Nearly two hours before the night’s speaker is scheduled to go on and yet people are already buzzing around shaking off the weather inside the Conaway Center at Chicago’s Columbia College. A woman directs people to the registration line. A man jokes to his friend about her hair, but she chalks it up to the wind. A trio of adults weigh their chances of getting into tonight’s event. It feels not unlike lining up for dodgeball. No one wants to get picked last.

Two student ushers direct people to the overflow room and tell the lucky ones—those who registered early enough for tonight’s event—that the Film Row Cinema will open shortly. A few men try to flirt their way out of the room and into the theater. “I’ve got overflow tickets,” a man in a ball cap says, smirking. “How likely is it we’ll get in?”

A woman appears in a headset, “You know it’s really hit or miss. I don’t want to promise anything.” Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who’s been to Logan Square’s hipster destination The Whistler wouldn’t expect the bar to have a Super Bowl party. But not so fast! The countrified Golden Horse Ranch Band has a monthly residency at the venue and February 6, Super Bowl Sunday, just happens to fall on one of the group’s dates. The solution? Broadcast the game from the stage while the band performs, and when the Bowl concludes, auction off the television. “The residency fell on the same day as the Super Bowl, but what can we do?” Jennifer Boeder, assistant at The Whistler, says. “We’re broadcasting it on a five-inch piece-of-crap television, from the stage. They’ll play, and play the game from the stage, and talk about the game and give updates. If you actually do care, you can kind of keep score, and if you don’t care, it’s a good alternate activity.” Leave it to The Whistler crew to even make the Super Bowl some kind of art piece.

On a Monday afternoon, diehard fans of a late-night legend huddle in the cold outside NBC headquarters in Pioneer Court. More than a hundred people stand in the picket line, waving colorful signs displaying admiration for the redheaded funny man who has been making people laugh for his entire adult life.

A mother and her two young daughters stand clad in orange attire, the theme for this evening’s march along Michigan Avenue. “My daughter is the biggest Conan fan,” says the proud mom. Fans in Conan wigs and orange wool caps pace in front of the tower as security guards keep them just beyond the NBC property. “This is actually a Trump wig,” says Qais of his hair garb. “This feud is worse then Leno vs. Letterman.” Read the rest of this entry »

In Bucktown on Sunday nights at a squat side-street building with loud antics and a giant graffitied mural along one side, everybody gets their fifteen minutes. Texas Fred hosts the open mic every week at Gallery Cabaret while portraits of Picasso, Joyce, Poe and Shaw look down upon those at the bar. With shoulder-length white hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Texas Fred seems to have ignored every year since 1969. He announces each performer and delivers dusty anecdotes about hitchhiking with a voice rough from what could be the build-up of pot resin in his throat.

Fifteen minutes or three songs, whichever comes first. Pitcher after pitcher of Leinie’s, the Gallery’s special, is spent composing the perfect set list, while a middle-aged single mother is trying her hand at stand-up comedy and isn’t nearly as bad as the spoken-word poet that preceded her. Read the rest of this entry »

“You want to give a gift to the earth too, right?” asks Lindsay Maldonado, coordinator of Family and Children Programs at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. The museum, located at 2430 North Cannon Drive in Lincoln Park, will host a “green gifting activity room” every Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 3pm through December 20. “It’s just a part of our mission here at the museum to be environmentally conscious,” says Maldonado. “What we try to emphasize is creative reuse. When you think of crafts, you think of glitter and consumable goods that are probably just going to get thrown out later.” This year’s activities include making recyclable CD snowmen, envelopes to mail your thank-you letters in and gift boxes made out of old magazines and calendars. The activity room is free with admission($6-$9). “This is a time when we’re buying all of these things, and it’s important to know where everything comes from,” Maldonado says.

This time-honored tradition, which nips at your nose the day before Thanksgiving, is spent in the freezing rain. Swarms of people are bundled in winter coats, scarves, hats and gloves as they stand and wait for the massive tree in the middle of Daley Plaza to illuminate and inform that the holidays are upon us.

Families and couples from all over the Chicago area, spanning from Algonquin to Zion, flock to this historical event that has been a city staple for years, bringing back the Christmas spirit before a dreaded month of crowded malls and retail nightmares consume their lives. Tourists stuff their faces with authentic German-style pastries and bratwurst as they peruse the Christkindlmarket. The aisles are filled with trinkets, artwork and countless other overpriced souvenirs to commemorate the trek downtown during the start of the most wonderful time of year.

Helping to celebrate the occasion is local movie star and daytime talk-show host Bonnie Hunt, always proud to call Chicago her hometown, saying this city makes her feel pretty when compared to Los Angeles, but we can let that slide. Read the rest of this entry »

“Fifteen bucks but it’s totally worth it—Big Gigantic is here!” sounds a voice from the crowd of people gathered outside Uptown’s Kinetic Playground.

Such unbridled enthusiasm doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Big Gigantic, an electronica/hip-hop duo from Boulder, Colorado, has managed to amass quite a Chicago following. “Last time we played Chicago,” shares drummer Jeremy Salken, “200 people confirmed on Facebook, but 500 ended up showing.”

The opening band plays softly while the few that have arrived lounge on the large cushioned bench that lines the back wall. Almost no one has a drink in hand and, if they do, it’s a Red Stripe held almost disdainfully, as if it has been forced upon them or they are holding it for someone else. There is a masseuse in one corner giving what appear to be “tip what you feel it was worth” massages and a lone, blonde-dreadlocked hula-hooper twists her pink tank-topped torso to the beat in another. This is no Lincoln Park Pub Crawl. 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

When Hulk Hogan is slated to appear at the Michigan Avenue Borders to sign his new hardcover, “My Life Outside The Ring,” fans line up outside as early as 6:30am to catch a glimpse of their god. Chris, the first in line, has not only already purchased fifteen copies of the memoir, but flew all the way down from Edmonton to stand in The Hulkster’s presence. “He’s The Hulk and nothing is going to break him,” he says of the wrestler’s recent reality-show-beamed travails. Will, a fan since 1983, is wearing a sleeveless shirt, displaying his Hulk tattoo surrounded by inked signatures of all his wrestling idols.

By Hulk’s side stands the Don King of wrestling, “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart, clad in a sport coat, Chuck Taylors and dark shades to complement his jet-black mullet. When The Real American walks out, the only sound in the room is the thunderous chant of “Hulk, Hulk, Hulk,” with fists in the air as the wrestling rock star enters. A fan near the front of the line who comes dressed as his hero, calls at him to tear off his shirt in the fashion that made him famous. The Hulk can’t resist the photo op as his huge sun-drenched hands rip the cotton material from the fan’s chest. Yeah brother! (Jonathan Kaplan)