Margaret noted briefly in her post on St. Patrick's Day rescheduling last week that this is also Shamrock Shake time. Finding it is an altogether different matter. There once was a time when one could walk into a McDonald's around this time of year and be able to order one of these thick, minty monstrosities, no questions asked. However, if Wikipedia is to be believed, Shamrock Shakes stopped being widely available in the '90s......

Further evidence that Macy’s strategies are not headed in the successful direction executives hoped, Macy’s North, the division that operates Macy’s in the Midwest, announced Friday the layoff of 271 employees, citing lagging sales. Combined sales for November and December were down 1.1%, while December’s sales were down 7.9%, significantly worse than the anticipated 4 to 7 percent drop over last year. January’s same day sales are expected to dip 4 to 6 percent. 100......

Who knew "celebrity" golf tournaments could be such a flustercuck? Not Caddyshack star Cindy "Lacey Underall" Morgan. She hosted a 2006 event, which was supposed to benefit the Illinois Military Family Relief Fund, turned out to be a disaster. A giant no-money-making, friendship-ending, lawsuit-generating disaster. Morgan says only about 100 people played golf, that the Caddyshack cast members who did show (Bill Murray and Chevy Chase weren't there) left early, and now she's on the......

Well, a pile of something: Sweet & Sassy, the tarting-up spa and salon party zone for little girls, is opening two Chicagoland locations in the very near future. One at 1730 W. Fullerton is set to open December 5, and another is in the works for the newly opened Oak Brook Promenade. A Sweet & Sassy spokesperson told Crain's that the company is looking to open 12 stores in our area in the next......

$25,000 in new equipment and $75,000 in remodeling is all it will take for McDonald's across the country to begin serving specialty coffees. The Oak Brook-based company announced that it plans to roll out specialty coffees, smoothies and frappes at the company's annual analysts meeting yesterday. McDonald's President Don Thompson announced, "We want to move from beverages as an accompaniment to beverages as a destination," which is funny only to the extent that one can......

Driving or hitching to Oak Brook to hear an Edgar Allen Poe recitation probably isn’t topping your weekend plans. But with “The Madness of Edgar Allen Poe,” the First Folio Shakespeare Festival sweetens the deal. They stage the performance of a few of Poe’s more frightening short stories, and the charming but creepy true account of the author’s courtship and marriage of his teenage cousin Virginia, at the historic Mayslake Peabody Estate. Poe might have......

A few weeks back we wrote about our search for a certain Rosey Goat Cheese. Many readers wrote in with information about other places we could look, other cheeses that might fit the bill, and complaints about the commenting system. We were happy to get such a response, even if it didn't actually lead to a purchase of the product in question. We figured readers had given us, and each other, a fair number of......

No, it isn't us; we'll get there soon enough, thank you. The Big Mac, one of Oak Brook-based McDonald's signature hamburgers, debuted forty years ago this week. The sandwich was created by Jim Delligatti in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Even though the Big Mac today is a part of American food and popular culture, Delligatti had to convince executives at Hamburger U that the concept of "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on......

Pop quiz! Which is better: a Chicken McNugget or a small morsel of chicken meat that has been battered and fried to look like, smell like and taste like a Chicken McNugget, a piece of chicken lacking only the telltale McDonalds' wrapping? If you answered the McNugget, you aren't alone; A recent study of preschoolers in which the children sampled identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers found that the unmarked food always lost.......

For those of you who work in the suburbs, this Chicagoist writer shares your pain. For those of you downtown, you might find this enlightening. Amusing, even. Brood update: the west suburbs (Oak Brook, Lombard, Elmhurst, Hinsdale and beyond) are under attack. They’re big. They’re black. They’re bumbling. And they’re EVERYWHERE. Packs, no, swarms of the red-eyed buggers are biz-izzing around, apparently with no sense of direction or sense of sight, really. They mill by......

If we are weighing "want to know" vs. "don't want to know" when it comes to where and how McDonald's food is prepared, Chicagoist definitely falls on the "don't want to know" side. Ignorance is bliss, people, ignorance is bliss. Yet McDonald's doesn't think most people are like us. The Oak Brook-based fast food behemoth will introduce six blogs next week from a team of "Moms' Quality Correspondents," six corresponding mothers who will get behind-the-scenes......

Jane Radostits, the DuPage County prosecutor who was killed when her state-issued car swerved into oncoming traffic may have had as many as eight drinks before driving on May 11, according to a lawsuit filled yesterday on behalf of Michele Lubinski, 36, of West Chicago. Lubinski, whose left arm and leg were broken in the crash, is seeking damages from Oak Brook's Kona Grill after lab tests revealed Radostits' blood alcohol level to be .25......

