First, my beer of choice as I write this is Brooklyn Winter Ale. My music of choice is the new Sinead O’Connor, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? Now…because there aren’t enough reality television shows, two new ones have popped up. Swamp People and Doomsday Preppers. It used to be where the only reality show I knew of was the one that’s still on about assholes on some island. Now they’re scouring the four corners of the globe to film real folks in unscripted dramatics and funnyisms. It’s time for one of these shows to hit Northwest Indiana and/or Chicago. I have some ideas. Hoosier Brew Breweries are popping up all over the country. There are several in Northwest Indiana alone:…
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The Chicago Tribune had a story the other day about the last remaining row houses in what was the notorious public housing project Cabrini-Green. They posted a timeline about the high-rises including events in its nearly 70-year history that brought nationwide attention to this part of Chicago. I believe they left something out. Something that might have brought the most attention, whether it be negative or not, to the projects than anything else. 1992 – Candyman. Here’s the Trib timeline: Good Times, seriously? But no Candyman? A critically acclaimed film and the only of its kind to use those shithole projects as its setting? Good Times was SET at Cabrini-Green. Candyman was set and filmed there. Maybe the Trib was afraid to say or…
The last time I saw Chicago reclusive author Clive Javanski was at the Bucktown Arts Fest in August. Shufflin’ around, looking at artwork, he had a journal in one hand, and after he sat down with me, a beer in the other. Some folk band was playing a song about a girl, a farm and the smell of earth after rain. Or something like that. I first met Clive at Mickey’s, the saloon down the street from my apartment (mentioned in an earlier post). He lives and writes above an area bar (not Mickey’s). He doesn’t drive and rarely goes out, and when he does, it’s usually within a several block radius of his home – which includes Holstein Park, home of the fest.…
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