Interesting Op-Ed in the Trib from 22-year entrepreneur who added her own store little more than a year ago, on the long traditions, attitudes, and future of Chicago's Jewelers Row. www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/09/o...

Watching Mamet’s brilliant Glengerry Glen Ross on Movies! Is pretty pointless as the bleeps almost outnumber the uncensored dialogue.

Reminder: Free live audio stream this evening (Friday, Jan 9), opening night of Madame Butterfly with Aileen Perez, 6:55 CDT. www.metopera.org/Season/Radio...

"We live in a world . . . that is governed by force." The salute, the speeches cribbed from Goebbels should have been the tipoff, but his embrace of unbridled aggression makes irrefutable that Stephen Miller follows the Nazi playbook, looking for global conquest. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/u...

How will Barnes & Noble's aggressive expansion in Chicago affect independent booksellers? B&N CEO James Daunt denied having any affect on the closing of Volumes Bookcase, because, in his mind, they were not a "full-fledged bookstore" and have a cafe. marthabayne.substack.com/p/believe-yo...

Metropolitan Steel storefront, Lake Street

The most immoral man ever to be President says the only restraint on him is not Congress, nor the Courts, but "My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me." While Congressional Republicans degrade themselves to stooges in service to a Mad King. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/u...

"The band is playing “Dixie,” a man got his hand outstretched Could be the Führer Could be the local priest You know sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace." - Bob Dylan, 1983 forward.com/culture/7957...

And while we're on State Street, if ABC7 isn't going to fix their twisty video ad tower, they should remove it. As a sign, it was tolerable; as a dark nothing, it's an eyesore. Hasn't it been down for at least a year?

Also, a new Panera in the Butler Building on State just south of ABC7. And reconstructed Chick-fil-A in the Page Brothers Building also now open.

New Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory shop at State and Madison in the long-time Body Shop space. www.rmcf.com

Honor our Western Culture, say the bookburners and state censors, purging anything not white and male. Spoiler alert: they're not stopping there. If Socrates were alive today, he'd of been hounded to suicide by now. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/u...

Fellow citizens: we are being made into a pariah state, about to take the world down in flames. Withdrawing from 65 treaties, including one signed by EVERY NATION on EARTH, while increasing military spending by $600 billion. Götterdämmerung awaits us. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/c...

Not that along ago, Kevin Hassett called for reducing deficits, supporting trade, and increasing immigration. Now, as the likely next Chair of the Fed, he's become Trump's stooge, shoveling out lies and disinformation with the grin of an addled child. www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026...

On the flip side at the Tribune, a pretty great story by Rick Pearson on Republican Illinois Governor hopeful Ted Dabrowski, formerly of the Illinois Policy Institute, whot now seems to be having trouble mastering the MAGA operandi of Lie, Deny, and Attack. www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/06/r...

Trib Dept. of the Undead double-header: Repeatedly rejected by voters, Trumpist Paul Vallas is suddenly a foreign policy expert; Bruce Rauner is asked to weigh in from the Florida mansion he fled to after ditching Illinois. Can't the Trib find any local voices who aren't losers?

America, Goebbels-ized. If you're not ashamed of this cynical, shameless tissue of lies, you have forfeited any claim to a commitment to truth, the rule of law, and the most basic American values of fairness, liberty and freedom. Full-up Nazi stuff. www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

January 6th rioters, with the connivance of the White House and its website, is upending historical facts with a deluge of lies and baseless conspiracy theories, converting violent scoundrels into heroes, and demanding we taxpayers pay them reparations. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/u...

Grant Park schedule out. Replete with warhorses, but with lots of American and lesser known scores, including the Glass Violin Concerto. Third Coast Percussion Ensemble. Acrobats! Return of Leonard Slatkin, Carlos Kalmar and Garrick Ohlsson. B9 for big finale. www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/events/

If you've been waiting for a Tesla Diner in Chicago . . . six months after opening in Santa Monica, "slow service, outrageous prices" and empty parking lots. www.autoblog.com/news/teslas-...

Is Barnes & Noble the next Borders? Like Borders, it's expanding VERY rapidly: it's moving into same the State Street space that previously was a Borders, closed with the collapse of the chain in 2011. (Great place to take pics of Block 37 construction, though.) www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/4...

"If you've ever walked into a Bed Bath and Beyond..." But you can't. BBB is a graft of the defunct retailer's name on the Overstock website. Retail stores are Kirklands, which has nothing to do with Costco. Is your head spinning yet? But there's a coupon! www.retaildive.com/news/bed-bat...

Private equity is a criminal enterprise. Walgreens was long one of Chicago's Crown Jewels. After the Boots fiasco, it wound up in the hands of vulture Sycamore, whose purchase was 70% debt. Now it's closing its Chicago office, slashing holiday pay and jobs. chicago.suntimes.com/other-views/...

1895-2026. Last day for the Loop L State-Lake station, to be demolished for a half-billion-dollar extravaganza that won't open until at least 2029. www.chicago-l.org/stations/sta...

