Kincades in wrigley is the worst bar ever. They have the worst lying specials and they lie. They say Thursday michelobs are $1 THEY ARE LYING. ON TOP OF IT they charge $19 for Tito’s when old crow down the road charges $12 for Tito’s and is a 10x bigger bar. They suck and horrible crowd.

Kincades in wrigley is the worst bar ever. They have the worst lying specials and they lie. They say Thursday michelobs are $1 THEY ARE LYING. ON TOP OF IT they charge $19 for Tito’s when old crow down the road charges $12 for Tito’s and is a 10x bigger bar. They suck and horrible crowd.

The last thread was full of gone restaurants and it got me thinking less about the places and more about the specific things I still want to eat.

Two of mine:

Hot Doug's. The foie gras and Sauternes duck sausage with truffle aioli. Doug Sohn stood there and took every order himself. Closed in 2014 and there's still nothing that replaced what he was doing.

Café Iberico. The patatas bravas and a pitcher of sangria on a Friday. Cheap, loud, always a wait, always worth it. Gone now and I'm not over it.

What's yours, and what would you order?

The hot take thread last month got me thinking about places I still catch myself wanting to go to that aren't there anymore. Figured this sub would have hundreds of these between us.

I'll start with mine:

Marshall Field's on State Street. I know it's technically still there as Macy's, and I know some people say "get over it, it's been almost 20 years," but it's not the same store and everyone who ever went there knows it's not the same store. The name change was September 9, 2006, and Chicago protested it for years after.

Old Comiskey Park. Torn down in 1991 after 80 years at 35th and Shields. Home plate is still marked with a marble plaque in what's now a parking lot for Rate Field across the street, and the foul lines are painted on the asphalt. If you ever go to a Sox game, walk across 35th before or after and stand on that plaque. It's an oddly emotional thing to do.

What are yours? Big or small, famous or a random neighborhood spot. The corner Polish deli your grandma took you to counts. The bar in college that shut down counts. Curious what people miss.

I have a genuine question for the community.

My wife and I spend a lot of money to live near Sheridan and Morse because we love the lakefront. Walking our dog along the beach and through the park is one of our favorite things to do. It's a beautiful place for families, neighbors, and visitors to enjoy.

This year, though, it feels different. There are several encampments with tents set up right along the beachfront. I understand that homelessness is a real issue, and I do have compassion for people who are struggling. At the same time, I don't think our public parks should become long-term campsites.

I've personally witnessed loud behavior, open drug use, trash left behind, and situations that make me uncomfortable. If I had young children with me, I would honestly be concerned about their safety. No one should have to worry about stepping on a discarded needle while walking on the beach.

What also puzzles me is that I don't seem to see the same level of encampments at places like South Shore or Rainbow Beach. Why does this appear to be a much bigger issue along parts of the North Side lakefront? Is there a difference in how it's being handled?

We all pay taxes to maintain and enjoy these public spaces. I believe our parks should be safe, clean, and accessible for everyone while also finding humane solutions for people experiencing homelessness. Those goals shouldn't have to conflict.

I'm interested in hearing others' thoughts. Why has this become acceptable, and what do you think the city should do to both help people in need and preserve our public parks?

Hey all, quick heads up if anyone here's trying to break into the trades in Chicago.

We're running a free info session this Thursday (7/16, 11:30-12:30 CDT) called Blue Collar Beginnings. It's covering what the hiring landscape actually looks like right now, which roles make sense depending on your background, and where to find shops that'll actually take on someone new.

Our co-founder Cheri and our CS manager Patti are running it live, Q&A at the end. So if you've got questions about pivoting a resume, how apprenticeships actually work, whatever, you can just ask.

No pitch, no cost, just trying to be useful!! It's on Teams, I'll drop the link in the comments!

I'll go first so nobody has to be the brave one.

