Photo: Heidi Harman

By Arvo Zylo

My first exposure to Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP, was late at night more than a decade ago, on Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM radio talk show. People had been recording in an abandoned mental hospital, and all of a sudden a scary old lady said, “He broke my neck!” Later that night, listeners heard a broadcast over the airwaves of what sounded like a child drowning in a room where there was neither a child nor a body of water. Supposedly, these voices were issued from a world out of reach to the human ears, or maybe the “underworld,” but certainly not from a living person, or at least what we consider to be a living person. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Life is not just a diurnal property of large interesting vertebrates,” poet Gary Snyder reminds us in his book “The Practice of the Wild.” “It is also nocturnal, anaerobic, microscopic, digestive, fermentative: cooking away in the warm dark.” I call this to your attention, Aries, because according to my astrological reckoning, you’d be wise to honor all the life that is cooking away in the warm dark. It’s the sun-at-midnight time of your long-term cycle; the phase when your luminescent soul throbs with more vitality than your shiny ego. Celebrate the unseen powers that sustain the world. Pay reverence to what’s underneath, elusive and uncanny. Halloween costume tips: Draw inspiration from the shadow, the dream, the moon, the depths. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Gil Castellanos

By Eric Lutz

I don’t believe in ghosts.

But, if I did, it would be because of a weekend trip to Galena I took a few years back, when about ten seconds of “The Lovecats” by The Cure emanated from a closed laptop in the middle of the night.

I was pretty freaked out at the time, certain we’d been visited by some hipster ghost with a penchant for eighties post-punk, and wound up driving around all night until day broke.

Nowadays, I’m inclined to think the only thing scary about that night was my carbon footprint.

Maybe it’s strong to say I don’t believe. More accurately, I just don’t think about it very much. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you have been resisting the command to go deeper, now is the time to surrender. If you have been hoping that the pesky little voice in your head will shut up and stop bugging you to get more involved, you’d better stop hoping. If you’ve been fantasizing about how to escape the growing pressure to give more of yourself, I suggest that instead you fantasize about how you could intensify your commitments. The time has come to explore what has been missing and what needs more love. Read the rest of this entry »

Rendering of the Dallas park expressway cap via the Woodall Rogers Park Foundation

By Sam Feldman

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Chicago’s received its fair share. We pioneered the steel-frame skyscraper, the Ferris wheel, and the electric blues, all worldwide hits. We started studying the idea of turning the abandoned two-point-seven-mile Bloomingdale Line into an elevated park in 1998, a year before the High Line was a gleam in anybody’s eye, though it’s New York’s elevated park that’s gotten all the attention. (To be fair, New York’s park does have the advantage of actually existing.)

But other cities have some good ideas too sometimes, and every so often we should glance around and see what might be worth stealing. We’ve made a good start with the recent announcement of a 300-kiosk bike-sharing system arriving by next summer, an idea we stole from Washington, DC, along with our new transportation chief Gabe Klein. But there’s a lot more we can rip off. There are areas where we haven’t been keeping up, or we’ve been making small plans, or we just haven’t taken the lead. Some of these ideas would cost money, but some of them would make money. Some of them might be immediately popular, while others could take some convincing. Some of them won’t happen—but some of them will. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): If it’s at all possible, Aries, don’t hang around boring people this week. Seek out the company of adventurers who keep you guessing and unruly talkers who incite your imagination and mystery-lovers who are always on the lookout for new learning experiences. For that matter, treat yourself to especially interesting food, perceptions and sensations. Take new and different routes to familiar hotspots. Even better, find fresh hotspots. Cultivating novelty is your mandate right now. Outgrowing your habits would be wise, fun and cool. Changing your mind is a luxury you need and deserve. Read the rest of this entry »

By Mike Gillis

The production of video games is, or always has been, profoundly depersonalized in modern culture. Individual vision is routinely sacrificed for profit in the over-ten-billion-dollar industry. As developers are incorporated into monolithic companies like Electronic Arts, pressure increases for blockbuster sequels and creative risk decreases, a trend that plagued the most recent E3 video game conference in Las Vegas. For a similar reason, games are commonly seen as the products of artisans, not artists.

Thankfully, this environment of stifled creativity has an alternative in the vibrant sub-industry of indie developers. While balancing financial concerns, independent developers local to Chicago manage to develop challenging, whimsical and sometimes utterly bizarre games. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Salvatore outside soon-to-open Heritage Bicycles/Photo: John Greenfield

By John Greenfield

Chicago just lost one of its coolest bike shops, but we’re gaining one that may be even cooler. Last week Dutch Bike Co. abruptly closed its Chicago location, only three months after relocating from Lincoln Park to Wicker Park. Founded in Seattle, the company opened its only satellite store three years ago at 651 West Armitage in a gallery-like storefront. They offered beautiful, practical European-style city bikes by brands like WorkCycles and Linus, most costing over $1,000.

This summer the shop moved to 2010 West Pierce, around the corner from Penny’s Noodles, in search of lower rent and higher foot traffic, says owner Dave Schmidt, speaking from Seattle. But even in bike-crazy Wicker Park, sales were not what he’d hoped for. It probably didn’t help matters that Wicker Park mainstay Rapid Transit Cycleshop, 1900 West North, and Copenhagen Cyclery, another Euro-style store at 1375 North Milwaukee, were only a stone’s throw away. Read the rest of this entry »

By Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Do unto others as they wish,” advised French artist Marcel Duchamp, “but with imagination.” I recommend that approach to you, Aries. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when you can create good fortune for yourself by tuning into the needs and cravings of others and then satisfying those needs and cravings in your own inimitable and unpredictable ways. Don’t just give the people you care about the mirror image of what they ask for; give them a funhouse mirror image that reflects your playful tinkering. Read the rest of this entry »