky) atmosphere for guests." The GNRs are chosen in a sort......

Google's controversial Street View feature is officially live for the Windy City, igniting renewed concerns about privacy. It's also rolling out in Pittsburgh, Philly, Portland, Phoenix and Tucson today. Privacy has been an issue since Street View launched last spring, though not so much a legal question as a personal one. Google captures the images by having a van with cameras on top of it cruise around; technically, that's no different than standing on......

Do you find your cell phone doesn't do enough for you, what with features limited to text messaging, video and music playing, internet access, cameras, alarm clocks and, oh yes, actual call capabilities? Do you find yourself wondering, "When, oh when, will I finally be fulfilled by my cell?" Well, until we get those kind of Touch capabilities built in, maybe not for a while, but in the meantime, you'll soon be able to use......

Phase one: Acquire somewhere between $480,000 and $2.78 million. Phase two: Develop desire to live right around the corner from the AMC River East 21. Phase three: Patience until 2010. Maybe you've accomplished these goals already, and if you have, this is your lucky day: Developers revealed plans for a new downtown high rise today that meets your criteria exactly. The Peshtigo (we can't stop saying it ...), which would be located at 515 N.......

Grab your quirky t-shirts and head over to the Metro tonight to celebrate the grand opening of the first Threadless store at 3011 N. Broadway in Chicago. To really tee it up and kick it off right tonight, Threadless and Metro are bringing you two free shows. Tonight's lineup will feature Hey Mercedes, Anathallo, Freer and host Marcus Monroe. It starts at 6:00 p.m. and is open to all ages, but you will have......

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......

- In case you've missed the previous screenings of local film Crime Fiction, produced by former U of C students, you've got another chance to see it this evening at this month's edition of the Midwest Independent Film Festival. That's at the Landmark Century. There'll be an afterparty just around the corner at Cousin's. - Starting this Wednesday night at 6, Jonathan Rosenbaum presents a weekly series of film screenings and lectures at the Siskel......

Parking Meter Zones?...

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

Chicagoist is a big fan of alternative sports. No we are not talking about underwater hockey but sports that are popular around the world that have just-under-the-mainstream-radar following here in Chicago. We're talking Gaelic Football, Rugby, and Australian Football. Chicagoist was excited to see there are some great alternative sporting events heading to town in the coming month. This weekend, Chicago United Australian Football Club is hosting the Nashville Kangaroos in a Mid-America Australian Football......

We were reading Deadspin yesterday and came across the map you see above, via flickr user "littlebudapest" and the website Strange Maps. As you can see, the map breaks down the continental United States by baseball allegiances. Notice the little fiefdom the White Sox hold within Cubs Country, like West Berlin surrounded by East Germany during the Cold War. One would think that, with one World Series win in the past ninety years, the......

For those of us whose baseball teams is hopelessly out of the playoff hunt, today is the day we've been waiting for since June -- the opening of Bears open training camp! Players arrived at Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais yesterday ahead of today's first practice. The Bears enter camp as reigning NFC Champs, and with the expectations of winning the Super Bowl this season. Can they overcome the fate of the past five......

Ever since Frank Kruesi got kicked to the curb back in April, we’ve been nothing short of elated. We looked forward to a new reign of … whatever the opposite of ineptitude is. (Eptitude?) With time comes sobriety, as the usual problems have started cropping up once more. Two trains shutting down in one week? Bad form. Honestly, though, we weren’t expecting that kind of mechanical stuff to be cleared up overnight, especially when the......

Who knew that U of C's DOC Films has been showing movies for 75 years? (Rhetorical question, as we're sure that many of you already knew that.) Well, they have. In fact they're the longest continuously running student film society in the U.S. As you can imagine, they've collected a lot of cool mementos in that time. Things like letters from Samuel Fuller and Jean Renoir, movie posters autographed by Hitchcock, and old programing calendars.......