2004, The Year in Review

By Rachelle Bowden in Miscellaneous on Dec 30, 2004 5:38PM

Chicagoist launched in May, so it's been not quite a year that we've been around. And even though this week is super slow.. everyone's on vacation, readers & contributor's alike.. we wanted to do a summary of the things we liked this year, both on the site and off, so the skeleton staff that is around the Chicagoist offices these days compiled a list. Chicagoist has grown from an idea for a spin-off to Gothamist, to Margaret & I spending our days and nights writing as much as we could and hoping someone would read it, to what we have now - a staff of almost a dozen contributors and a rapidly growing fan base. We'd like to take a moment to thank you for your support, tips and comments, and to wish you a Happy New Year!

Click the link for a few of our favorite things -

The Political Player of the Year – Divorce
As the adage goes, “the victors write history”, and so it is easy to forget that only four weeks before the 2004 Democratic primary, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama was in third place and 14 points behind Blair Hull. But then Hull’s divorce records were unsealed, and his poll standings were whacked by accusations by his once-wife, Brenda Sexton, of him whacking her shin. The divorce’s unsavory details – revealed with a mere three weeks left to go in the race – helped Obama engineer a come-from-behind win for the Democratic nomination. It was to be Obama versus pretty-boy financier/do-gooder Jack Ryan in November.

Although early-summer polls never showed Ryan closer than eleven points in the polls, it seemed that Obama-Ryan was a real race, where real punches would be thrown. But then came whispers of another sealed divorce file from Ryan’s marriage to starlet Jerri Ryan. Ryan and Ryan both fought to keep the records closed, "for our child’s sake," they said. But WLS-7 News and the Chicago Tribune fought to open the records in a California court, and Pandora’s Box was opened: Jack wanted to have sex with Jerri in sex clubs. But Jerri wouldn’t, and then Jerri had an affair. Suddenly Jack Ryan’s campaign imploded, and after five tumultuous days, Jack Ryan gave up the Republican nomination and quit the race.

Who would replace Ryan? There was talk of mid-level Bush Administration appointees, Mike Ditka, and finally Maryland-import Alan Keyes. The über-conservative Keyes seemed to talk about nothing but abortion and all kinds of wacky-talk, proving to be a repellant candidate. So, thanks to divorce, Barack Obama sailed to an incredible 70%-27% victory, and the cover of Newsweek. Whadda year!

Favorite Wacked-Out Stories
We at Chicagoist cull through the day's major events and determine just what you, the reader, need to know. We try hard to stay high-minded and informative, but sometimes a story leaks through that's just too weird to avoid. And so, we remember, the Squirrel-Shot Gun Lady, Pimp Doughnuts, foot-long eyelashes, guy jailed for bigamy, and of course the Naperville Library Masterbator.

Chicago is a great town. And the weirdoes are just playing their part to keep us entertained.

Best Local CDs Released This Year That No One Else Has Mentioned In Their "Best Local CDs Released This Year" Lists:
In this week's Reader, Bob Mehr covers some of the major Chicago releases that hit CD bins this year. But two of our favorites didn't make his list or anybody else's (we think): Taro Sound by Quasar Wut-Wut and the debut album from The Manhandlers. If drunken pirates set out to compose the great American musical then the result would be the wickedly ambitious music of Taro Sound (provided said pirates possessed a sharp musical acumen and a horn section). The Manhandlers' album delivers a solid primer on their Stooges-meets-X-Ray-Spex sound though seeing them live is still the better bet.

Best Chicago Book
At over 1,100 pages, 6.7 pounds, and costing $40 - 65, this book has been a bit much for us to actually buy, but there's no doubt that The Encyclopedia of Chicago was the most exciting book to hit the city this year. Developed by the Newberry Library in association with CHS and more than a decade in the making, this book is the definitive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago. But that doesn't mean it's your typical boring history book. Inside are rich, full-color illustrations, more than 400 photographs, 386 thumbnail maps, 56 original thematic maps, and a comprehensive dictionary. Too bad our only interactions with the book thus far have been at our very frequent trips to Borders. Someday we'll get through the entire book, never having bought it!