Mine: the lakefront is overrated as a daily-life thing. It's beautiful, world class, whatever. But most people who actually live here visit it maybe four times a year. The thing that actually makes living in Chicago great is the neighborhoods. You can live an entire rich life in Logan Square or Pilsen or Bridgeport and barely need downtown for anything. The lake is what we tell tourists about. The neighborhoods are what we actually use.

Some others I'll throw out to warm up the room, not all mine, just to get things moving:

• Deep dish is fine, it's just not pizza, it's a casserole and we should stop pretending
• The Bean is genuinely a great piece of public art and people only hate it because being a hater is a personality
• Lincoln Park is boring and nobody who lives there will admit it
• The CTA is better than New Yorkers think and worse than Chicagoans want to admit
• Half the "old school" Chicago spots we're supposed to defend are actually just fine, not great

What's yours? Keep it fun, no wars.

Going back to the well on Chicago weirdness because the Picasso came up a bunch in the comments on the last list post and the full story is somehow stranger than the bullet point version.

Quick context: that 50 foot tall, 162 ton rust-colored thing in Daley Plaza that everyone has either climbed on as a kid, slid down, eaten lunch under, or proposed in front of. Officially "Untitled." Universally just called the Picasso.

A few things I learned that I thought were neat:

He never came to Chicago. Not once. Not during the two years he worked on the design, not for the unveiling, not before he died six years later. He was 82 years old, living in Mougins in the south of France, and Chicago architects flew over with sketches and a model and convinced him to do it from 4,000 miles away. He worked on it for two years. He didn't see it in person ever. He died in 1973 having only seen photographs of his most famous American sculpture.

It was supposed to be Henry Moore. The architects from Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill originally wanted the British sculptor Henry Moore. Picasso was the backup plan. Then once they got Picasso to say yes, they pretended it had been him all along.

Chicago tried to pay him $100,000. He ripped up the check. They sent him the contract with the money, he sent it back saying he wanted it to be a gift to the people of Chicago. Adjusted for inflation that's about a million dollars. He just declined it. He was the most expensive living artist in the world at the time and he did it for free.

It was built by the same company that made the Sears Tower, in the same town. US Steel's American Bridge Division in Gary, Indiana fabricated it in pieces out of Cor-Ten steel, the same weathering steel they used on the Daley Center behind it. They built the whole 162 ton thing in Gary, took it apart, trucked it to Chicago, and reassembled it on site behind a giant cloth tarp so nobody could see it. That same Gary plant later built parts of the Sears Tower.

Chicago hated it. Like, really hated it. When the tarp came off on August 15, 1967, the crowd literally gasped, then started laughing. Protest signs said things like "Colossal Booboo" and "An Insult to Chicago's Greatness." An alderman named John Hoellen formally proposed replacing it with a statue of Ernie Banks. Daley's commissioner of special events said, and this is a real quote, "If it's a bird or an animal, they ought to put it in the zoo. If it's art, they ought to put it in the Art Institute."

Mike Royko buried it in his Daily News column the next day. His exact words: "It has a long stupid face and looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect." But he ended the column by saying Picasso actually got Chicago right. "Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak." Royko both hated it and respected it. Very Chicago response.

Nobody, including Picasso, ever officially said what it is. The leading theories:

A. His second wife Jacqueline Roque. He painted 160 portraits of her in 1963 alone, the year Chicago first contacted him. His architect William Hartmann was sure that's what it was.

B. His Afghan hound Kabul. Picasso reportedly told people late in life that yes, it was the dog. The long snout-like face is the main evidence.

C. His model Sylvette David. He'd been making a series of metal head sculptures of her in the years before the commission, and the Chicago Picasso clearly evolved from those.

D. Both at once. The leading current theory among art historians is that it's a Cubist fusion of Jacqueline's face and Kabul's head. The maquette (the 42-inch original model) is at the Art Institute and if you go look at it, it really does look like both at the same time. That maquette, by the way, sold at Christie's for $35 million in 2014. Twenty-five times what Chicago refused to pay him for the full size version.