This weekend the Chicagoist offices were in a tizzy, as The Nightwatchman Tom Morello announced his tour dates, including a stop on Chicago's Federal Plaza on April 14 to play the Immokalee Workers Rally. Part of the focus of this rally is to continue to shine a spotlight on the plight of migrant farmworkers that pick produce for some of the largest fast-food chains. One of those chains, McDonald's, calls Chicagoland (Oak Brook, to be......

Their slogan might be "I'm lovin' it," but not all of McDonald's customers are: complaints per 100,000 guests totaled 20.1 at company-operated stores, compared with 18.5 in 2005. Complaints at franchised stores were 12 complaints per 100,000, up from 11 in 2005. What exactly makes all of those Happy Meals less than happy? The number one customer complaint is screwing up orders, accounting for one fourth of all complaints.. "Wrong item included in order" and......

Move over James Frey – McDonald’s says it's planning to fight back against fictional information about the company being sold as fact. Books such as “Fast Food Nation” and “Chew On This” have gone so far as to claim that the fast food giant’s products are unhealthy (gasp!) and poor quality (shock!), and the company has had enough. At a meeting with stockholders in Oak Brook today, CEO Jim Skinner said, "Fictitious information irresponsibly published......

Chicagoist loves a good McDonald's story. Hell, we should probably set up a McDonald's Archive Section for all the stories we've published about them. Much like their fries, if we see a news morsel about Mickey D's, we must consume it. Then we lick our fingers, wipe them on our shirt, and feel guilty for indulging the rest of the day. Fine, we overdo it it because we're lucky enough to be the only -ist......

Ah, road trips. Fluorescent lights and prefab office furniture are no good for anybody and our favorite cure for office blahs is a few hours on the road. With Columbus Day approaching, now’s the time when we start thinking about getting out of the office for a long weekend. Summer road trips are where it’s at for some people but it’s hard to commune with the road with the windows rolled up and the A/C......

In case some readers think that we fine folks at Chicagoist have been going overboard with the Macy Field's coverage the past two days, for your perusal today here is a gaggle of news from Hamburger U that has nothing to do with the nutritional quality of its food or its CEO suddenly dropping dead: - Helping those affected by Hurricane Katrina will take years. The possibility of Rita hitting the Gulf Coast would......

The sales tax increase we toldya about in November - it goes into effect on Friday. Sales tax will be raising by 1/4 of a percentage point, making it 9% and one of the highest among major U.S. cities. BUT this is ONLY for the city of Chicago. .. which means that the malls in Oak Brook, Schaumburg, Skokie, EVERYWHERE will have a tax advantage over the city. Some people think that the city's retailers......

We’ve got another giveaway today in conjunction with The Futureheads acoustic show this Friday the 10th at the Hard Rock Hotel bar presented by MSN/Swatch Paparazzi. You can pick up a free ticket to this performance by stopping in at the Swatch store at North Bridge. If you’re out in the ‘burbs you can also stop by their stores at Oak Brook Center or the Westfield Stores at Old Orchard. Tickets are also still available......

Last summer, Costco started carrying caskets on their web site and at two of their Illinois warehouses. At the time, Costco's general manager of merchandising called it a test phase, but wouldn't say how long it would last. We called the two Costco locations, in Lincoln Park and Oak Brook, and they're still selling the caskets. An administrator at the Lincoln Park location said it is still considered a test-phase, but they sell four different......

Two high-profile deaths this week in Chicagoland; one this morning and one Monday (with details surfacing today). Chicagoist usually doesn't like to cover…death…but these are kind of big, or at least unusually interesting, cases. Daniel T. Bowen was found hanged in his Cook County Jail cell this morning. Bowen had been in jail since his arrest September 28 and was due in court again November 3. He was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly hiring......

While Chicagoist misses the boxes they used to come in, Oak Brook-based McDonald's is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Happy Meals this summer. Pairing a child-sized meal with a little toy, McDonald's revolutionized kids meals by joining eating and entertainment. The idea was originally hatched by ad exec Bob Bernstein, as he watched his 9-year-old son staring at a cereal box every morning while eating breakfast. Having worked with McDonald's francisees for years he......

Kind of catchy, huh? Costco, the retailer better known for selling jugs of mayonnaise and flats of chips, is now selling caskets in its stores in Chicago and suburban Oak Brook. Some customers said they like the idea of being able to shop for a casket long before a loved one's death. We say those people are weirdos! Although, several seasons of Six Feet Under have kind of desensitized us from the sight of a......