The runner up in this category was this year's debut of the paperback version of Devil in the White City which made it easy for commuters to bone up on Chicago history while reading the creepy tale of Dr. Holmes, the serial killer.

Best Movies To Reverse The Toronto-As-Chicago trend:
Spider-Man 2 and Ocean's 12. Chicago (and its surrounding suburbs) finally got its own back this year with starring roles in two sequels. Proving the first is the best, the city's "L" train stood in for New York's in Spider-Man as its locales doubled for almost every city in Ocean's 12 but Rome and Amsterdam. Suck it, Canada.

Best Chicago Musical
Porchlight Music Theatre’s “Sweeney Todd”: barbers & butchers & cannibals, oh my! The intimate setting of the wee teeny tiny Theatre Building Chicago helped crank up the creep factor on a show that doesn’t need much help in that area, and the music…well, when in doubt, go Sondheim, we say. We bow to his every will.

Best Chicago Play “Omnium Gatherum” at Next Theatre Company. A dizzying hodgepodge of post-9/11 hot buttons crammed into an onstage dinner party, touching on everything from politics, religion, and terrorism to veganism and the merits of British TV shows over their American counterparts. In the end, everybody loses.

Best Copy Editing
Chicagoist has its share of sharp-eyed readers. This fact is no more apparent than when we make an error in proofreading. Luckily, this only happens on days that end in “Y.” Our mistakes are as varied as our readers. First off, we here at the Chicagoist offices seem to have a blind spot for correctly identifying the names of confectioners. And, of course, there’s our tendency to confuse the names of institutions of higher learning even though said institutions are over 100 miles apart. Although it’s not as bad as accusing a guy of a murder he didn’t commit.

But our favorite corrections come as a result of our sometimes-sloppy use of the rules of grammar and punctuation. Sometimes they get a little fiery but most of them time they’re right on. All in all, you try to keep us from getting lazy. So in that spirit, we give this year’s Best Copy Editing award to the readers of Chicagoist. We’ll make you a deal in 2005: you keep reading and we’ll try not to compose our posts when we’re drunk anymore. Deal?

Best Use of Swear Words in a Chicagoist Post (hereafter known as The Margaret Lyons Memorial Pottymouth Award)
The post we like the best in this category is a post about words that aren't socially acceptable to say and how the Trib had to manually pull a story about the word c_nt but never mentioned. Of course, being the pottymouth that she is, Margaret couldn't go the whole post without saying all of the following: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. For this she, and this post, get the award.

Favorite Restaurant
While technically it opened in 2003, Avec [615 W. Randolph] made its mark this year by combining not only the latest in dining trends but also in serving food that lives up to the overall hype of the restaurant itself. Avec did not disappoint, a rarity for those that make it to every hipster's "See And Be Seen" lists of places to haunt.

Unassuming from the get-go, Avec's staff sets the tone remarkably well. Friendly, warm, and most importantly, knowledgeable, Chicagoist was disarmed by how welcomed it felt the very first time it walked through the West Loop restaurant's doors. One gets the impression that Avec's mission is to let the food tell you how cool it is; no additional posturing is required.

Which isn't to say that the dining room itself doesn't reek of cool; using materials found during the wine making process, reviewers of Avec have described the area as something similar to a Japanese Spa. And while it's an issue on a particularly crowded night, Avec's diminutive dining space and communal method of seating its guests ups the cool faction as teems of people crowded around the Mediterranean-inspired foods give the space its energy.

The food at Avec is a culinary delight. Chicagoist was especially fond of the Deluxe Focaccia with its taleggio cheese, fresh herbs and truffle oil. Worth trying is olive-oil braised octopus, the ubriaco, as well as the pork shoulder, the hanger steak, and the quail. Especially interesting was Chef de cuisine Koren Grieveson's handmade salamis, a lovely and rare treat. photo via Citysearch.