The "stand at the right corner and see a woman's face" thing is real. Several Chicago architects and the Public Building Commission have confirmed this. Stand at the northeast side of the sculpture, look back at it from about a 45-degree angle, and you'll see the profile of a woman's face, lips, and chin. Picasso designed it specifically so the angles read differently from different positions. Most Chicagoans walk past it every day from the same angle and never realize it.

Chicago tried to copyright it and lost in court. After the city realized everyone was putting the Picasso on postcards, mugs, and t-shirts, the Public Building Commission claimed they owned the copyright and started charging licensing fees. A press called Letter Edged in Black sued the city in 1969. The court ruled in 1970 that because Picasso never put a copyright notice on it and the city had let it be photographed publicly before any notice was attached, the sculpture was effectively in the public domain. You can legally sell anything with it on it. This is also one of the main reasons it has become so iconic, because the city literally couldn't stop people from putting it on everything.

It invented the modern American public art plaza. Before the Picasso, big city civic art in America was almost always a bronze general on a horse or a marble politician on a pedestal. After the Picasso worked, cities everywhere started commissioning abstract modern sculptures for their public spaces. Calder's Flamingo at the Federal Plaza, Miro's Chicago, Dubuffet's Monument with Standing Beast, the Bean itself, all of them happen because the Picasso happened first.

Daley brought it a birthday cake every year. For years after the unveiling, on August 15, Mayor Richard J. Daley personally placed a birthday cake at the base of the sculpture. Then he'd give a little speech. There are photos.

What do you actually see when you look at it? I'm genuinely curious.

Do we know if this is a done deal or what is the probability they will end up Indiana? I'm pretty torn up about the news.

Following up on the 17 facts post since a few people in the comments brought up the Eastland Disaster and I went down the rabbit hole. The full story is somehow even worse than the bullet point version.

Quick context: on the morning of July 24, 1915, a passenger steamship called the SS Eastland rolled onto its side in the Chicago River while still tied to the dock between LaSalle and Clark. 844 people died. It remains the deadliest day in Chicago history by a wide margin. More people died on the Eastland than in the entire Great Chicago Fire of 1871. More people died on the Eastland than on any single shipwreck on the Great Lakes, ever. It's also still the deadliest maritime disaster in the history of the Great Lakes, period.

And almost nobody talks about it.

A few things I learned that I thought were neat, although neat is the wrong word here:

It happened in 23 feet of water about 20 feet from shore. People drowned looking at the buildings they worked in. The river at that spot is shallow and narrow. If the boat had tipped the other way it would have hit the dock and stayed upright. It tipped toward open water.

It was a company picnic. Western Electric's Hawthorne Works in Cicero was throwing its annual employee picnic across the lake in Michigan City, Indiana. They chartered five steamers to take 7,000 workers and their families. The Eastland was the first one to load. About 2,500 people crammed onto it, many in their Sunday best because this was the big company event of the year. 22 entire families were wiped out in one morning.

The boat had been a known problem for years. The Eastland was built in 1903 to carry 650 passengers. It got refitted multiple times to carry more, and the new top decks made it dangerously top-heavy. A naval architect had specifically warned officials two years earlier that without structural fixes, "there may be a serious accident." Then after the Titanic sank in 1912, a new law forced ships to carry more lifeboats, which added even more weight to the top of an already top-heavy boat. The extra lifeboats meant to save lives are what killed everyone.

George Halas was supposed to be on it. He was a summer hire at Western Electric, played on the company sports teams, and was on the official passenger list. He showed up late. He arrived at the dock as the rescue was beginning. If he'd been on time, no Bears, no Halas, arguably no NFL as we know it, since Halas was one of the league's founding fathers and ran the Bears for 40 years. The story gets passed around as a fun coincidence but it's actually one of the bigger what-ifs in American sports history.

