This Week’s Biggest Gainers
1 Mayor Daley
After a years-long battle with neighboring town Bensenville, a settlement was reached which allows the city’s O’Hare Expansion Project to move forward. Read the rest of this entry »
The awaiting crowd erupts with joyous congratulatory support as each racer reaches the top of Willis Tower. Drenched in sweat and smiles, the participants in this year’s Sky Rise Chicago couldn’t be happier to finish the 103-flight climb, if only to glimpse one of the best views in the world. Racers catch their breath and converse with fellow climbers, gazing out the windows of the Sky Deck, able to not only see their houses from up here, but miles beyond.
This is the first year the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago organized this event, which raises money to continue awareness for their cause. Founded in 1954, RIC has been named the “#1 Rehabilitation hospital in America” by U.S News and World Report every year for the last eighteen years. Their standards of care and innovative research are commended, especially in the field of bionic medicine, robotics and neural regeneration. But you don’t have to be a Harvard graduate to understand the immensely positive affects the RIC has on its patients.
The more-than-1,800 participants include current and former RIC patients and employees, local firefighters, high-school track teams, elite climbers and Paralympics athletes, who have a hand-cycle event that allows them to peddle the distance and resistance of the massive 103-floor climb.
Scrabble has been broadening players’ lexicons for decades. This day, November 14, the game proves to take that dynamic a step further at the annual Scrabble for Literacy Challenge, held in the Grossinger City Autoplex. All proceeds go towards adult and family literacy programs, in addition to the Jump Start program, which helps incarcerated youth.
“It’s kind of amazing,” says Dorothy Miaso, executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Illinois. “People are often surprised at what our literacy rate is in the United States. Generally we are thought to be one of the most powerful countries in the world, but national studies indicate that almost twenty-five-percent of the adult population have literacy problems.”
Player Steve Hartsman goes by the anagram “Trashman.” He’s not having the best of days. “I started off three-and-oh, had a great morning, and have lost all three this afternoon,” he laments. “So I went from being one of the contenders to one of the pretenders, and lost all three in heartbreaking fashions.” Earlier in the day Hartsman made some impressive plays: “Well I had a triple-triple—140 points—‘parities.’ That’s by far my highest scoring play, but I also had a non-bingo for 99 points. I played ‘quezal’ (a Latin American bird). The ‘z’ was on a double letter and it was a triple word, so that was the highlight of my day.” Read the rest of this entry »
By Rob Brezsny
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. My wish for you, Aries, is that you will have many such days in the coming weeks. In fact, I hope that you will be blessed over and over again with the hair-raising thrill of having your imagination pricked, causing it to half-blossom, half-explode. To get the most out of the fantastic possibilities, set aside any tendency you might have to be a know-it-all, and instead open up your heart’s mind and your mind’s heart as wide and deep as they will go. Read the rest of this entry »
155 items + 75 you voted for. Check it out at http://best.newcity.com
And how about this cover, from Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer, who were recently profiled in our art column, Eye Exam. And Sonnenzimmer discusses the story behind this cover, here.
And, finally, be sure to check out Fred Sasaki’s, um, ode to the Best head waiter on our Resto site.
By Rob Brezsny
ARIES (March 21-April 19): A whitewash happens when you use deceit to cover up the messy facts about a situation. A blackwash is just the opposite: It’s when you invoke candor as you reveal complications that have previously been veiled. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the coming weeks will be prime time to enjoy a jubilee of blackwashing. But I suggest that you proceed gently. Remember that not all hidden information is a sign of malfeasance or evil intentions. Sometimes the truth is so paradoxical and nuanced, it’s hard to get it completely out in the open all at once. And sometimes people are motivated to keep things secret mostly because they’re afraid to cause pain. Read the rest of this entry »
People get into running for many reasons—health, competition, even insanity I’m often told—but it’s hard to argue with the logic of running for the sake of indulgence. No wonder then that the Hot Chocolate 15K/5K has almost instantly become one of Chicago’s larger races, tripling in size to nearly 12,000 runners in this, its second year. Not surprisingly, the 15K field is quite a bit smaller than the 5K, but the distance is a perfect return to running for those who’ve done the Chicago Marathon three weeks earlier and need a stick or a carrot to get going again. But all runners in this race are unified in their pursuit of chocolate, which is delivered to racers through a rather tasty chocolate-fountain fondue (watching the staff madly unwrapping Hershey’s Kisses to feed the thing was something of an astonishing site) and through a conceptually terrific hot-chocolate booth. (And if we don’t talk about the assorted “trick-or-treat”-style candy-bar distributors near the finish line, those calories won’t count, so we won’t.) Read the rest of this entry »
The polls close at midnight on Wednesday so sharpen your mental pencil and get over to http://newcity.bestofchicago.sgizmo.com to get started!
A gorgeous Indian summer morning and I’m frantically zipping around the Loop on my bicycle. A guy I know from Critical Mass, a member of the powerful Pritzer family, scored me a seat at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s fourteenth annual Chicago luncheon, but I can’t remember which hotel is hosting the event.
It’s the largest fundraiser for the D.C. museum, which educates millions worldwide about the WWII tragedy and raises awareness of modern-day issues of intolerance and genocide, like the crisis in Darfur. While I certainly support the cause, I’ll admit that what I remember most from my museum visit a few years ago was thinking the Nazis had excellent graphic design.
Now late, I hammer south on Michigan from the Hyatt to the Hilton, then check email at a Kinko’s. Argh, the luncheon is north across the river at the Sheraton.
I arrive sweaty and winded to find a huge ballroom packed with more than 2,000 attendees, a sea of black suits and skirts. My table’s full of sharply dressed Critical Massers, mostly members of the “Tribe,” as we Jews like to call ourselves. The food’s terrific—a Japanese-inspired plate of teriyaki salmon, soba with edamame and sunomono salad—and it’s kosher. This stuff could give kosher Chinese a run for its money. Read the rest of this entry »
This Week’s Biggest Gainers
1 Tom Ricketts
The Ricketts family officially became owners of the Cubs and Tom’s comments to the press received nearly unanimous praise. Read the rest of this entry »