Close of protest against the invasion of Venezuela, across the river from Chicago’s Trump Tower, following an earlier rally at Federal Plaza.

The CTA has no problem porking half-a-billion dollar showpiece superstations, but smaller-scaled projects making the experience better for commuters are apparently beneath their interest. chicago.suntimes.com/other-views/...

Like two floundering swimmers dragging each other beneath the waves. Saks bought Neiman Marcus. Little more than a year later, Saks is veering towards bankruptcy. Will it take down both stores in Chicago? Losing even one would be a major blow to Michigan Avenue. www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/a...

Will be posting more pics next week, but what makes the Chicago Architectural Biennial annex at 840 North Michigan even more spectacular is seeing it within the bare-bones remainder of the razzle-dazzle build-out for the short-lived Uniqlo flagship. chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/sites/840-n-...

Vinci-Hamp's rescue of the Portland Art Museum www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/179...

Notice anything? Like the peak years for Chicago homicides took place under Sts. Daley I and II? Barely noticed, because it clashed with the narrative. Just like now, with crime dropping, social media trolls amp crime as a cudgel promoting their disinformation. blockclubchicago.org/2026/01/02/c...

Trump has made the White House a Den of Thieves, protecting their own. His white nationalism extends to not prosecuting white collar swindlers, money launderers, drug dealers, bribe makers and takers - and pardoning them if convicted, no matter how egregious their crimes. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

From Chicago, Happy 2026!

"Japanese tradition holds that on New Year's Eve, foxes gather at a specific tree ... On their way there, the foxes produce distinctive flames, which local farmers use to predict the harvest..." May the flames of all you foxes point to a bountiful, saner 2026: Happy New Year! bit.ly/3Npldoj

Have a Puritan New Year! Free live audio stream of opening night of I Puritani tonight, Wednesday,from the Met: Oropesa, Brownless, Rucinski, Van Horn, Armailliato at the podium. Starting 4:55 p.m. CDT. www.metopera.org/Season/Radio...

Kyle MacMillan for the Sun-Times looks at the everfresh Chicago imagists on their 60th anniversary, with Gladys Nilsson adding a mural to the Art Institute's Modern Wing just this past June. chicago.suntimes.com/art/2025/12/...

Sometimes eclipsing the two dailies, Block Club Chicago has become essential to understanding what's going on in our city, and a prime example is this epic history of the Trump invasion spreading terror throughout the city this year. blockclubchicago.org/2025/12/30/c...

Your American Health Care System, II: Private equity now owns almost 500 hospitals, cutting care, loading up on debt to pay themselves dividends. After being acquired by private equity, short-term nursing homes saw deaths increasing 11% newrepublic.com/article/2035...

Your American Health Care System: Private ownership sells off hospital real estate, then rents it back at doubled rates, cuts staff, stiff vendors, reduces care, loads up on debt on road to bankruptcy. Are we no longer capable of being shocked? www.sfchronicle.com/projects/202...

Unlike most of journalism, The New York Times is highly profitable, up 26% last quarter. So of course they're treating their subscribers as suckers, raising monthly rates 20%. I cancelled the New Yorker, which I loved, years ago when they showed similar contempt.

It's "best-of 2025" time, and I must comply. It's the law - I think it's a federal law. I took over 60,000 photographs this year. Selecting "the best" is nuts, so, at the link, some I liked best. There's no accounting for taste. Click, if you dare. arcchicago.blogspot.com/2025/12/best...

Fire and fury, signifying nothing: Elon and his merry band of DOGE saboteurs lied through their teeth about savings. It was never about saving money; it was about ruthlessly consolidating power. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/u...

I’m hungry. I know it appears to be a stupid thing to proclaim, but I haven’t been for the past two months.

Madness. Saudi Arabia exhausted its ground water growing crops like alfalfa, so it banned those crops and bought farmland in the U.S. to grow alfalfa for export to Saudi Arabia. Groundwater depleting 10x replenishment rate, land sinking up to 2 inches a year. www.latimes.com/environment/...

Trib architecture critic Edward Keegan looks back on 2025 as a series of who-would-have-thoughts, including Landmarks soiling itself landmarking a junk tower, "a laughably nonsensical move by the city to help the developer tap into public subsidies." www.chicagotribune.com/2025/12/28/c...

There's an entire city beyond these balconies. The fog ate it. (And now, rumblings of thunder.)

Will law enforcement become a rolling advertisement for Elon Musk's recall-prone, hulking Cybertrucks? Musk billionaire techbro buddy donates fleet of 10 to Las Vegas police: "far bigger than just a police car. These are badass." www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Fascinating story on how Hitler cast Europe's churches into silence, seizing and melting down 170,000 bells for the Nazi war effort, and then the long road back post-war. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/a...

Sears should have been Wal-Mart - it was a retailer with global presence. It should have been Amazon - it started out as a mail-order powerhouse. Instead, obtuse management threw it into the clutches of vulture Eddie Lampert, who destroyed it. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/b...

"A must-have catalogue" artlyst.com/product/kerr...