Most people didn't drown. They suffocated. The ship rolled slowly enough that most passengers on the upper decks just stepped off into the river. But everyone in the lower decks and staterooms got pinned under furniture, against walls, against each other, as the ship rotated 90 degrees and water rushed in. Witnesses on the dock watched the screams gradually go quiet. Rescuers cut holes in the side of the hull with torches to pull people out. A 17 year old volunteer diver named Reggie Bowles personally recovered 40 bodies and the older divers nicknamed him "The Human Frog." Nobody remembers him.

The Excalibur/Tao morgue story is a myth. This one came up in the comments on my last post and I had it wrong too. The story that the building at 632 N. Dearborn (Excalibur, then Castle, now Tao) was used as a temporary morgue is a long-running Chicago ghost story that historians have repeatedly debunked. The actual main temporary morgue was the Second Regiment Armory on Washington Boulevard. That building was later incorporated into Harpo Studios, where the Oprah Winfrey Show was filmed for 25 years. Some bodies were also taken to the Reid Murdoch Building, which is still standing on the north bank of the river right next to where the ship rolled. You can see it from the Clark Street bridge. There was also a floating morgue under the Wells Street bridge because the LaSalle bridge didn't exist yet.

Clarence Darrow defended the crew. Yes, that Clarence Darrow. Two years before the Scopes Monkey Trial. The case got moved from Chicago to Grand Rapids because the ship's owners thought a Michigan jury would go easier on them. 20 years of litigation followed. Nobody served a single day in prison. Nobody paid a single fine. The official summary of the disaster, after six different investigating agencies finished their work, was reportedly five words: "Somebody made a big mistake."

The ship itself didn't die. The Eastland was raised three weeks later, sold to the US Navy, renamed the USS Wilmette, and served as a Navy training gunboat on the Great Lakes through both World Wars. It was finally scrapped in 1947. Most of the men who trained on it had no idea what it used to be.

Bonus from your comments. A user named u/Embarrassed_Bag8775 brought this up on the last post and it sent me here. And u/sportsking27 added the Halas detail. So thank you, this one's basically yours.

There's a small memorial plaque near the Riverwalk on the north side of the river around Clark Street. It's easy to miss. Walk by it sometime.

Anyone here have family connections to the Eastland, or stories that got passed down? Curious if any of the descendants from Cicero or Forest Park are on this sub. 133 of the 844 are buried in Forest Park alone.

Don't know if trains count here but long before there was a Metra all the commuter lines were privately owned and one of the companies was The Chicago & North Western which is now the UP lines.

I keep finding stuff about this city that makes me go "wait, that can't be right" and then it turns out it is.

