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Everybody needs business cards, even street gangs! In the late '70s and '80s, gang members in Chicago gave out these calling cards with handdrawn logos to introduce themselves to others, and either to intimidate or to impress with their stylish flair.
Link | More at Gang Cards - via Flavorwire
Urban Prep, also known as “Hogwarts in the Hood,” is a charter school located in inner-city Chicago. According to its website, the similarities between Hogwarts and Urban Prep include school houses. Whereas the wizarding school has four houses–Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin–Urban Prep has six “Prides” that compete against each other for academic, athletic, and extracurricular points.
“We’ve been incredibly successful,” the founder and president of Urban Prep, Tim King, tells me. “All our students are African-American, about 85% are low income and 100% of our classes have gone on to college.”
In 2010 and 2011, 100% of students who graduated from Urban Prep were accepted to college.
“It’s extraordinary when you think about it because the number of African-Americans who go on to college in our country, the numbers are really low.”
Another cliche is that the only way out for some kids is to become a rapper or a sports star.
Mr King says he wants to create role models who are engineers and scientists. Even getting a college degree makes a big difference.
“Education is key. It can become trite when you hear it, but it is really true,” he says.
As a testament for his love of Chicago, this man had a map of the city’s train system tattooed on his arm:
I absolutely LOVE Chicago. It makes me so extremely happy and proud to call myself a citizen of this amazing city.
I got this because, not only is it such a staple of Chicago, but also because fellow Chicagoans can recognize it immediately.
This is the heroic tale of skyscrapers rising from the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire, and how they inspired changes in cities across the world.
Chicago grew up fast. In 1840, it was a quiet settlement of 4,500 people. Three decades later, it had grown to a vibrant metropolis of 300,000. Unfortunately, the city planners didn’t take much stock of the materials they were using. From the planks of the sidewalks to the shingles on the roofs, the new city was built almost entirely of wood. And in the autumn of 1871, all of that came to a head.
On October 8, during a particularly dry and windy spell, the wood and weather combined to make combustion history. That night, the Great Chicago Fire broke out in a DeKoven Street barn. (The O’Leary family owned it, but their cow had nothing to do with the fire.) The flames advanced quickly, engulfing nearby lumberyards and the city’s downtown, and they burned for 36 hours straight. In the end, 18,000 structures were destroyed, as many as 300 people were killed, and nearly one-third of the population was left homeless.
Yet, the enduring legacy of the Great Chicago Fire is not its destruction, but the amazing rebirth that took place after it.
The rebuilding of Chicago began with Joseph Medill, managing editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who personified the city’s indomitable spirit. Even though the blaze had partially leveled his newspaper’s headquarters, Medill cranked out a special edition two days later, affirming the city’s resolve with an editorial stating, “Cheer up … Chicago Shall Rise Again.” It was more than empty encouragement. One month later, Medill was elected mayor on the city’s “Fireproof” ticket. He immediately ushered in safety reforms that set the stage for rapid development and a new wave of construction.
Within 10 years, the population of Chicago had nearly doubled. Soon, there was no more land to build on, and overcrowding was setting in. But in 1883, architect William Le Baron Jenney came up with a novel solution. He designed the innovative, 10-story Home Insurance Building -widely considered to be the world’s first skyscraper. The Home Insurance Building had the steadiness of a cathedral, but at a third of the normal weight. Jenney’s genius was in using a light steel frame covered in hollow terra cotta tiles to prevent the spread of fire. His skyscraper inspired architects to think vertically and gave rise not just to Chicago’s skyline, but also to new skylines across the globe.
CITY MEETS WORLD
By 1890, less than two decades after the Great Fire, more than 1 million people were living in Chicago. It surpassed Philadelphia in population, and became America’s “second city”, next only to New York. Despite its size, many saw Chicago as a glorified hick town. To change that perception, Chicago competed with New York to host the world’s Columbian Exposition, a fair to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in America. At the time, World’s Fairs were serious business. They had the power to thrust a host city into the global spotlight and bring in enormous revenue and prestige.
