Results tagged “thedoors”

Who gives last rites to the priest? Who installs a new crown in the dentist's mouth? Who buries the gravedigger? Or, more importantly, who gives the eulogy when a funeral home dies? If you're the family that has held sway over Griffin Funeral Home for 60 years, you give it yourself. The historic, African-American-owned parlor at 32nd and King Drive is closing its doors come New Year's Eve. Griffin has played host to such final...

So we walked up to the doors of the Cheetah Gym Bucktown/Wicker Park location this morning and found a sign on the door saying it's closed "per David Wilshire" (the owner), giving an AOL address to contact with questions. Which we thought was weird, since his email has always been a Cheetah Gym one. So we went home, deflated from the lack of a workout we were looking forward to (amazing, we know, but we do work out to offset all that booze we consume in the Chicagoist office after lunch), to email him and to call the other locations to see if any of them know what's up. Only no one answers our email or any of our phone calls to the other locations. So we check the website to see what's up, only to find it's down.

O.K., let's say you're cheap (or on a really tight budget, that's totally understandable too) so you're not buying tickets to this year's Hideout block party ... but you still want to see fabulous bands like Andrew Bird, Bloc Party, The Frames, Mucca Pazza, Art Brut, Dan Deacon (who you really MUST see live), and a bunch of other cool acts yet to be announced. You can still get in by volunteering! Volunteers do everything...

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network." It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by...

There's about to be some empty spaces on North Michigan Avenue, the likes of which haven't been seen on the Magnificent Mile for 15 years. Lord & Taylor will soon shutter the doors at its Water Tower Place location, and it will be 2008 before American Girl Place moves from its current spot on Chicago to take over a portion of the space. With CompUSA closing up shop on Chicago as well, retail vacancy for...

No witty introduction this week. Our fault for trying to impress the new staffers with barleywine ale and Dalmore. Thank God for French-pressed coffee. The buffet is now open. A Good German to the End: The closing of Delicatessen Meyer should have been a story we weighed in on earlier in the week and not relegated to the Buffet. To that end, Chicagoist extends a sincere mea culpa. Anyhoo, for those who haven't heard, the...

Alinea Chef/Owner Grant Achatz

The Horseshoe (4115 N. Lincoln) always kept its main windows by the stage obscured, so when we were walking by on our way to brunch we thought to ourselves that they must not be open on Saturday mornings, only Sundays, and we didn’t really give it another thought. We loved the Bluegrass Brunch — a brunch for those of us not into Gospel, but it’s right back to praising the Lord with our eggs because the Horseshoe seems to be no more.

Along with its manual scoreboard, one of Wrigley Field's signature elements is the brick- and ivy-covered outfield wall — alone in an era where most home runs clear walls of padded vinyl, printed with advertising. The idyllic green backdrop of Wrigley's outfield will be at least partially altered, as ads will now grace the doors in the outfield wall that the grounds crew uses. On Wednesday, the Cubs announced a deal with Under Armour that...

It's been a whole seven days since last week, and just like snow, the news is piling up. As our man Barack implores us to let him walk with us on this movement, everyone is just hoping for a piece of his shadow. Let's take a look back. Chicagoist's favorite whipping boy Todd "The Toddler" Stroger got booed by the crowd at Obama's announcement rally in Chicago Sunday. Considering that the people that carried Obama...

Do you have a business idea? If you ran into Donald Trump on an elevator, could you sell it to him before the doors open on the 23rd floor? You can practice your pitch for a chance to win $5,000 in prize money in the inaugural FAST PITCH competition, part of Entrepreneurship Week Chicago. That's enough cash to buy quite a few Foosball tables for your startup office (OK, so maybe you should pay the rent first). A panel of experienced business owners, investors, and other high muckety-mucks will critique your pitch and select a winner, and, of course, it's all preceded by a networking reception.

Oh wow. This is going to be so much fun. The first CTRL-ALT-ROCK was a huge success so version 2 had to be bigger and better, naturally. But we think we've outdone ourselves. Chicagoist has profiled all four of the bands performing, to bring you up to speed:

About an hour after our post on Chicago theater coping with the theater of the gridiron, we discovered the Tribune’s list of Super Sunday alternatives. We won’t even pretend that any of these events are more momentous or worth your time than the biggest Bears game since MTV was cool. But we still think they’re better than hearing yet another story about South Beach “sabor.”

We were recently going through, what we like to call, the take-out drawer of shame and realized we multiple copies of almost every menu we could possibly order from. Not to mention the fact that rubber bands and tiny plastic bags line our hall. Well, on January 9th the License and Consumer Protection Agency considered changes by Alderman Flores, 1st, and Alderman Rugai, 19th, which would crack down on the companies and those they hire...

