A little snow…

The New Grainger Conservation Center, design team led by Art institute architects Barozzi Veiga, looks really cool, but it’s replacing exhibition space. www.artic.edu/articles/121...

Updates you have no real interest in but I’m going to tell you anyway because I’ve got nothing else to do. Incredible efficiency! Tests already analyzed: I have a big gallstone! Which is strange because they’re usually very painful. Removal shouldn’t be difficult, or so I’m told.

Being wheeled to CTSCAN. (Very colorful!) Such great people at Northwestern! Everything’s fine- just in for tests. For Billie Rubin somebody.

The Castle of Tomorrow doesn't look like a castle anymore. Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey looks at how fast food chains are abandoning architectures that once defined their brand for generic replacements. chicago.suntimes.com/architecture...

I know governing is difficult, but this is ridiculous. Springfield proposes to shovel $1.5 billion to Chicago area transit with ZERO reform and added bureaucracy. For Chicago, they want a $7 ticket tax, raising the take to 16%, PLUS $5.00. www.chicagobusiness.com/politics/tra...

Another case of a place I never went to, but took pleasure just knowing it was around. Now it's not. What are the odds the mansion is now on death row? chicago.eater.com/restaurant-n...

"My name is Jamieandias, King of Bankers Look on my works, you peons, and despair!" www.dezeen.com/2025/10/21/2...

great video of some wonderful creations for this year’s Arts After Dark parade. www.instagram.com/reel/DQabsV6...

"Enough steel for a skyscraper... 23 stories high... millions of light bulbs!" A look back at Chicago's greatest billboard, the giant Chevrolet sign right across the street from what is now Millennium Park. arcchicago.blogspot.com/2014/06/20-f...

Gratuitous advice Thursday: With all the money being spent on the Obama Center and new playground across the street, you'd think they'd find some cash to fix the gloom-laden, incredibly, derelict 60th street viaduct leading up to them.

Gratuitous advice Thursday: Really should be vertical signage marking the Blue Line Dearborn entrance so people wheeling their luggage know they're going in the right direction. No elevator or escalator, so maybe a plaque on entering Block 37 a few doors down for elevators/escalators.

There'll always be an England

A week lost to illness. Things seen on trip to clinic, then to pick up prescription. On Dearborn, outdoor dining definitely done for the season, gut rehab at former golf site...

Nazi wannabes, thugs, and gangsters, one and all, domestic terrorists perverting the legal system to criminalize dissent and quash all opposition to their atrocities, just like the Jim Crow South did to preserve the obscenity of American apartheid. chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/...

The Wall Street Journal chronicles Michigan Avenue's revival. Beware the usual don't-live-there and maybe have-never-even-visited comments from trolls whose only information sources are Fox and Trump's fantasies. www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

Cinemark Seven Bridges in Woodridge is one of the theaters the chain is equipping for 70mm IMAX in anticipation of Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" next year. AMC has also added IMAX to its Roosevelt Collection complex in Chicago. variety.com/2025/film/ne...

If Hawley can get 5 or more Republicans to sign on, shouldn't Dems support this bill? Or course, Stepford Speaker Mike Johnson would probably still keep the House out of session. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/o...

"Frankly impressed," said Bill Gates after meeting Trump. The head of Nvidia sucks up to Trump, parrots his disinformation. Visions of trillion-dollar sugarplums dancing in their heads, the U.S. version of the German industrialists comes to full flower. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/nvid...

That war against climate change? We lost. The percentage rise in temperatures will double, so let's say global temperature isn't that important. AI, and its insatiable appetite for power, barely mentioned. Our tech Gods have spoken. Obscene profits are to be made! www.gatesnotes.com/home/home-pa...

Reminder: opening night of Met Opera's Carmen with Isabel Leonard and Michael Fabiano, free live stream, tonight, Tuesday, October 28, 6:25 CDT. www.metopera.org/Season/Radio...

Mas Context has a great on-line symposium on Northerly Island at 100, with contributions from leading architects, scholars and activists. Here's my take from last May. I doubt much has changed: one of Chicago's greatest jewels, scandalously neglected. mascontext.com/observations...

Just cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post . A great newspaper; downfall personified in this convoluted, mind-twisting editorial that reeks of control by a centi-billionaire owner intent on enabling a gangster President despoiling his office and destroying the Republic. wapo.st/4o2FcGU

"Take care of this house. Keep it from harm If bandits break in, sound the alarm..." Alan Jay Lerner, Leonard Bernstein, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjZU...

"Hitler engineered annihilation; today’s migrants are not facing that. But the moral test feels painfully familiar." A very sad account of the short, troubled Chicago refuge of a skilled craftsman and his two children, shipped to the city by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. share.inquirer.com/rrEHtT

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cautionary poem returns to the facade of his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...

