Photo: Courtesy of the Mayor’s Office of Special Events

“If you can get on a boat, you’re going to see a really terrific [view]. You can see the planes against the background of the city,” recommends Gerry Souter, co-author of “The Chicago Air and Water Show: A History of Wings Above the Waves.” He says “it gives them a scale and also makes them a heck of a lot faster.” The best way to get on a boat, Gerry says, is to have a friend with a boat, but if you can’t obtain a boat or a friend by this weekend, he recommends North Avenue Beach. Janet Souter, co-author of the book and Gerry’s wife, attended her first Chicago Air and Water Show with Gerry in the sixties, back when it was held at Lake Shore Park at the end of Chicago Avenue. She met Gerry at the Art Institute, which they graduated from in 1952. They never guessed they would be writing about the show they saw in the sixties, along with ones before and after, but when The History Press asked if they would like to, they jumped on board. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s another lazy Sunday downtown. The sun is low above the lake; stores are closed, and the trains are sparsely populated. Then 20,000 bicycles hit Lake Shore Drive. Their peddlers are welcoming summer and biking the Drive. Some are not yet old enough to drive, and others bike a drive, a street or avenue every day. Some ride pricey bikes built for speed, and others drive rented tandems at a slow pace. The idle thirteen gallons of syrup under a tent in Butler Field, however, will please the rolling multitudes indiscriminately.

“How are they tasting?” yells out Tim Lane, the man in charge of feeding thousands of hungry hotcake hunters. A member of his team is testing the first of countless pancakes to be flipped and served at Bike the Drive. The surrounding tents are peddling energy bars and energy drinks to the morning peddlers, but Tim and his team from Goose Island, under a black tent, are making good on a promise to feed those biking the drive their fill of pancakes and syrup. Read the rest of this entry »

By Michael McColly

Imagine a Chicago summer night, well past midnight, a long day of crowds and trains, sirens and screens, dirt and smoke, and more of the same the next day. But all of these are behind you, literally, because you are not stewing in a bed of thought and worry, you are doing the breaststroke out to a buoy 200 yards off the shore of Pratt Beach. And in an act of defiance, you’ve slipped off your running shorts and hung them around your neck.

Memorial Day usually marks the opening of Chicago’s great exodus out of our condos and apartments back to the sun and the waters of Lake Michigan. But for the tribe of lake swimmers, we’ve already been braving the fifty-degree waters for a month and some as early as April.

For me, it began in graduate school twenty some years ago. Demoralized and already behind after only a month at the University of Chicago, wondering if I ought to quit, I followed the path of all forlorn U of C students to Promontory Point to stew and stare in hopes of some Delphic answer. And the oracle presented itself as they always do in a symbol of absurdity. As I looked out into the grey waters that mild October afternoon, I discerned four bobbing objects, swimmers making their way through the choppy surf. Amazed, I watched and waited for them. And then, to my complete surprise, what came out of the water were not he-man triathletes, but three septuagenarians without wetsuits, smiling and waving me in. I was hooked. Read the rest of this entry »

By Daniel Prazer

A year ago last weekend, I walked across the stage and got my master’s degree in writing from Columbia College. Cranking away at a book-length manuscript tends to burn you out, a condition I referred to as the post-post-graduate writing hangover.

Less than a month later, my father took his own life. For the next few months, I sank deeper into the couch cushions.

Momentum—or the lack of it—took over my writing life. When I finally emerged from my suicide-survivor’s exile, the only words I put down on the page were cover letters to go with a redesigned resume. Nothing creative.

Until this summer, when a former professor and friend, Sam Weller, threw down this gauntlet on his Facebook wall: “I am going to write 500 words a day, every day, until the end of August. This will give me a 53,000-word draft of a novel by the end of summer. Anyone care to join me in this challenge? It’s just two pages a day.”

I decided to pick it up, to get myself moving creatively during that awful time of piecemeal employment. Sam set up a Facebook group, and the Summer Novelist’s Club was born. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Green City Market

By Elias Cepeda

Jerry Heward didn’t know a thing about flowers growing up as a city boy in Northern Indiana. Yet he is surrounded by and selling purple lilac look-alikes on a sunny Wednesday morning in Lincoln Park. Heward is one of more than fifty vendors at the Green City Market.

“I was never really interested in this type of thing when I was young,” Jerry says. “My son actually got us started, my wife and myself. When he was in high school he worked for a farmer, a local farmer who lived in the city, and he would bring home these beautiful flowers and plant them in our backyard. Each year they’d get bigger and bigger. Our backyard ran out of room and so we said that we’ve got to move out into the country, buy some acreage and that’s how we got started.”

Today, Jerry and Jill’s Stoney Run Fields farm is a ten-year veteran of the Green City Market. The market itself has grown from a sparsely attended tiny alley operation next to the Chicago Theatre in 1998, to having more than 80,000 annual visitors a decade later.

All of the produce, meat, cheese, bread, flowers and more sold at the Green City Market are produced locally and in sustainable manners, in adherence with the market’s guidelines. Though Jerry, a retiree, says he does not depend on his flower business for income, he says the market does play a “big role,” in their overall sales.

