Saturday's inaugural Chicago Beer Festival at Union Station's Great Hall has us wondering if the location is the draw for this festival. Because it certainly isn't the beer. more ›

Ride and dine in style aboard five mid-century train cars. more ›

If you're a wine lover (or a lush) an event is coming next week that you can't pass up. Wine Riot , a tasting event held in the Great Hall at Union Station, is visiting Chicago on May 21! After stops in Los Angeles and Boston, Wine Riot will offer Chicagoans a chance to taste over 250 wines of all varietals and from all over the globe. "Crash Courses" will help teach you about wine in free, 20-minute bursts and, if you're in the mood for some grooves to go with your wine, a DJ will help you get in the mood. The price is just $50 per person. more ›

If America is rethinking movie ticket pricing, sigh, why stop there? Over at Urbanophile, they are thinking about Amtrak. And specifically, the Hiawatha Line, which runs from Union Station to Milwaukee (and soon all the way to Madison —hey, go see some wolves!) for a very reasonable $22. The route is by far the most popular Amtrak service out of Chicago with a record 783,060 trips taken last year. Given the ongoing highway construction season on I-94, that number may continue to increase this year. We have taken the Hiawatha many times and never had a quibble with the price, but Urban Milwaukee writer Jeramey Jannene thinks that a more interesting (and complicated) model might push ridership to ever-more dazzling heights (off-hours discounts seem pretty natural and the Megabus model is interesting). more ›

Amtrak announced Monday that it's making a $40 million bet with taxpayer money that American's declining love affair with the airline industry will continue to falter, so they're undertaking a two-year project to give their Midwest hub, Union Station, a major upgrade. more ›

Yes, on a slow news week when the Blago Trial is on a break, we're bound to talk about only a few things: Transformers filming and the weather. Though it's the latter and not giant robots that caused 150 Megabus passengers at Union Station to suffer from heat exhaustion yesterday afternoon. As temps crept into the low 90s and the heat index neared 100, paramedics responded to the call around 5:15 p.m. as the passengers experienced a number of heat-related ailments. No one was hospitalized and a CTA cooling bus was brought in as well. more ›

In honor of National Train Day on Saturday, we have decided to momentarily set aside any frustrations we may have with Chicago-area trains and remember why the rails are such an enduring and ideal form of transportation. Vice President Joe Biden loves trains - why shouldn't we? more ›

Union Station's massive Great Hall, which is popular for movie sets (but not with waiting passengers), may soon receive an overhaul. Amtrak has asked seven architecture and real estate firms to come up with ways to make the hall and its surrounding vacant office and retail space more vibrant and more transportation-oriented. How does Chicago's Union Station look in comparison to other heavily-trafficked and iconic train stations around the U.S.? See photos above for a look. more ›

Last Fall, we took a look at some of the communities and abandonments on the far South side and in Northwest Indiana. While the weather hasn't been amenable to walking the City of the Century, David Tribby has shared some of his photography of Gary with us. This week, we'll be looking at some of the notable abandoned buildings there. For a more in depth look at the architecture of the once-great city, check out his book, Gary Indiana, a City's Ruins. more ›

Planes, trains, and automobiles the country over are being utilized to transport folks from one city to another. Here are some scenes of those trying to escape the Windy City for the holiday weekend. more ›

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, The average commute in Chicago lasts 31.6 minutes. That's among the nation's longest and, if we're "average" in any way, usually means that coffee is necessary whether you park, lock your bike, or leave the train or bus. more ›

In about 10 minutes, the city will close Jackson between Canal and Wacker for the next year to repair the bridge and rebuild the viaduct over the Union Station south passenger platforms. This, of course, means CTA bus reroutes. Several of them. Between now and April 2010, if you catch the 1, 7, X28, 126, 129, 130, 132, 151, and 156 buses in this area, you'll need to figure out your new stop. The CTA has all the details here. more ›

We've admired Richard Simmons since the 1970s, when we switched from the Jim Morrison Whiskey Diet to a more balanced one in order to once again look good in our leather pants. Simmons' willingness to be himself (Swarovski crystal tank tops? hell yes), ability to inspire people to better themselves, sense of humor, and entrepreneurial moxie make him a true American success story. Yesterday, we got a chance to meet Simmons at Union Station, where he was helping Ocean Spray to promote their new Cranergy energy drink while greeting befuddled commuters, posing for lots of cell phone and iPhone pictures and sweatin' to oldies. As an added bonus, we got to hand-deliver a portrait we had made of him a few years ago, and got a kiss on the hand in exchange. more ›

Just in time for rush hour! An Amtrak train has derailed at Union Station, blocking three Metra routes: the BNSF to Aurora, the Heritage Corridor to Joliet, and the Southwest train to Manhattan. Damn, the BNSF is having a tough day. The blockage is bad enough it could force a closure of Union Station. Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said: "At this point in time we are waiting to hear from Amtrak the extent of the derailment, how long it will be for them to move that train and restore the switches. Right now nothing is coming in, nothing is going out and we are waiting to see how Amtrak proceeds with their investigation of thi. Right now nothing is going in. Nothing is going out." more ›

