Photo: Jenny Yoon

By Jenny Yoon

Saturday, August 18. Day One.

The Fair
The day is impossibly nice: a boundless blue sky, warm in that skin-shivering way, and a breeze with a cool bite to waft the smell of fried dough blows through the air.

It’s Park District Conservation Day at the Illinois State Fair, and my friends and I have yet to see a tent dedicated to the cause. We’re greeted, instead, by a massive wooden statue of a young Abe Lincoln brandishing an axe, flanked by a bed of flowers. From somewhere in the distance, we hear the buzz of racecar drivers circling in front of a rapt audience in the grandstand.

We wander, bug-eyed and slack-jawed at the sight: hordes of people (some of whom are airborne on a ski lift), food carts that line the pavement, the tram led by a John Deere tractor that parts the crowd as it makes its sputtering way through the fairgrounds. A man dressed as Honest Abe saunters past. We stop in shrill indignation at a gate emblazoned with the label “Ethnic Village.” In the village, one can find authentic fare such as “Dracula’s Feast” in Romania, gummy falafel from Persia and turkey legs from “Cajun.” Read the rest of this entry »

By Jenny Yoon

Illustration: SPBurke.com

By Sheila Cull

I peeled open stoned eyes and saw my rubber snow boots. I stuck my feet inside without pausing to zip them up. I staggered around the corner to the twenty-four-hour mart for a five-dollar wine bottle, while I counted time on one hand.

I started drinking as a teenager. I seriously wondered why everybody didn’t drink, all the time. It turned into a daily addiction. For near twenty years I was recklessly wasted. Wine, I imagined, made me sophisticated. At times my happy-hour drunkenness got so I curled up outside my door, in the hallway. Other tenants shook me awake and asked if I was okay. I was lucky to have a job, but it was in jeopardy. I’d let nothing impede my drunken interruptions.

My father’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis did. Shawn, my twin brother, phoned me and explained what this news meant. After learning his dire prognosis, I stayed locked up in my apartment. I kept an eye on the phone cord, making sure that it didn’t accidentally get plugged back in. My sisters and brothers left answering machine messages. Read the rest of this entry »

By Galen Leonhardy

A 25-year-old Zion man drowned in Lake Michigan off Monroe Harbor Saturday after a stolen rowboat in which he was sitting began to take on water and sank, authorities said.

A man and a woman who couldn’t swim stole a rowboat from Monroe Harbor Saturday morning and were rowing it with the back end facing front, which caused water to flood the boat, said police Marine Unit Officer John Clifford.

“He was rowing the boat from the wrong direction and water kept on splashing in and it sank,” said Clifford.

Witnesses jogging in the area jumped in the water and attempted to rescue them because the victims couldn’t swim, said Clifford.

Police were notified at 7:55 a.m., and when they arrived the woman had been rescued but the man was still under water and had been for 10 minutes, Clifford said. —From the Chicago Tribune, July 19, 2003

The city hummed. Bright blue that morning, Lake Michigan stretched to the horizon. It was 7:30am. Hallie, nine years of curly red hair tied in a ponytail, held my right hand loosely as we walked the waterfront, the three of us trekking our way toward the Art Institute of Chicago, toward the mighty lion statues and their den of art. Sarah, twelve, at the edge of puberty, still felt comfortable enough to hold my hand. The girls had traveled fifteen-hundred miles to visit their father, an itinerant teacher of English living far from home, a scholar cast out of marriage and ripped from his place by economic forces.

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By Desiree Cole

I watched a Ferris wheel get stuck at an amusement park when I was younger, when the park was nearly closing and it was dark. I remember the screaming, even though nothing especially bad was happening. I thought about those folks on the front of the ride who were just hanging in mid-air. If they had to climb out to escape, they would have nowhere to fall except to the ground. At least if you were at the top, you had rails and cars to climb down. Ever since, I’ve had an irrational fear of this most seemingly benign of rides.

“I’m going to ride the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel today, guys,” I told some coworkers on the morning I decided it was time to get over this. Read the rest of this entry »

By Desiree Cole

The parade’s drumming, roaring and thumping sounds outside our storefront windows shook the register screen in front of me as I rang up customers. “This is a grocery store, not like a state-law building, for Chrissakes,” a man vented to another cashier. “I mean, if I want to fucking come into a grocery store without clothes, that shouldn’t even be a problem. This whole system is ridiculous, you got cops standing over there and every corner armed with weapons like we’re some crazy folk about to riot in a grocery store,” said the half-drunken man who was forced to put on his clothes before entering the store. He ripped the receipt out of the silent cashier’s hand and stormed off.

The produce and the meat sections were eerily quiet, but, stepping behind the counter to man the register, I saw six packs—all cans, since we weren’t selling alcoholic beverages in glass containers today—roll down the moving belt, one after another.

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Illustration: Elena Rodina

By Elena Rodina

We sit cross-legged on the trail in Douglas Park. Across the road is Mount Sinai hospital with its famous trauma center, where people are often treated for gunshot wounds that they receive in this very neighborhood. Somewhere nearby a car stereo is cranked up to the top level, playing angry rap. Meanwhile, Nance Klehm takes a patch of dry mugwort from a black plastic bag that she carries with her, carefully places it on the cracked asphalt surface, and sets the herb on fire. While the dry plant burns and smolders, emanating a bitter-sweet aroma, Klehm explains that we are making an offering to the land, a ritual traditionally done by herbalists before they start picking plants. Once the fire dies down, she reaches into her black bag one more time and takes out a pair of ordinary red gardening scissors. We are ready to start our foraging trip in the heart of Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Zach Freeman

Among its many accolades, Chicago is frequently cited as one of the best running cities in America. And after running on any part of the eighteen-mile stretch of paths that make up the Lakefront Trail, it’s pretty easy to see why. Whether you’ve been hitting the trail for decades or this is your first summer, here’s a quick north-to-south guide to getting the most out of a summer run on Chicago’s iconic Lakefront Trail. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Shutterstock

Fireworks explode overhead as a small fleet of kayaks bobs at the mouth of the Chicago River watching the show. After a few minutes, the last of the fireworks fade away to the raucous cheers of onlookers. Most of the spectators simply power up their motorboats and putter home or continue their walks on the banks of the river. The tour group from Kayak Chicago still has a three-mile paddle back to the dock.

The Kayak Chicago Fireworks tour begins at 6:45pm with a brief tutorial conducted by two instructors. This trip, it’s Hina Iwate, a small, bubbly woman, and her laid-back co-worker Brian Westrick. Iwate starts off with some stretches, and then draws a laugh from the crowd of about fifteen kayakers when she appears to break into a dance. Read the rest of this entry »