Every Wednesday and Saturday he wakes up near dawn in order to pack up his flowers, make the trip to Chicago and set up his booth at the market by the 7am opening time. As a reformed city dweller turned farmer, Heward is patient with his mostly urban customers, and quick with a folksy axiom. Read the rest of this entry »

By Ilana Kowarski

Hidden near the parking lot of the Museum of Science and Industry, people meet in a green near a little brick building. Seen from afar, their rituals seem somewhat strange. They dress in all white, use odd hand gestures, and throw balls on their lawn. I have decided to meet these people. A Scotsman dressed in white shakes my hand, and smiles, “I’ve got something for you.” He introduces himself as John Clark, reaches into his bag and takes out a tiny ball, which he twirls between his fingers. Clark grins and exclaims in brogue, “These are the best bowling balls out there. There’s no excuse for not playing well when you have these.” I nod. I take the ball and throw it across the grass. The ball bounces and goes only a few feet. “Try again,” he tells me. I throw the ball harder, and it goes further, but in the wrong direction. “It’s not an easy game,” Clark shrugs.

Like many Scots, Clark loves land bowling, and considers the sport to be an important part of his heritage. Clark has been playing the game for years, both in Scotland and here in Chicago, at the Lakeside Lawn Bowling Club. Read the rest of this entry »

By David Witter

Nelson Algren bought his beach cottage in Miller, Indiana in 1950, partially from the proceeds from the film rights to “The Man with a Golden Arm.” I was born on Juniper Street, across the Calumet Lagoon from his cottage a few years after Algren had left. However, tales of the man whom many consider to be Chicago’s greatest writer have echoed through my family gatherings ever since.

In a way, a lot has changed in Miller since Algren and Simone de Beauvoir drank, swam, hiked, made love, wrote and enjoyed the dunes area just east of Gary only forty-five minutes from downtown Chicago. Yet a lot has stayed the same, and it is not hard for Chicagoans to spend a summer afternoon retracing the steps of Algren in Miller. Read the rest of this entry »

Urbanrules/Creative Commons

By Patrick Roberts

It is 7:40am on a Saturday, and I am smoking a cigarette on Darrow Bridge, waiting for birders to appear. A friend waits with me, and a debate between us is why we are here. Inexplicably, she believes fish to be more interesting than birds. I disagree. In flight and song, birds capture the imagination and lift the spirit. Think “Ode to a Nightingale.” Fish, by contrast, lack all personality. I don’t know of any odes to a fish. Nonetheless, my friend is unconvinced, and so we have come to Wooded Island in the heart of Jackson Park to gain perspective.

During the summer, Wooded Island draws birders and fishers alike. The birders stroll the trails, eyes upon the trees; the fishers troll the lagoons, eyes upon the water. This morning, we hope to join one of the semi-organized bird walks that have been a fixture on Wooded Island for years. Every Wednesday and Saturday morning throughout the year, birders gather on Darrow Bridge and set off together in ornithological fellowship. Read the rest of this entry »

By John Greenfield

On a hot August morning, I load my bicycle with camping gear and catch Metra up to Kenosha, Wisconsin. As usual I’ve stayed up late packing and haven’t slept much, so I snooze during most of the hour-and-a-half train ride.

Taking a combo of Route 32 and bike paths I ride thirty-five miles to a dock on the south side of Milwaukee for the high-speed ferry to Muskegon, Michigan. The main function of the ferry is a shortcut for drivers who want to avoid Chicago congestion, and the lower deck of the boat is packed with cars, RVs and motorcycles—mine’s the only pedal bike. Read the rest of this entry »

If there was ever a summer for DIY ice cream, this is it. With a new generation of cheap, efficient ice-cream makers readily available during a time of serious scrutiny in personal finance, it turns out that a $40 ice-cream machine pays for itself shockingly quickly. It’s also incredibly easy; most machines on the market simply consist of a bowl you freeze before adding ingredients and mixing, no ice or salt required.

Then it’s just a matter of getting the proportions right. Your simplest ice-cream recipe has, by volume, a ratio of about one-part milk to two-parts cream, with a little less than one-part granulated sugar. The basic ice cream recipe I use for my one-quart ice-cream maker is one cup whole milk, two cups cream (you can substitute light cream/half and half), and three-fourths cup granulated sugar, with a splash of good vanilla extract. In all cases you want to heat the dairy and the sugar until the sugar dissolves before pouring the cooled mixture into your ice cream maker.

My most successful variations to date have been, somewhat surprisingly, the simplest: cinnamon ice cream (add about 2 tablespoons of cinnamon, which is far more than you’ll think you need, to the basic recipe); and avocado ice cream (add one diced-and-then-crushed avocado to the mix when the ice cream is almost totally frozen). In fact, my friend Colleen and I have been talking about making an ice-cream burrito from red bean, avocado, tomato and sweet corn ice-cream wrapped in a sugared tortilla. I think we’re both afraid of trying it out for fear that life afterwards would be all downhill. Read the rest of this entry »