Chicago To Do: Summer Adventures
I’ve been so focused on work lately (and adventures far and wide), it’s been ages since I took a look around a little closer to home for new experiences. One of my favorite parts of living in New York were the outings and random exploring I’d do when I found myself with a free weekend or day off. The same goes for Chicago. Even though the Windy City is endlessly more familiar to me, there’s no shortage of new ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. And as Spring gives way to Summer and the days are the longest they’ll be all year, I took stock of some of the ideas…
The Shape of This Thing
Though I left my last employer at the end of February, I only formally announced my latest professional endeavor a couple of weeks ago. Which means in the intervening weeks and months, I didn’t really have a lot going. Sure, I was working here and there. And I did take a trip to Paris. But generally speaking, I was existing from day to day without much of a schedule. For most of that time, I didn’t wake up with any kind of alarm other than my own internal clock (and sometimes, my annoying cat). Any day could be a lazy, binge-heavy couch day. Any day was just as likely to…
Chicago List: Out of Hibernation
It’s been a while since I drafted a new list of things to do around the city. With summer ramping up, it seemed a perfect time to build out something fresh, a brand new list of what I’m looking forward to doing and seeing and experiencing as the city comes out of hibernation.
Preview: Chicago Critics Film Festival
Though the heyday of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel has passed, Chicago boasts a strong showing in film criticism these days. The guys (because it’s mainly guys) who make up the Chicago Film Critics Association work hard across outlets to cover film releases and happenings around the city. On Friday, their fifth annual Chicago Critics Film Festival kicks off a week of screenings at Chicago’s classic Music Box Theater. A small festival by any measure – no galas, no panels, no frills – it’s big where it matters: the movies. More than twenty features will screen over the course of a week, and for those of us keeping track of these…
Two for Two: Logan Square
After a really wonderful time away (see here), it honestly wasn’t until I was on the plane back to the U.S. that I started thinking about, you know, being back in the U.S. That first week was fairly chill (as have been the subsequent weeks, too). I may get into that side of things in a future post, but for now I want to focus on much more important matters: food. As it happened, I had two separate plans for the weekend after I returned. One, a chance to catch up over dinner before a friend jetted off on her own travels. The other, brunch with my cousin who’d been feeding…
Watch This: Chicago’s DOC10 Film Festival
Next week, Chicago Media Project presents DOC10, an annual film festival that presents the most compelling documentary films of the year over the course of a few days. This year, organizers have partnered with the newly-revamped Davis Theater in Lincoln Square to showcase films covering subject matter from music and film to social justice and true crime. Much as I’d love to, I can’t fit in all eleven films in four days. But I am going to catch a few, which I’m highlighting here. Join me!