While New York had financial titans like J.P. Morgan and William Waldorf Astor bidding in its corner, Chicago had something more compelling -a collective sense of purpose. Department store mogul Marshall Field, who’d lost his original building in the blaze, and industrialist Cyrus McCormick, who’d also lost his factory, pledged a combined $15 million to underwrite the fair. Then an even more surprising thing happened: The taxpayers voted for a referendum pledging an additional $5 million. To them, the World’s Fair wasn’t just a celebration; it was a chance at rebirth.
In the end, Congress decided that Chicago’s bid was stronger than New York’s, and the city went on to host one of the most successful World’s Fairs in history. The 1893 event introduced the world to ragtime music, shredded wheat, hamburgers, postcards, neon lights, and the Ferris wheel. It also influenced architecture for decades to come. The fairground’s classical buildings inspired the nationwide City Beautiful movement, which led to the creation of the National Mall in Washington, DC, and the fair’s layout inspired modern amusement parks, such as Disneyland. The buildings even sparked the imagination of writer L. Frank Baum, who created the Emerald City in their image in his book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
On October 9, 1893, on the 22th anniversary of the Great Fire, 716,881 people visited the World’s Fair in one day, shattering all previous Fair attendance records. In just 22 years, Chicago had risen from a pile of rubble to the height of civilization -and the world was there to celebrate.
__________________________
The article by Christopher Zara is reprinted from the May- June 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine. You can order back issues of mental_floss or get a subscription to have each issue delivered to you!
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!
The show must go on, even though the actors don’t get paid, and even though the audience is there for only a few seconds each week. A group of performers in Chicago stage a skit on a rooftop for the commuters on the the Brown Line of the El, between Armitage and Sedgwick.
Turns out, every Wednesday from 5 to 6 p.m., these three friends put on a new skit atop the four-story parking garage for the Brown Line passengers who pass by.
On this particular Wednesday, the actors were indeed performing an original skit about Frankenstein and a mad scientist.
“Look at me, look me in the eyes Frankenstein,” said the actor playing the mad scientist, during a performance. (Of course, no one on the el could hear the words, but the actors’ actions pretty much explained the scene.)
“Argh, argh, argh!” said Frankenstein.
The three actors go by the name of CTA Theater, and they’ve been performing for riders for six months, every single week, just to make people happy. Riders who catch their show say they love the performances, no matter how short. Link -Thanks, Jeff!
The work of art is called dimply, “Eye.” The sculptor is Tony Tasset, who modeled it on his own eye. Folks in Chicago get to see this 30-foot-tall eyeball until the end of October. Watch it being built in a video at Laughing Squid. Link
The Aqua Tower is one of those buildings that seem, even at their opening, to be destined for global fame. It is an amazing structure, to put it simply – it is almost as if the eroded rocks of the Great Lakes had been transformed in to a skyscraper.
Skyscrapers are often seen to be an expression of, to put it politely, male prowess and there has always been a certain my skyscraper is taller than yours not so friendly competition. Perhaps the elegance and fluidity of this design is due to the fact that the main architect is a woman – as is at least half of the staff on her team.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
Take a look at seven historic Chicago locations. Some were notorious hangouts of the Prohibition-era gangsters of Chicago. You may have even been to some of them without knowing the colorful background of these placces.
The speakeasy, 1920’s icon. When prohibition began, outlawing the sale of alcohol in the United States paved the way for criminals like Al Capone to come to fruition. And if you think prohibition stopped alcohol, well, then… the word naive comes to mind. Alcohol, if anything, was more rampant in the 1920’s. Want to make something that’s already fun even more popular?? Make it taboo. The “speakeasy” was the slang term for an establishment that illegally sold alcohol during these times. Some were seedy bars, others were extravagant nightclubs filled with the rich and famous. The Green Mill Jazz Club, still open today, was a popular speakeasy back during prohibition and at one point even owned by Jack McGurn, a right hand man of Al Capone.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by digimouse.
