Know this first: this is the most emotionally compelling blog I've ever read, and perhaps the best. A Chicago writer and pet lover loses his job, gets fed up with the economy, and decides to bike to the Pacific Ocean to promote pet adoption, with his favorite Basset Hound, Antigone, blogging the trip from her doggie trailer. But it's the candid bravery of the human author that shines best as Antigone Goes West.
Antigone Goes West: A Man, A Dog, A Bike...and 2,000 Miles Towards A New Life
Loud Loop Press: Webzine for Chicago's Music Scene
Richard Giraldi's Loud Loop Press aims to "amplify Chicago's music scene" over the Internet. By the look of things, Giraldi's doing a pretty good job of it, too.
The Point of Social Media Is the Social, Not the Media
A version of the following entry is cross-posted today on Chicago Carless.
Last month on Chicagosphere, I wrote a popular post about how social media helped save a financially struggling local business. Unfortunately, social media wasn't enough to save a popular Oak Park coffee shop. Lido's Caffé, the home of a longstanding coffee klatsch that germinated on Twitter--my coffee klatsch--succumbed to the ailing economy last week. Yet in the shop's failure is a lesson in online community--and how to translate it to real life.
How to Help Haiti: Aid Resources on the Web
(Updated 7:27 p.m.) Several fellow Twitterers have been asking today how they can help the victims of yesterday's devastating earthquake in Haiti that leveled the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Here is a list of resources I've found that Chicagoans and anyone else can use to figure out the best way for them to offer indirect and, in some cases, direct aid to people affected by the disaster...
Track Your Bus over Coffee in Wicker Park/Bucktown
WPB, the newly renamed easier to remember name of the Special Service Area tax district that works with the Wicker Park/Bucktown Chamber of Commerce, is putting CTA bus tracker data to great use in its eponymous twin near-northwest neighborhoods. How about video screens in your favorite local shops and cafes telling you at a glance how long you can linger before heading out to the bus stop? Wicker Park/Bucktown now has a network of them.
Recently, WPB program manager Jamie R. Simone (AICP, LEED APWPB) and Chris Lackner, principal of the PR firm Lackner/Andrews, walked me through the finer points of the video kiosks at Red Hen Bread on Milwaukee Avenue, where one of the screens is located.
The screens grew out of WPB's master plan, completed 18 months ago, which sought to make real-time use of CTA's bus tracker info in the district's service area (find a PDF map of the district's boundaries boundaries here.) Around the same time, digital signage company Redpost approached the chamber to explore the potential to roll out a network of neighborhood video screens to promote local news and carry local advertising.
The two ideas merged in the creation of a pilot network of video kiosks installed in 11 locations along the major shopping and transportation corridors of Milwaukee, Damen, and North avenues. The screens, which went live in November, display a real-time scroll of arrival information for CTA bus routes adjacent or nearby to the establishments in which they're located.
Snow Removal and a Chicagoan in Montreal
Last week's allegedly heavy snowfall got me thinking about a couple of things. First, that Chicago meteorologists are way too melodramatic--it's Chicago, it's winter, it snows, we live here, we know that. Second, that maybe there's an even snowier major city that deals better with the white stuff than we do. There is, and a Chicagoan in Montreal tells all about it.
"Seriously" Elizabeth Grattan, You Should Have Known Better
Chicago radio talent/producer Elizabeth Grattan (tweeting as @elizabethdamaro) turned herself into a story lede over New Year's weekend. Like me, she's a loud-mouthed, late-30s media insider. And that means she should have known better.
On January 2, the Sun-Times reported a "highly intoxicated" Grattan got herself arrested for smashing a front window and breaking into her ex-boyfriend's Old Town apartment during a New Year's Eve party. When the police arrived, Grattan made matters worse by holding them at bay and refusing to be removed. Now she has a January 25th date in Misdemeanor Court. But wait, because that's so not all...
Is RedEye the "New" CTA Tattler?
When ChicagoNow debuted in May 2009, Chicagoist called CTA Tattler one of the site's most notable blogs. Predating ChicagoNow by several years, CTA Tattler came with a built-in reputation as the Windy City's go-to online source for transit news. So why for the past several months has RedEye's Going Public column been beating the Tattler at its own game?
Raise a Cup with the Windy City Wine Guy
If you thought Chicago's only new media-savvy sommelier was Alpana Singh, think again. Michael Bottigliero, scribe of Windy City Wine Guy, is out to show Chicagoans that the viney beverage is nothing to be feared by the average Midwesterner.
Depaul Copenhagen Climate Blog a Copout
A class of Depaul University students spent two weeks in December blogging the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (aka COP-15.) The students, under the tutelage of associate public policy professor Hugh Bartling, attempted to explore the dangers of a warming climate--and the politics behind finding a fix. Unfortunately, they spent much of the conference locked out of it.
