Josh Dennis @noteviljosh

3 years later, Kennedy Expressway traffic nightmare lives on. Epic delays persist — a year after a three-year construction project ended and Gov. JB Pritzker promised “faster commutes.” Great work @dmihalopoulos @AldenLoury wbez.org/transportation…

Tom Cruise was in Chicago when the @ChicagoBears won the Super Bowl — and he watched it with Paul Newman!

The Pittsburgh Steelers asked an Englishman to sing the American national anthem. Bruce Dickinson did it a cappella, no autocue, having never sung it before in his life. He held "free" for six seconds.

America lost one in six of its neighborhood bars in a single decade, and the killer was real estate math. A bar like this can pour $3 beers because the building was paid off decades ago. The owner often lives upstairs. No rent, no investors, no debt service on a Pabst sign that's been hanging there for 40 years. The moment that building sells, the math dies with it. A new operator inherits a market-rate lease, which forces $9 drinks, which forces a renovation to justify $9 drinks, which produces another exposed-brick cocktail bar where the dive used to be. The Midwest kept its dive bars because of how they got built in the first place. Before Prohibition, Milwaukee's breweries put up corner taverns themselves. Pabst and Schlitz wanted guaranteed outlets for their beer, so they built bars directly into residential blocks. That's why these places sit on quiet snowy corners between houses instead of on commercial strips where rent explodes. Chicago had around 3,300 tavern licenses in 1990. It's down to about 1,200. At the worst of the decline, America was losing six neighborhood bars a day. And every single closure is permanent. You can't build a dive bar. You can only inherit one.

Midwest vs. The Rest @midwestern_ope

a month ago

Yearning for a Midwest dive bar in the middle of winter

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@davebftv

@ChicagoBears

@RalphVacchiano

@ChicagoBears @common @IAMJHUD @itsgabrielleu @DwyaneWade

@mzenitz

@NFLMemes

@MLFootball

Toys R Us was profitable. Private equity bought it anyway, and 33,000 people lost their jobs with nothing. In 2005, Bain Capital, KKR, and Vornado Realty Trust bought Toys R Us in a leveraged buyout for $6.6 billion. Here's the part that gets skipped: the company itself was making money. It wasn't failing. It wasn't asking to be saved. But in a leveraged buyout, the firms don't pay with their own money. They borrow against the company they're buying, and the debt becomes the company's problem, not theirs. Toys R Us went from having almost no debt to carrying over $5 billion in loans it never asked for and never benefited from. Every year after that, a huge share of the company's profit went straight to interest payments instead of stores, inventory, or staff. The stores got run down. Amazon and Walmart kept eating market share. Toys R Us couldn't invest its way out because there was nothing left after the debt. In 2017 it filed for bankruptcy. In 2018 it liquidated completely. 33,000 employees lost their jobs. Store closures. No severance for most of them. Giovanna De La Rosa worked there for years. She testified before Congress on November 19, 2019, describing what it meant to lose her income with nothing after decades of loyalty to a company that had been profitable the entire time she worked there. The firms that bought it walked away having collected management fees for over a decade, regardless of outcome. Here's the sentence that explains the entire model: the buyers cannot lose. The debt belongs to the company. The fees get collected either way. They didn't buy a business to grow it. They bought a business to extract from it, and left 33,000 people holding what was left.

Periodic reminder that Chicago could have had this world class tourist destination built entirely on George Lucas’s dime in an area called the “Museum Campus” on what is now a Soldier Field parking lot but the busybody idiots at @FOTPChicago chased him away, against the wishes of the vast majority of Chicagoans. The actions of a few foolish, impractical, geriatric NIMBYs caused tremendous harm to the entire city. Never let them live this down. This organization and their head at the time Juanita Irizarry belong in the Chicago Hall of Shame.

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Trung Phan @TrungTPhan

2 months ago

George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in LA opens to public on September 22. Cost $1.5 billion and covers 300,000 square feet with 35 galleries (tons Star Wars memorabilia) and 2 (apparently insane) movie theatres. Took decade to build and first walk throughs look incredible.

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This was a really poor decision by Goodwill. It’s all donations - they get everything for free. I will no longer be donating.

Farm Girl Carrie™️👩‍🌾 @FarmGirlCarrie

2 months ago

This is so disappointing that Goodwill would not let go of one pair of donated shoes for a homeless woman when asked by a police officer. We have donated many goods to Goodwill over the years, and may have to re think who we donate to. I have tagged @GoodwillIntl here.

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An apt day to remember that Dolly Parton once recorded a cover of Stairway to Heaven - and, in defiance of every moral law in the universe, she absolutely owned it.

Yes, "The Pope" Donn Pall will be involved in tomorrow's Pope Hat Night at the Rate. Last year, I talked to Pall after Pope Leo came into our lives. nytimes.com/athletic/63432…

@SoxOn35th @quernzy What about an appearance by “The Pope” Don Pall

@TinaSfon @whitesox Will “The Pope” Don Pall be in attendance Tuesday?

Chicago’s relevance or prominence seems to have peaked in the 90s/00s. Why? It’s a mix of factors. Some were simply beyond anyone’s control, things naturally age out: the Bulls, John Hughes films, Oprah, Springer, even Obama's rise, moments/phenomenons pass. One of the biggest factors, though, was local leadership. Mayor Richard M. Daley was an aggressive booster who took promoting and running the city quite personally, it showed in the development and civic momentum during those years. The population grew for the first time in 50 years. Daley seemed to seize every opportunity that arose, even if he didn't get everything right. Some of that momentum carried into Rahm Emanuel's administration, its totally gone now with the shambolic Lightfoot and Johnson mayorships. Also, Rising crime numbers during pro-crime State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s tenure contributed to a perception that Chicago was less hospitable to residents and businesses, shootings and lootings were regular headlines. Economically, while Chicago remains a major financial center, it didn't emerge from the GFC with the same renewed momentum as NYC, and it never captured the scale of the VC and startup boom that transformed the Bay Area. Chicago seems to be coasting on past momentum, and momentum decays unless new energy is continually applied. @david_perell

David Perell @david_perell

3 months ago

Why isn't Chicago a more prominent place? Big city, beautiful architecture, top-tier sports teams, a solid subway system, and one of the world's biggest airports. People called it Second City for years. The Chicago Bulls were absolutely dominant during the 90s, and three of the

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