Hidden in a Chicago suburb is a funeral home with a 9-hole mini golf course in the basement! Fred Abercrombie made a stop in Palatine, Illinois to visit Ahlgrim Acres, a community room hidden underneath Ahlgrim Funeral Home and took quite a few pictures of the infamous golf course with a haunted theme.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
A spontaneous lunchtime food fight broke out at a Chicago middle school, and by the time the last bell rang, 25 students aged 11 to 15 were arrested for reckless conduct. Parents told the local news they are furious.
“My children have to appear in court,” Erica Russell, the mother of two eighth-grade girls who spent eight hours in jail, said Tuesday. “They were handcuffed, slammed in a wagon, had their mug shots taken and treated like real criminals.”
“They’re all scared,” Ms. Russell said of the two dozen arrested students. “You never know how children will be impacted by that. I was all for some other kind of punishment, but not jail. Who hasn’t had a food fight?”
What do you guys think? Link (Image from aggrotech‘s Photobucket album)
One of the good things about living in the midwest is that while I may not live in a big city, a bunch of them are within decent driving distance – Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha. Milwaukee and St. Louis aren’t too bad.
Anyway, as such, I’m headed to Lollapalooza in Chicago this weekend! And I’ll be Tweeting as I go, so if you can’t be there to enjoy the extremely varied selection of music, you are welcome to live vicariously through me. I’m a little bummed the Beastie Boys won’t be playing, but I totally understand why they can’t be there.
Bands that are definitely on my “To Watch” list include Manchester Orchestra, Heartless Bastards, the Decemberists, the Arctic Monkeys, Animal Collective, Tool, Vampire Weekend, Snoop, the Killers and the Silversun Pickups.
If you have any other recommendations or just want to follow along as we check out cool bands and try to hit up some local culture (the Shedd Aquarium is on our list, as well as the Chicago Art Institute), leave me a Tweet. And if you’re already following me on Twitter, you should probably switch to this new account – the old one got hacked by spammers and was suspended.
Police are investigating how a 14-year old boy passed himself off as a Chicago police officer for an entire shift. When he showed up for work in uniform, the teen was assigned a patrol in a squad car. He never drove or handled a gun, but the deception was not noticed until his shift was over.
Assistant Superintendent James Jackson said the ruse was discovered only after the boy’s patrol with an actual officer ended Saturday. Officers noticed his uniform lacked a star that is part of the regulation uniform.
Police said they were investigating how the deception went undetected for so long in what they described as a serious security breach.
Police didn’t identify the boy because of his age. He has been charged as a juvenile with impersonating an officer.
Link -via J-Walk Blog
Photo: Second City Warehouse [Flickr]
Neatorama reader lir wrote an interesting account of the abandoned Uptown Theatre in Chicago. The ornate theater, the second largest in the United States, has been abandoned and boarded up since 1980 because the high cost of upkeep and repair:
The theatre is called the Uptown Theatre. It was built by Balaban and Katz, a company started by four Chicagoans who built, owned and operated dozens of theatres and movie palaces from the 1920′s to the 1970′s. It was designed in a Spanish Baroque style by Rapp and Rapp – the same who built the Chicago Theatre on State Street four years before. It was built in 1925 with 4,381 seats (only the Radio City Music Hall is larger), a five story main lobby and two other side lobbies, an eight story facade, a large Wurlitzer organ, and millions worth of marble statuary and oil paintings. Silent films with full orchestras were the original entertainment at the theatre, but since its opening the theatre has been a stage for musicals, concerts, television shows, company meetings…
Unfortunately, due to the less then perfect reputation the area has had for a while, the cost of upkeep, its size, and from competition with the Riviera and Aragon, the Uptown started to sell off parts of itself, starting with the organ, and continuing with much of the interior decorations to pay for the care of the place. In the 1970′s, the Uptown was used as a large concert venue, with evidently a very memorable show by Bruce Springsteen taking place there in 1980. It was about this time that the theatre was sold, boarded up, and while plans with what exactly to use the massive ornately archaic and deteriorating structure for were being formed, water pipes froze and burst inside, causing severe damage. (Source)
Undercity.org, a website dedicated to exploration of abandoned and hidden urban sites, has a fascinating gallery of the Uptown Theatre: Link | Uptown Theatre photoset at Flickr by Second City Warehouse
