Events

Welcome to stop #27 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Oak Park Brewing Co., 155 S. Oak Park Ave., Oak ParkTrain line: Union Pacific West, Oak ParkTime from Chicago: 16 minutes (Zone B)Distance from station: 700 m Oak Park Brewing Co. is the first brewpub in Oak Park since 1872, when the village went dry. Yesterday evening an old friend and I donned masks and sat outside in the perfect weather to have pub food and, in my case anyway, beer. From left to right, I sampled: the Leprechaun Zombie...

Josh Marshall sums up the criminal negligence of the president and his enablers: The US is not experiencing a surge. We are back to exponential growth in the virus just as most of the rest of the wealthy, industrialized world is moving on. COVID is not done for them of course. There are masks and mitigation and distancing and people are still falling ill. Some are dying. But most of these countries have beaten Covid down into low enough numbers that they can get about the business of a new form of...

Tomorrow a good portion of the United States will celebrate our independence from the UK. NPR this morning reminded me about the portion of the US that Frederick Douglass described in his speech to the Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, N.Y., on 5 July 1852. I think everyone should take 15 minutes and listen to it. Or read it, in full here. Or watch James Earl Jones read part of it here:

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago annual benefit will take place at 7pm on Friday July 17th. We have to do it online, of course, but the original plan had us at Mayne Stage on April 4th. I had to go up there tonight to take some publicity photos, and I remembered I took this photo in April 1993: Here's the same scene two hours ago: Mayne Stage is on the left, in the space that apparently used to be the Cobbler's Mall behind the Poolgogi Steak House. The neighborhood has changed quite a bit in the last 27...

A couple on the north side of Chicago planted hedges around a patch of public park land and fought the city's attempts to get the land back for 15 years. Then a local blog got ahold of the story, and the hedges came right out: About 8:30 a.m., a landscaping crew was at the home in the 3000 block of North Lake Shore Drive West to remove the hedgerow on public land. The politically connected homeowner, businessman Michael Tadin Jr., confirmed he ordered the bushes removed. As neighbors watched the...

As I take a minute from banging away on C# code to savor my BBQ pork on rice from the local Chinese takeout, I have these to read: President Trump once again said the quiet part out loud, announcing he plans to gut fair-housing rules because otherwise they would "have...a devastating impact on these once thriving Suburban areas." The Supreme Court will hear arguments whether the House can have access to Robert Mueller's unredacted report—in the fall. Josh Marshall goes over the "ominous and harrowing"...