Unlike Richard Brautigan, who learned about trout fishing in America as a child, I was an adult when I first heard about smelt fishing in Chicago. It was 1979, a spring evening of course, and I was walking along the bike path north of Irving Park Road. At dusk I arrived at what looked like […]
I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being. — The Magic Mountain (1924), Thomas Mann Just when I think I’m done writing about the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, more compelling information comes my way. Here’s a patient’s account of her two years at the sanitarium. It tells of a bright moment […]
There used to be a saying, “The Swedes built Chicago.” Looking around the city today, however, you wouldn’t know Swedish immigrants made up Chicago’s fifth largest foreign-born group until 1960. The Swedish-born population peaked at 70,000 in 1930 and declined to just over 7,000 in 1970. Various neighborhoods once were predominantly Swedish. Around 1870 there was a “Swede Town” on the Near […]
A few weeks ago I told you I grew up in what amounted to a shtetl, an Old World Jewish town, on Chicago’s Far North Side. That’s not quite the whole story. A single point of origin never is the whole story for one of the city’s ever-evolving ethnic neighborhoods. In the sixties my neighborhood, Hollywood Park, was […]
Recently I discovered Chicago now has a public food market at the suburban concourse of the Ogilvie Transportation Center, the block bordered by Clinton, Canal, Washington and Randolph. While the Chicago French Market is no Reading Terminal Market and not even the L.A. Central Market, it’s ours, it’s wonderful and it’s open seven six days a week. […]
Sometimes we Chicagoans have to travel out of town and although no city can compare to home, we do manage to enjoy ourselves. When we were in Philadelphia a few weeks ago I asked my cousin Howard Shapiro, Philadelphia Inquirer theater critic, where we should have lunch. He directed us to Reading Terminal Market. What luck. It […]
I am dreading Opening Day. I haven’t lost my eternal optimism but this will be the first baseball season my father won’t be calling me to ask, “What time are the Cubs playing?” or “Are the Sox playing tonight?” or “What station for the Cubs game?” or “Did you see last night’s game?” Before cable, […]
Recently I heard Richard Cahan and Michael Williams discuss their new book about Chicago artist Edgar Miller and his miraculous transformation of old homes. Actually, two miracles occurred, according to Cahan. The first was Miller created this body of work. The second is the work not only still exists, it’s as beautiful as ever. The […]
I wrote a post called Mom and Pop, about the business district that ran through the Hollywood Park neighborhood on Chicago’s far north side, and I called it a small town Main Street. I had no idea. It wasn’t a small town, it was practically a shtetl, an old world town with a large Jewish population. As it […]
During the 1960s, on the three blocks of Bryn Mawr Avenue (5600 North) between Kedzie (3200 West) and Bernard (approximately 3430 West) avenues there were two gas stations; an Orthodox synagogue, or shul; an elementary school (Peterson–kindergarten through eighth grade, and still there); Irv’s Barber Shop; a Grocerland and a Jewel Foods that later became […]
