Category Archive 'Chicago'
25 Sep 2015

Chicago Welcome

, ,

WelcometoChicago

31 Oct 2014

Jeppson’s Malort

, ,

I’d never heard of this stuff before running into the ad yesterday.

——————————-

——————————-

RedEye Staffers taste Malort for the first time. 1:51 video

——————————-

14 things about Malort.

10 Jul 2014

Chicago: Strictest Gun Control in the Country

,

ChicagoGunControl2

The Onion: Environmental Study Finds Air In Chicago Now 75% Bullets

——————————

Chicago and the Don Zaluchi Policy:

Don Zaluchi runs Chicago, although it’s actually grey-black powder.

If they had any sense or American identity left in them, they’d realize that they are every one his sacrificial pawns. The Don wants this, every child gunned down makes the case for firearms confiscation, and the reversion to slavery complete. But this, in this country, will never happen without risking civil war. And the Don knows, the rest of the country doesn’t care either and believes as he does. Who cares if soulless animals off each other? There’s no downside to letting this continue, or so he and his associates think.

The Don could stop this. But it would mean a severe squeeze on the rackets to make the streets safe. The Capo’s would get themselves a new Don. That the Don only calls ineffectively for firearms confiscation, while doing nothing to actually make the city safe for all People, “evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”

20 Jul 2012

Small Business and the Government Hammer

, , , , , ,


John Kass

Barack Obama’s Roanoke speech struck a deep personal chord for Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass. Kass, born in the early 1950s, was the son of a Greek immigrant grocer who can remember very well exactly what government did for his family.

When President Barack Obama hauled off and slapped American small-business owners in the mouth the other day, I wanted to dream of my father.

But I didn’t have to close my eyes to see my dad. I could do it with my eyes open.

All I had to do was think of the driveway of our home, and my dad’s car gone before dawn, that old white Chrysler with a push-button transmission. It always started, but there was a hole in the floor and his feet got wet in the rain. So he patched it with concrete mix and kept on driving it to the little supermarket he ran with my Uncle George.

He’d return home long after dark, physically and mentally exhausted, take a plate of food, talk with us for a few minutes, then flop in that big chair in front of the TV. Even before his cigarette was out, he’d begin to snore.

The next day he’d wake up and do it again. Day after day, decade after decade. Weekdays and weekends, no vacations, no time to see our games, no money for extras, not even forMcDonald’s. My dad and Uncle George, and my mom and my late Aunt Mary, killing themselves in their small supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.

There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks.

Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads. …

One of my earliest memories as a boy at the store was that of the government men coming from City Hall. One was tall and beefy. The other was wiry. They wanted steaks.

We didn’t eat red steaks at home or yellow bananas. We took home the brown bananas and the brown steaks because we couldn’t sell them. But the government men liked the big, red steaks, the fat rib-eyes two to a shrink-wrapped package. You could put 20 or so in a shopping bag.

“Thanks, Greek,” they’d say.

That was government.

Read the whole thing.

1:17 video

21 May 2012

$225,000 Lamborghini With Unskilled Driver

, , ,

How embarrassing!

15 May 2012

Battle of the Raptors

, , ,

(photo: Rick Remington)

In Chicago, this winter, a Peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) took a go at a Snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus). A local birder named Rick Remington got some great photos and described the action.

North American Birding:

[The owl] would do a somersault just as the Peregrine approached and flash its nasty talons in an attempt to scare off the Falcon. The battle lasted for 5 full minutes before the Falcon headed off in another direction and the Snowy Owl flew down to the rocks by the lake. It was a surprisingly violent and noisy encounter, with both birds shrieking loudly and the owl extending its giant wings to intimidate the smaller falcon. I fully expected this to end badly for the owl based on what I was watching. In spite of the obvious mismatch, the Snowy Owl managed to hold its own and escape unscathed.

18 Sep 2011

Choosing a Polish War Hero

, , , , ,


Pfc. Omar E. Torres, 20, of Chicago; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, US Army, died Aug. 22, 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit during combat operations.


David Feith
, in the Wall Street Journal, describes a Hispanic organization with the right perspective, and recounts a heart-warming anecdote of ethnic interaction between older and newer American immigrant communities.

According to [Juan] Rangel—CEO of Chicago’s United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) and co-chair of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s recent election campaign—the central question for Hispanics to answer as they grow in number and potential political influence is: “Do we want to be the next victimized minority group in America, or do we want to be the next successful immigrant group?” …

UNO’s main operation is an 11-school charter network serving 5,500 students, 98% of whom are Hispanic (mostly immigrant families from Mexico) and 93% of whom are at or below the poverty line. The schools—which the Chicago Tribune says outperform city averages—include many staples of effective charters: strict uniforms, an extended school day and year, and a contract laying out parents’ and teachers’ responsibilities to students and vice versa, which may soon be the model for a contract distributed city-wide.