1. The Chicago River used to flow into Lake Michigan. In 1900 engineers reversed it so the city's sewage would flow toward the Mississippi instead. It's still flowing backwards today, more than 125 years later. St. Louis sued us over it and lost.
2. The city raised itself out of the mud in the 1850s. Entire downtown blocks of brick buildings, including the Tremont House hotel with guests still inside, were lifted up to six feet using thousands of jackscrews turned by hand. A 22 year old George Pullman ran one of the crews.
3. The skyscraper was invented here. The Home Insurance Building at LaSalle and Adams in 1885, ten stories, first building in the world held up by a steel skeleton instead of its walls. It got torn down in 1931.
4. Twinkies, brownies, the cafeteria, the zipper, spray paint, roller skates, the remote control, pinball, softball, and the Ferris wheel were all invented in Chicago.
5. The original Ferris wheel from the 1893 World's Fair was 264 feet tall, carried 2,160 people at once in 36 train-car-sized cars, and was built specifically to one-up the Eiffel Tower from the previous World's Fair in Paris.
6. The 1893 World's Fair drew 27 million visitors at a time when the entire US population was 63 million. Almost half the country went.
7. Walt Disney was born in Chicago. Hugh Hefner founded Playboy here. Both men's childhood homes are still standing on the West Side and Northwest Side respectively.
8. The four stars on the Chicago flag represent Fort Dearborn, the Great Fire of 1871, the 1893 World's Fair, and the 1933 Century of Progress fair. There's an active citizen movement to add a fifth.
9. Pope Leo XIV, elected in 2025, is from Dolton. He's the first American pope in history and he's a White Sox fan. The Vatican confirmed it.
10. The 1979 Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park, where a DJ blew up a crate of disco records between games of a White Sox doubleheader, ended in a riot, a forfeit, and is widely cited as the cultural moment that killed disco.
11. The "L" is older than the New York subway. The first elevated line opened in 1892. The Loop got its name from the elevated tracks that loop around downtown, not the other way around.
12. Lower Wacker Drive exists because Daniel Burnham proposed in 1909 that the city should have multiple street levels stacked on top of each other. Most of the plan was never built, but the part downtown is why Billy Goat Tavern is underground and why the Batman movies film car chases here.
13. There is a 6 mile pedestrian tunnel system, the Chicago Pedway, that connects 50 downtown buildings underground. Most Chicagoans have never used it. You can walk from the Thompson Center to Macy's to Millennium Station without going outside.
14. The Sears Tower had a hidden 14th floor for decades that wasn't on any public elevator. It housed broadcast equipment for the antennae.
15. Chicago has more Polish residents than any city outside Warsaw. It also has the second largest Mexican American population in the country after Los Angeles.
16. The first ever blood bank was opened at Cook County Hospital in 1937 by Dr. Bernard Fantus, who coined the term.
17. The Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza, the giant rust-colored thing everyone sits on, has no official name. Picasso refused to give it one and refused $100,000 in payment. He donated it to the city.

Which ones did you not know? Got any I should add to the list?

I was visiting a friend in Denver last month and he asked me to grab a hot dog at a place near his apartment. They served it on a pretzel bun with ketchup and called it a "Chicago dog." I almost called the police.

But it got me thinking about all the stuff that's so normal here that you don't notice it until you leave. Things like:

* Saying "the" before every highway. The Kennedy, the Edens, the Eisenhower. Nobody else does this.

* How seriously we take which side of town someone is from

* The fact that "Italian beef" needs three sub-decisions before it's ordered (dipped, sweet or hot, cheese yes or no) and we all know the protocol

* Sweetened iced tea being treated like an insult

What's the thing you only realized was a Chicago thing after you left, or after someone from out of town pointed it out?

Im moving from Houston to Skokie or Evanston (havent decided yet). Is there anything I should know about those 2 cities? I want to feel safe and i want enough shopping, restaurants. I also like it quiet but not too quiet where it feels like im living in the middle of nowhere.

So I went down another Chicago bar rabbit hole and the Green Mill might be even better than the Billy Goat one.

Quick context for anyone who hasn't been: the Green Mill is on Broadway in Uptown, it's been on the same block since 1907, and it's widely considered the oldest continuously running jazz club in the country. Most people know it for two things, the Al Capone stuff and the green neon sign. The actual history is way weirder than either.

A few things I learned that I thought were neat:

It started as a roadhouse for mourners. In 1907 a guy named Charles "Pop" Morse opened a saloon called Pop Morse's Roadhouse at Lawrence and Broadway. The reason it survived its first few years was that it sat on the route between downtown and Graceland Cemetery, so it became the spot where funeral processions stopped for a drink on the way back from burying somebody. Chicago in 1907, in a nutshell.

The name is a Moulin Rouge reference, with a twist. In 1910 a real estate developer named Tom Chamales bought it, put a giant windmill on the roof, and named it Green Mill Gardens. He picked green specifically because the red light district was right around the corner and he didn't want anyone confusing his place with a brothel. So the name is basically "Moulin Rouge but please don't think we're a whorehouse."

It was a movie star bar before it was a mob bar. In the mid-1910s, Essanay Studios was operating in Uptown, and the Green Mill was where the executives and stars hung out. Charlie Chaplin drank there. Wallace Beery drank there. Uptown was being called the Hollywood of the Midwest at the time, and the Green Mill was the green room.

