If we didn't have to work today, we'd be at Pierogi Fest in Whiting, IN right now. All weekend long, 119th Street in downtown Whiting becomes a thoroughfare of music, carnival rides, parades and pierogis. This year's festival promises to bring more of the same babushkas, polkas, parades, lawn mower drill teams, showcasing of dogs and all-around family fun. For those of us having a staycation this summer, this could also fit in the "one-tank......

Midway ranked number-one on customer satisfaction for midsize airports in a new survey from J.D. Power and Associates, who apparently took a break from giving awards to every car ever to compile this data. According to the survey, late-arrival rates were the highest since 1996, customers are less satisfied than ever, and fewer people are checking bags. Perhaps even fewer travelers will be checking bags now that American will be charging $15 to do so.......

The TSA is rolling out a new security-line system at Midway. Starting today, passengers will sort themselves into three different lanes to go through the security check, based on their experience and efficiency as travelers (and packers). People who know the ropes, like business travelers, will go in the expert lane; people who are inexperienced travelers or who have kids with them go in the novice lane; and anyone who's not sure or is somewhere......

Photo by P2wy American canceled 138 flights out of O'Hare today and as many as 850 flights nationally, stranding passengers and making everyone extremely grumpy. The flights have been canceled so the airline can inspect its fleet of MD-80 jets "to ensure precise and complete compliance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s airworthiness directive related to the bundling of wires in the aircraft’s wheel wells," according to American's press release, and not "safety-of-flight" matter. This......

Photo by Joseph P ATA filed for bankruptcy yesterday and completely shut down all operations at 4am today, leaving around 10,000 passengers SOL and laying off more than 2,000 employees. People are showing up at airports to check in for ATA flights only to find the company doesn't really exist any more, and all their money's gone. From ATA's press release: ATA customers who purchased tickets using a credit card should contact their credit......

Chicagoist has a list of places to visit and experiences we'd like to have before we die. We've hopefully got a few decades left to keep checking these items off, but some are certainly a bit more improbable than others -- like our dream of owning and living in a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. The Arthur Heurtley house -- just down the street from Wright's own home and studio in suburban Oak Park --......

The art of the postcard is a delicate thing. How does one evoke the entirety of a place, a mood, and the very essence of travel into a tiny block of text with a picture on the front? From the "thinking of you" sentimental to the "wish you were here" silliness, most often they miss the point. We come away happy for sharing, but ultimately lost on the breadth of travel in the brevity of......

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. Two Chicago staples made the cut. Food lovers across the city......

Haha, just kidding, you can't. Midway is completely closed until at least 4pm, and delays at O'Hare are currently averaging over 2 hours and more than 300 flights have been canceled. Hear that? That was the sound of thousands of travelers all saying "blerg" at the exact same moment. [FAA, Trib]......

Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced yesterday that the state is getting out of the loan business. On Monday, Sangamon County Circuit Court Judge Patrick J. Londrigan signed the foreclosure order on the Abraham Lincoln Hotel and Convention Center, the first step in removing ownership from the politically connected powerbroker Bill Cellini. Although the owners quickly fell behind on payments, the loan was restructured in 1990, ensuring that the owners didn't have to repay the......

Planning on flying to New York on the cheap this year? You won't be going easy, going ATA (or Southwest). The low-cost carrier will no longer be flying to New York. As of January 6, ATA is eliminating its flights to and from LaGuardia. A spokeswoman for the airline said that the decision to eliminate NY-area service was "very regrettable but purely economic strategic decision." Southwest doesn't actually operate their own flights to LaGuardia--ATA......

Unless you stayed inside all day yesterday (and that wouldn't have been a bad idea, because it was dis-gusting out there), you couldn't miss the super-slippery sidewalks all around the city. An ice storm Saturday night made traveling around the city extra-treacherous due to the thin coating of ice on sidewalks. Chicago city officials, being their normal helpful selves, urged people to salt their sidewalks and walk carefully when it's icy. And also to look......

Ah, O'Hare. First your flight gets delayed, then there's a stinky but nontoxic cleaning agent used in the terminal, then your plane almost runs into another plane. Indeed, ye olde ORD has the second-highest number of near-collisions of any US airport. And according to a report from the GAO, O'Hare has six runways that don't meet the FAA's "runway safety area standards," and the airport had four "serious incursions," which is when two planes......

Where Can I Go Sledding?...

The only thing worse than being on a Greyhound bus at 3:15 a.m. is having that bus spin out of control and crash. Luckily, no one was killed or seriously hurt, but 17 passengers were injured when a bus from Chicago wiped out in Indiana. In other Indiana transit-problem news, a Chicago-bound South Shore train hit a pickup truck in Gary this morning, killing the truck's driver. The 212 and 214 trains will not......