At UNO’s schools there’s no controversy over reciting the Pledge of Allegiance daily or singing the Star-Spangled Banner before every public event. On Flag Day every June, roughly 100 immigrants swear oaths of citizenship at a naturalization ceremony held in an UNO gymnasium. …

One of the UNO network’s newest outposts is Veterans Memorial Campus, which has three schools, each named in honor of a Hispanic-American war hero. The campus is in the traditionally Polish Archer Heights neighborhood, and when Mr. Rangel initially proposed it, the neighbors were suspicious. Having met with the neighborhood association and earned its trust, Mr. Rangel invited the Poles to name one of the school buildings after a war hero of theirs. After several days of deliberation they responded, to Mr. Rangel’s surprise, by naming Omar Torres, a Hispanic son of Archer Heights who had recently died in Iraq.

25 May 2011

Governing the Chicago Way

, , , , , , , , ,

Michael Barone cites 1,372 waivers from Obamacare, the NLRB’s intervention to prevent Boeing building an assembly plant in South Carolina, and an innovative attempt by the IRS to apply gift taxes to certain 501(c)(4) organizations guilty of supporting Republican candidates.

Punishing enemies and rewarding friends — politics Chicago style — seems to be the unifying principle that helps explain the Obamacare waivers, the NLRB action against Boeing and the IRS’ gift-tax assault on 501(c)(4) donors.

They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government.

One thing they don’t look like is the rule of law.

—————————————

Warner Todd Huston finds the same “Chicago Way” of doing things applies also to White House press pool access.

The Boston Herald recently found itself excluded from the press pool covering presidential visits. The Herald angrily reported finding out the reason for the ban.

The White House Press Office yesterday refused to address its policy on choosing local reporters for pool coverage, after the Herald was denied full access to the president’s Boston visit this week in part because the administration didn’t like the newspaper’s coverage. A press staffer’s e-mails cited a Mitt Romney op-ed that ran March 8 on the front page, challenging Obama’s policies the same day the president came to town for a fund-raiser.

14 Feb 2011

Valentine’s Day, the Chicago Way

, ,

11 Feb 2011

Vivian Maier, Street Photographer

, ,

This New York Times feature has a representative slide-show:

Vivian Maier, evidently one of America’s more insightful street photographers, has at last been discovered. The release of every fresh image on the Web causes a sensation among the growing legion of her admirers. … Ms. Maier’s streetscapes manage simultaneously to capture a redolent sense of place and the paradoxical moments that give the city its jazz, while elevating and dignifying the people in her frames — vulnerable, noble, defeated, proud, fragile, tender and often quite funny. …

What is known about Ms. Maier is that she was born in New York in 1926, lived in France (her mother was French) and returned to New York in 1951. Five years later, she moved to Chicago, where she worked for about 40 years as a nanny, principally for families in the North Shore suburbs. On her days off, she wandered the streets of New York and Chicago, most often with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera. Apparently, she did not share her pictures with others. Many of them, she never saw herself. She left behind hundreds of undeveloped rolls.

Vivian Maier blog

Russell Bowman Art Advisory Exhibition, Chicago, April 15, 2011 – June 18, 2011

Finding Vivian Maier: Chicago Street Photographer exhibition, January 8, 2011 – April 3, 2011


Vivian Maier, 1926-2009

Hat tip to Xavier.

27 Jun 2010

Chicago Lightning

, ,


Lightning hits the Willis Tower (formerly, the Sears Tower) and the Trump Tower in Chicago.

Chicago is a great city for weather watching and photography.

20 Jun 2010

Sunday, June 20, 2010

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ouch! I don’t get to type this often…: “He had acetylene torch injury to the penis.”

———————————————

John Hinderaker from Power-Line, respects Obama’s behavior.

———————————————

Conservative cultural commentary venues The Notes and Culture11 went under. (link 1 & link 2).

Some people think they were not populist enough, but I am inclined to believe that the fact I never previously heard of either one of them could be part of the problem.

———————————————

Cigarettes $10 a pack in NYC.

New Yorkers ought to take up chewing tobacco.

———————————————

Write fiction based on your own life experience and they’ll sue you.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Your are browsing
the Archives of Never Yet Melted in the 'Chicago' Category.











Feeds
Entries (RSS)
Comments (RSS)
Feed Shark