I always used to read how Ross Douthat was a serious man worthy of respect. When he wrote a column saying he'd do the Iraq war all over again., I realized he wasn't. Being a better writer doesn't make you any less of a morally bankrupt toady.

I'm sure I just didn't notice it, but I don't remember seeing this Soldier Field logo before. "Stadium in a park" - now that's turning a controversy into a selling point!

Who needs the Bears? New Zealand national rugby team All Blacks pop-up at Pioneer Court Saturday morning. Facing off against Ireland at Soldier Field next Saturday, a rematch of 2016 Chicago appearance. Coverage on CNBC/Peacock. Seems to be a pretty big deal. www.choosechicago.com/ireland-vs-a...

Who's going to be the one to tell Rahm all those Republican buddies he got along so well with are now RINO traitors shoved to the sidelines - if not indicted - by our gangster-in-chief.

Lawless, reckless and unqualified. ICE eviscerates standards and training for new hires, and so we get drunk-driving agents asking the arresting officer if he's Haitian and threatening him with deportation. www.miamiherald.com/news/local/c...

ICE has no problem in abducting U.S. Citizens. You're guilty unless you can prove you're innocent, and then you MAY be thrown back like a fish above the catch limit. Conservative George Will details the horrific tactics Trump's lying lawless brownshirts inflicted on just one U.S. citizen, a veteran.

Say goodbye to the graceful round chapel of the1954 Edgar Miller/Ross Barney 2001 rehab Emanuel Congregation, about to be demolished and replaced as part of a new residential tower along the Chicago Riviera. chicago.urbanize.city/post/residen...

You won't find any better opera production than Lyric's Medea, and you have only one more chance to see and hear it, this Sunday at 2pm. A monumental performance from Sondra Radvanovsky and stellarsinging from Matthew Polenzani, Elena Villalón, Alfred Walker... www.lyricopera.org/shows/upcomi...

The Phil Thompson effect? JDL publishes new renderings of Foundry Park, the mega development previously known as Lincoln Yards, with (AI generated?) B&W line drawings. chicagoyimby.com/2025/10/addi...

East Wing obit Friday - Part IV At its best (see: Beeby), classicist architects offer thoughtful challenges to modernism. At their (frequent) worst (see: McCrery Architects, Trump ballroom), they align all too easily with monarchists and anti-democracy imperialism. lynnbecker.com/repeat/class...

East Wing obit Friday - Part III The New York Times publishes an obituary for the historic building Donald Trump blitzkrieg bulldozed for his imperial ballroom. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/b...

East Wing obit Friday, Part II The Architectural Record marks Donald Trump's blitzkrieg destruction (he's closed Lafayette Park to keep people from photographing it) by republishing Montgomery Schuyler's 1903 review of the original East Wing. www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/178...

East Wing obit Friday, Part I There's no more cogent personification of Trump's imperial ambitions than his wanton, lawless demolition of the historic East Wing for an imperial ballroom. Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey has a great, informative report. chicago.suntimes.com/architecture...

Jackhammering State Street

Via author AJ LaTrace, a look at a 2019 Chicago Magazine architecture buff's house-buying guide with striking illustrations from Phil Thompson, co-author of the new book Chicago Homes: A Portrait of the City's Everyday Architecture. www.chicagomag.com/chicago-maga...

When they talk of a "Biden crime family," it's the voice of a thief deflecting attention while he ransacks your house. For a little grease, this inbred crew will grant the right to swindle you, poison you, even imprison you for their personal profit. www.wsj.com/finance/curr...

There's a unique new book on a neglected Chicago topic: what kind of house is that? And, why? At once, a really fun read and useful resource, painlessly informative and strikingly illustrated. A review, and the story of how the thing was created, at the link. arcchicago.blogspot.com/2025/10/brin...

What an absolute clown car of grifters, liars, self-dealers, perennial losers and work-from-home Florida operatives. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/21/i...

Wednesday bridge lift, nine sailboats: Tatra, Fortunate Sun, Dulcinea, Nebula, Mission Accompli, Kraken, Bravo, Denial, and one anonymous ringer (or at least I couldn’t see a name anywhere.)

via New City, Air Mail's Nathan King's great profile of Chicago's hatmaker supreme Optimo and its founder Graham Thompson. airmail.news/issues/2025-...

If you feel a hand reaching into your pocket, dear fellow taxpayer, it's just our gangster convicted felon President seeking to extort $230 million in your tax money from his own Department of Justice. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

Trump the destroyer: as he demolishes the East Wing of the White House, he demolishes "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," appending: but only if you're white and from South Africa. wapo.st/47BTzMA

The mother of a young Chicago woman killed by an undocumented drunk driver speaks out against a shameless DHS appropriation of her tragedy in service to their malevolent propaganda. www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/21/o...