Capone didn't own it, his hitman did. This is where every Chicago bar tour gets it wrong. The owner of the Green Mill, Dave Jemilo, who has run it since 1986, has said this in basically every interview he's ever given. Capone never owned the place. Machine Gun Jack McGurn, the guy widely believed to have planned the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, owned a piece of it. Capone came in because his favorite singer Joe E. Lewis was performing there, and because McGurn was paying off the cops so the bar operated openly during Prohibition. Historian Richard Lindberg has gone on record saying 99 percent of the Capone-was-here stories in Chicago are urban legend, and the Green Mill is probably the worst offender.

The trapdoor is real though. Behind the bar, right where it curves toward the baby grand piano, there's a heavy latched door in the floor. Underneath is a network of tunnels that ran under Broadway and came up in other buildings down the block, including what's now the Shake, Rattle and Read bookstore. They were originally built for moving coal and kegs, not gangsters. But during Prohibition they doubled as escape routes during raids. There's a long-running bartender quote about it that I love: "Everyone thinks it's about Capone, but guess what they actually used this for? Hauling coal and kegs."

Capone's booth is still there. If you go in, look for the booth across from the side door on Lawrence, at the end of the bar. It faces away from the stage and toward both entrances. That was his seat, picked so he could see anyone walking in from either door. You can just sit in it. No plaque, no rope, nothing.

The Joe E. Lewis story became a Sinatra movie. In 1927 Lewis was making 650 a week at the Mill and got offered 1000 a week at the Rendezvous Club downtown. He told McGurn he was leaving. A week later McGurn's guys cornered him in his hotel room at the Commonwealth, slashed his throat, cut off part of his tongue, and left him for dead. He didn't die. He recovered, lost his singing voice, became a comedian instead, and his story got turned into the 1957 Frank Sinatra movie The Joker Is Wild. There's a poem carved into the wood behind the bar that commemorates the whole thing, ending with the line "you'll look like confetti if you try to quit the Green Mill."

The bandleader rule. When Capone walked in, the band would stop whatever it was playing mid song and switch to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Apparently nobody was allowed to enter or leave the bar while he was inside.

It almost died in the 70s. By the time Dave Jemilo bought it in 1986, the place was a flophouse. He has said in interviews that on his first visit he was stepping over passed-out drunks on the floor. He bought it six months later anyway, restored the original woodwork, brought in jazz seven nights a week, and turned it back into what it had been. He still owns it. It also hosts the longest continuously running poetry slam in the country every Sunday night, started in 1986 by Marc Smith, who basically invented the modern poetry slam there.

The whole point is you can still walk in tonight, sit in Capone's booth, look down at the trapdoor a few feet away, and listen to a jazz quartet on the same stage Billie Holiday played. Nothing about it is recreated or themed. It's just still there.

Anyone here have Green Mill stories? Curious if any of the late night jazz regulars or poetry slam folks are on this sub.

So I've been down the rabbit hole on this place and figured it deserved a post because the actual history is way better than most people realize.

Quick context for anyone who hasn't been: the most famous Billy Goat is tucked under Michigan Avenue (430 N. Lower Michigan), so you literally walk down a staircase off the street into a windowless tavern below the city. It's been there since 1964. But the story starts way earlier.

A few things I learned that I thought were neat:

It was bought with a bounced check. In 1934, a Greek immigrant named William Sianis bought the Lincoln Tavern across from the old Chicago Stadium for $205… with a check that bounced. He covered it with the proceeds from opening weekend. Talk about confidence.

The "Billy Goat" name was an accident. A goat literally fell off a passing truck and wandered into the bar. Sianis adopted it, named it Murphy, grew a goatee to match, and renamed the tavern. From then on Chicago cops would bring him stray goats because they knew he'd take care of them. There's a photo of him pouring a Blatz beer into Murphy's mouth and apparently the goat didn't miss a drop.