We were inclined to dislike Smoque, the new BBQ joint that just opened up off of the Irving Park Blue Line stop on 3800 N. Pulaski. The borderline idiotic name, the intensity of their BBQ manifesto and (for us) the long distance necessary to travel to get there, made us ready to dismiss the recently opened BBQ joint. Additionally, we didn't feel like it was "authentic." While we aren't sure what authentic really means, Smoque doesn't have it — it almost feels like a pre-fab restaurant, with the menu on the chalkboard and the french fries in a paper bag acting like what someone thinks a BBQ place should be. We were ready to hate it.

Last Friday we were winding down our work week when shots rang out at the offices across the street. Outside was pandemonium, with police everywhere, streets closed, sirens, and helicopters. Inside was not much better. Our office just stopped and was looking everywhere for more information online, playing radio broadcasts and trying to figure out alternate ways to get home. All the while, we tried to keep you up to date.

Despite the overall increase in department store shopping, 2006 has been a disappointing year for such shops in the city. From Macy’s takeover of Marshall Fields (and the resulting low sales) to the closing of Carson’s on State Street, the department stores where many of us grew up shopping have been having a tough time with Chicago buyers. While the plight of Macy’s/Marshall Fields and Carson’s is well-known, two other Magnificent Mile mainstays are struggling,...

Yesterday, we were stuck on the blue line for about 15 minutes. "Attention passengers, attention passengers, a train ahead of us is having a malfunction. We will be moving shortly." After the third or fourth time of hearing this the rain soaked, anxious passengers start to get a little frustrated. We overheard one young lady expressing her frustrations, "I wonder if the CTA ever gets scared there might be a mob, they should be scared...

Chicagoist has long avoided Black Friday, that day of misery following Thanksgiving, when millions of men, women, and children descend upon malls and other retailers across the country in hopes of scoring some fabulous holiday deals. However, we do realize that some people really get into the spirit of crushing crowds and waiting in freezing temperatures outside Circuit City at 3 a.m., as some of our friends have been known to do. Retailers are catching...

That tangle of threads is the “Taxonomy of the Chicago Art Community,” an ambitious project hatched by the Bad At Sports podcasters to connect local and out-of-town artists, institutions, and media producers. Last weekend we dropped by the BAS All-Media Pancake Breakfast and Tea at the ThreeWalls gallery where we meeted 'n greeted and added a few strings to the tapestry. “Taxonomy” works along the six degrees of separation principle: we’re all connected if...

Tuesday night at the Abbey Pub, we got to witness Ghostland Observatory in a smaller venue than their energetic show put on at ACL this year. Tuesday was the last night of their short two week tour, and they had sold out of all their merchandise and no one could grab the music of this band (sorry, it's not a band - it's an agreement between friends) out of Austin. We were thrilled to hear...

Admit it — you’ve probably dreamt up an invention or two in your day, some grand idea that would change the world, or at least make it a little more enjoyable. However, the thought of having to design a protype, pitch it to a company, and apply for a patent sounds like far too much work to fit into your already busy schedule.

A CTA bus driver may need to have his mouth washed out with soap after launching into an expletive-laced tirade at an elderly woman on his bus. The woman boarded the 157 Streeterville bus around 5 p.m. on Monday. It’s not clear what the woman did as she boarded, but she sat right behind the driver and he then yelled for her to “get back up there,” according to Naperville resident Gwen Sylvain. The elderly...

It was just another Friday happy hour at the Hideout. Well, not including the BBQ going on and the fact that there just seemed to be more people arriving than normal for a show that wasn’t supposed to start until 10:30 pm. Sure, there was to be a 9:30 showing of George Bush being eaten by rats, but what did that really mean? After the sound check, we dutifully made our way to the back...

We were stunned. So much so that it took us a moment just to take it all in and grouse a little with the other people standing outside of the theater. And then of course, we took a picture. Really though, it is disheartening to think of another independent business close, and does anyone really know why?

Normally Chicagoist isn't big into reporting on every restaurant/bar/whatnot that has its door shuttered for health code violations. But this one we couldn't let pass by. This morning, a Chicagoist operative was on assignment out in North Center (read: drinking many beers at the Globe watching the World Cup) when he stumbled on over to Lincoln Restaurant only to find the doors locked and a big ol' neon-green sticker on the front, which means...

The Trib is reporting that U.S. Marshals are conducting a floor-to-floor search at the Everett M. Dirksen Federal Building for a man who escaped custody during a court appearance.

Oh how our babies grow up so fast! Why, it seems like only yesterday that we were all waiting with heaving bosoms and baited breath for Grant Achatz to open the doors of his long-awaited restaurant and now? Awwww. Alinea turns a year old next month.

It's been a busy week for Chicagoist. So we've spent the evenings catching up on our reading. Our jaws dropped when we read that another Chicagoist is yet again undertaking the seemingly Sisyphean challenge of growing tomatoes. It's like that ant trying to move a rubber tree plant. He's got high hopes (and so do we for Tomatoist. May the weather and squirrels be fair to you this season. If you need a deterrent from the latter, we're getting our hair cut this afternoon and can lend you some clippings to keep the furry beasties at bay). In the interest of solidarity, the Bridgeport Bureau is also undertaking a summer project.