We got an e-mail today from a national travel magazine fact-checker wondering about local lingo. Some of the terms are definitely things we're familiar with, but..."the prairie"? Huh. Let 'er rip, cats and kittens. Would you agree that while the term "Chi-Town" means "Chicago," it's rarely spoken by a resident? Does the term "dees and doze guy" refer to a working class local who speaks with a Chicago accent? Does the term "dragged through......

Hearts all across Chicago were broken last January when Zephyr closed its doors. We walked past its former space a few days ago and wouldn't you know, construction workers were busy building what looked to be another restaurant. Alas, it won't be Zephyr 2.0 but rather an Irish-style bar and restaurant (pictured), opening in March 2008 (to their best estimate). The workers didn't know what it was going to be called. New York Times writer......

Big surprise — the weather is going to be wildly unpredictable on and around Thanksgiving. Holiday travel will most likely be ludicrously difficult for the thousands of weary travelers coming and going in the Midwest via plane, train and automobile. According to Tom, we can expect rain as the week goes on. The rain will probably change to snow on Thanksgiving eve following a low pressure storm that may (or may not?) be moving northeasterly......

We were visiting our mechanic at Gateway Auto this morning -- dropping off our own slightly ill vehicle -- and noticed a bright yellow 1967 Ford pickup truck in their lot. We commented upon how cool it looked, and the owner told us it was in to be converted to run on vegetable oil. Yup, vegetable oil. Basically, once they are done adding a new fuel tank and filter system, the owner of the truck......

It's easy to forget that, with all the hype recently bestowed to the Violet Hour since it opened months ago (much of it warranted, we'll preface), that this city was already teeming with master mixologists before Toby Maloney blew back into town. Case in point, at the recent "Chicago Iron Bartender" competition, Sepia's Peter Vestinos beat out a packed field including Nacional 27's Adam Seger, Tim Lacey of Spring Restaurant Group, and Otom's James Macknyk......

Yeah, people knew how to fly the friendly skies on November 21st, 1965, when the menu above was served on a United Airlines flight from Denver to San Francisco. This and 380 other menus from airlines, ocean liners, and railroad lines are available for perusal online at the Transportation Library archives of Northwestern University. The archives hark back to a time when multiple course meals were de rigueur not only for first class passengers,......

Mayor Daley and the FAA got in a bit of a pissing match over the weekend, with the FAA cooling their jets after a Tribune article published Saturday cited the FAA as stating a 2004 cap on flights would not be lifted after the new runway opened at O’Hare. Flight restrictions were imposed in an effort to help ease flight delays and cancellations, and the two parties came to realize they had different expectations of......

Today's New York Times has a profile of Tom Nauman, a mushroom hunter in downstate Magnolia who also owns a store dedicated to morels with his wife. The story tracked the Nauman as he searched the woods in search of edible mushrooms. It wasn't really news that edible mushrooms grow in Illinois. The story did prompt us to ask why we don't hunt for mushrooms ourselves, with the Forest Preserves nearby? A couple calls to......

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......

We first heard of Acrassicauda through a story on NPR, describing the trials and tribulations of these heavy metal band of Iraqi refugees. They were recently hunkered down in Damascus, but got out in the nick of time when Syria started ejecting all Iraqi refugees, and not the group is in Istanbul ... trying their damndest to keep from getting sent back to Bagdhad. VICE has sort of taken the group under its wing and......

Treaty Of Paris is one of those bands that doesn't get a lot of critical acclaim, despite the fact that they've been plugging away at the local scene for a number of years, under a couple different guises. We suppose one reason for this is the band's chosen genre, which we would say falls somewhere on the FUSE-friendly emo-pop-punk radar. What we're trying to figure out is when exactly that sort of thing became a......

We always appreciate when the New York Times Travel Section takes time out of its busy day to come and visit our little Midwestern city. The last time they stopped by they discovered that the West Loop is cool! This time, they send "the frugal traveler" to answer one of life's big questions: Is it possible to spend a weekend in Chicago and spend less than $500? The answer, of course, is not only that......

Eeeeverybody's talking the Complaints Choir of Chicago this week — Daily Herald, Sun-Times, the Trib, Time Out, 848, even UPI — and with good reason. The Complaints Choir is rad! How do we know? Er, Chicagoist is in it. And so are a bunch of Chicagoist readers. But we'd think it was awesome anyway! Really. We've covered the choir before, but as a quick refresher: Finnish performance artists and husband-and-wife team Oliver Kotchta-Kalleinen and Tellervo......

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … an electric shaver? Low-rise capris? A James Michener book? Holy cripes, DUCK!!! This very well could have been the scenario yesterday in the vicinity of Midway Airport. Seems a Delta plane bound for Atlanta (or “Hotlanta,” as one of our coworkers insists on calling it) experienced a pressure abnormality soon after takeoff. Upon inspection, it was revealed that one of the bin doors holding the luggage at......

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