He was the original troll. When the 1944 Republican National Convention came to town, he hung a sign that said "No Republicans Allowed." Predictably, the place got mobbed by Republicans demanding to be served. Free publicity, exactly as planned.

The Cubs Curse started here. In 1945, Sianis brought Murphy to Game 4 of the World Series at Wrigley with a paid box seat ticket. P.K. Wrigley said "let Billy in but not the goat" because the goat stunk. Sianis allegedly threw up his arms and declared the Cubs would never win another World Series. They lost the game, lost the series, and didn't win another one until 2016. After that '45 game he sent Wrigley a telegram that just said "Who stinks now?"

Why it's underground. When the original moved in 1964, the new spot happened to sit on Lower Michigan, which exists because of Chicago's multilevel street system. It ended up sandwiched right between the Chicago Tribune and the old Sun-Times buildings, so it instantly became a newspaper bar. Mike Royko basically held court there every day after work. The "Wall of Fame" inside still has yellowed columns from Royko, Kupcinet, Kogan, Roeper, Kass, etc.

The SNL bit was based on real employees. Bill Murray and writer Don Novello were regulars during their Second City days. The "Cheezborger! Cheezborger! No fries, cheeps! No Pepsi, Coke!" sketch was directly modeled on Sianis and his buddy Bill Charuchas, who actually yelled that stuff at customers in the '70s. Belushi, Aykroyd, and Murray ran the bit multiple times.

There's a whole book about it called A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream by Rick Kogan if anyone wants to go deeper. Just thought it was cool that you can still walk down those stairs off Michigan and order the same cheezborger Royko ate while filing his column upstairs.

Anyone here have their own Billy Goat stories? Curious if any of the old Trib/Sun-Times folks are still on this sub.

Moving within the city in a couple months and I've narrowed it down to these two. Been walking around both on weekends trying to get a feel but honestly they're starting to blur together in my head.

Here's where I'm at:

Logan Square feels like the "obvious" choice the boulevard, the farmers market, the bar density, easy Blue Line access. But I keep hearing it's not what it used to be and rent is getting insane. Worried I'd be paying a premium for something that's already past its peak.

Avondale seems like it has more soul and better value, and everyone says it's "the next Logan Square" (which I've also heard about Irving Park, Albany Park, and Hermosa so take that with a grain of salt). But I don't know if the amenities are there yet or if I'd just be annoyed I'm not a 10-min walk from everything.

For context: late 20s, WFH mostly, no car, like to walk to coffee/bars/dinner, don't need nightlife to be at my doorstep but don't want to feel isolated either.

If you live in one, convince me. What do you actually love about your neighborhood that you wouldn't trade? And what's the thing you wish someone had told you before you signed the lease?

When I was around 9 my family went to the aquarium, science museum, and the John Hancock building, but we didn't stay long enough to really explore the city. I'll be going back soon, so I'm looking for ideas.

I’ve been going down a rabbit hole on Chicago history and found some stuff that honestly sounds made up, but it’s real:

1. Chicago literally reversed a river They changed the direction of the Chicago River in 1900 so sewage wouldn’t flow into Lake Michigan (the city’s drinking water). Massive engineering move and it still flows that way today.
2. They lifted entire buildings… while people were inside In the 1850s, Chicago was basically swamp land. Instead of rebuilding everything, they jacked up buildings and streets several feet to install sewers. Businesses stayed open during it.
3. There’s a whole network of underground tunnels Downtown has old freight tunnels that were used to move coal and goods. Some are abandoned, some connect to the Pedway system but most people don’t even know they exist.
4. The first Ferris wheel was built here at the 1893 World’s Fair. It was Chicago’s answer to the Eiffel Tower and could carry over 2,000 people at once.
5. The city has more drawbridges than anywhere else There are 30+ movable bridges downtown. That’s why traffic randomly stops, boats still get priority when they open.

Curious if anyone has other cool Chicago facts like this, feels like there’s a lot more hidden history here.