Virgin Atlantic is offering free flowers, cards, cab rides and movie tickets in honor of Valentine's Day. You can grab flowers or cards at the NBC Building, Ogilvie Building, Union Station and the LaSalle Metra Train Station between 3:30 and 7:30 tonight. For free movie tickets, you have to text VPORT312 to 51684, and it'll text you back a Fandango code. Word. more ›

So the Sun-Times is laying off reporters, but it still has the money to run a moronic article about presidential candidates' sexiness? John Edwards is "not exactly wet-T-shirt sexy, but it still sets a few hearts aflutter," Rudy Giuliani is "now rather frigid," John McCain is "a far cry from a sexy man in uniform," Hillary Clinton has "stripped herself of the trappings of sexuality and femininity," Mike Huckabee "Preacher. Moving right along...," Mitt Romney's "tendency to flip-flop on certain issues belies his discomfort with sexuality," and Barack Obama "exudes the most sex appeal of the bunch." [S-T] more ›

Breaking news: An Amtrak train and a freight train collided at 48th and South Shields Ave about an hour ago, and passengers are being pulled out as we write this. Developing. UPDATE 12:27: Don Rashid from Stroger Hospital is on NBC5 saying that Stroger is in a "stage 3 disaster." The footage is showing color-coded triage areas, and so far the green zone is empty. 12:30 Witnesses are describing a sound "like an explosion" when... more ›

Winston-Salem, N.C., may have given their name to a couple of brands of cigarettes on the shelves today, but it's not their tobacco products we love most. It's their doughnuts. more ›

If you use the Clark/Lake station as a mini-hub to catch the Blue Line to O'Hare or the Orange Line to Midway, you soon will be able to get up-to-the-minute flight information on display boards. Mayor Daley introduced the intergovernmental agreement at Wednesday's City Council meeting — the city has agreed to buy the boards, install them, and maintain them, and the CTA will cover the cost of electricity. Daley wants install similar display... more ›

One good thing (about the only good thing, really) you can say about the CTA is that there aren’t a lot of bomb scares. That may be because the vehicles themselves are considered enough of a hazard, but we digress. We can’t remember the last time our train was sidelined for anything besides electrical problems or medical emergencies. National rail may be another matter entirely, though: An Amtrak train headed to Chicago from Washington, D.C. was detained last night when several suspicious packages were found abandoned on it. more ›

Chicagoist is old-fashioned. We long for the olden days of class and luxury. We are also a bit of a rail enthusiast. What could be better than being whisked off in a Zephyr to some remote part of the country, with your every want and need attended to, in the most tiptop of accomodations? Thanks to a new venture from a company called Train Chartering, we now have the opportunity to find out. more ›

How 'bout that weather last night, people? Wet and/or windy enough for ya? We lost track of how many times our umbrella caved out on us, only to cave back in on the next unholy blast of wind. In situations like that, we find the appropriate music to be somewhat helpful. Good stuff. more ›

In the movies, traveling around with a dead guy makes for great comedy (see Weekend at Bernie’s, Little Miss Sunshine). In real life, it’s just, well, kinda gross, and sad. But that’s exactly what a Grayslake woman did this weekend when her 80-year-old father died on a cross-country Amtrak trip. Daniel Stepanovich of Hammond, Ind., passed away somewhere around Glenwood Springs, Colo., but he wasn’t officially pronounced dead until just after midnight on Tuesday, seven... more ›

Federated Department Stores is in a tug of war with Target Corp. over yet another piece of Chicago history. Only this time, we’re siding with Federated. The dispute is over a 60-year old painting (entitled "Clock Mender") by Norman Rockwell, which appeared on the Nov. 3, 1945 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. more ›

Who Cares What Time it is in Elgin? more ›

• In Park Ridge they're adding signs below some stop signs that say "Stop Means Stop." If that doesn't work then maybe they can add another sign under that saying "Dammit, we mean it, STOP!!"
• A Charlotte news station did an article about all the Chicago restaurants in their town as the Panthers look to the Bears playoff game this weekend.
• A couple local art gallery owners are in deep doo for smuggling protected artifacts - you know like carved elephant tusks and ceremonial headdresses made from feathers of endangered birds and a carved shell of an endangered sea turtle.

Fake badges, football follies, and a whole lotta weed for this installment of Chicagoist's weekly celebration of stupidity: more ›

Before a certain sports team and its star player made international headlines, most outsiders associated Chicago with tales of mythic gangland figures like Al Capone or Terrible Johnny Torrio. Chicagoist saw proof of this many years ago on a family vacation to San Francisco when we encountered a street performer dressed as a clown. While making a balloon animal, the clown asked us where we were from. When we said Chicago, he said “Oh? Gangsters,... more ›

To quote Ron Burgundy, "I love scotch, scotchy scotch scotch"- we prefer bourbon. And as we've mentioned before, our motto for drinking is "If it's free, it's for me." So if you like drinking for free, drinking scotch, or both, that headline is not a typo. Through September 29th the fine folks at Johnnie Walker are hosting a "Journey of taste" at the Grand Ballroom at Union Station, and it's free! The event is... more ›

Chicagoist knows that we can sometimes be a little weird. That is, sometimes we do and say things which makes other people give us that look. You know the one. The “you’re more than a little crazy, aren’t you?” look. more ›