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Chica-go-go: Chicago's dance show for kids of all ages
kissnride.com is outta bizness :( |
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My grandmother taped this copy of Council Wars in 1983. We used to listen to it every once in a while. It was a Star Wars themed radio show and comedy play lampooning the Chicago's city "council wars".
I digitized the tape from my Mom's house this Christmas and as far as I know, this is the only copy available on the internet. Enjoy:
CouncilWarsEpisode1.mp3
CouncilWarsEpisode2.mp3
CouncilWarsEpisode3.mp3 |
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Mmmm. Just got back from Smoque barbeque on Pulaski and Irving. Had the chopped brisket sandwich, macaroni and cheese, and cobbler. Delicious. Super friendly too.
Smoque manifesto | menu | website |
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The Italian sub is suberb and while I cannot seem to cure my cheese steak jones anywhere outside of Philadelphia, the Philly here is so weird and good, I give it props.
Don't forget to get your cheese fries in the edible taco bowl. It serves 3.
Here's the article:
Hot dogs
The glutton
At Susie’s Drive Thru, you might get more wiener than you bargained for.
By Christina Couch
Photograph by Chris Lake
Time Out Chicago
July 3-9, 2008 - Issue 175
In an age of calorie-counting, carb-reducing, fat-free, sugar-free, taste-free everything, one culinary beacon isn’t afraid to let the grease fly. At tiny shack Susie’s Drive Thru (4126 W Montrose Ave, 773-283-6544), healthy is out and guilty pleasure is in. That delicious disregard for the arteries keeps customers queued up ’round the clock.
“Welcome to cholesterol heaven,” chirps night manager Laura Migon, dishing up an order of Susie’s signature cheese fries, a honey-almond milk shake and a fully loaded hot dog complete with raw onions, cucumber, relish, pickles and fresh tomatoes. “I’ve been working here for 34 years and still love the food,” she says.
Hot-dog devotees love it, too. Established in 1973, Susie’s is the last surviving member of a trio of Chicago-based hot-dog havens once owned by the Ninos family. Named after daughter Susan Kandra—one of four current owners of Susie’s Drive-In along with semiretired father-mother duo Gus and Kathy Ninos and sister Anastasia Romero—the former Western Burger building did so well as a hot-dog stand, it eventually drew all four Ninos there full time, as well as Migon, Kandra’s future mother-in-law.
Susie’s has evolved into a 16-person, 24-hour operation that looks almost exactly the way it did in the ’70s. It still has bare-bones decor, provides indoor seating for a whopping three patrons, and dishes up the majority of its 22,000 dogs per year through two all-night walk-up windows and two all-night drive-through windows.
Dog devourers don’t come here for a swanky setting. Susie’s clientele, a mishmash of families, college students, neighborhood locals and hot-dog connoisseurs, keep coming back because nothing goes with a neatly loaded dog quite like a housemade taco shell stuffed to the brim with french fries topped with cheese, bacon and grilled chicken (one of several topping combos available on the build-your-own-fries menu), and washed down with a milk shake in flavors ranging from butterscotch to “baboon” (chocolate and banana). Susie’s also offers several dishes of its own creation, such as the gyro burger (a concoction of hamburger, gyro meat, housemade sauce and onion served on a bun) and the corn pole (a cheese-stuffed Polish sausage battered and fried like a corn dog).
“A lot of the recipes are Gus’s and a lot of them are secret,” explains Migon. “He invents things and then passes them down to the girls. We’re always trying to come up with something new and better.”
Migon also admits patrons who hit up Susie’s late on a weekend night might get a glimpse of a less-appetizing kind of wiener. “Sometimes when it’s late and the drunks come out, things get a little funny, sometimes a little risqué,” Migon explains. “We’ve had customers try to place drive-through orders into a tree in the back of our lot [instead of ordering at the window]. We’ve had guys jump over the counter, dance on the tables, get mad and strip down in the lot, give you a bit of a show. We have girls that try to get free food by flashing our guys that work here, couples that steam up car windows in our parking lot. After a while I go up and say, ‘Could you please get a hotel [room]?’ It’s actually pretty funny.”
While limited seating, a deliciously grease-soaked-yet-trans-fat-free menu and the occasional drunken episode would detract from a more pretentious establishment, these quirks only add to Susie’s divey charm. “I’ve watched this place grow from ten customers a shift to hundreds on a shift,” Migon says. “It’s amazing, and I’m really proud of the fact that I’ve been part of it.”
NEXT>> |
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L.A. Journalist pines for Mayor Daley. Translation: Chicago: Awesome. Los Angeles: Not so much |
posted:
Sunday, July 20, 2008
| tags:
Chicago, Los Angeles, Mayor Daley, Los Angeles Times, Politics, Press, Newspapers, News, Media
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Here's the full article:
Chicago's Daley could teach Villaraigosa a few things
Steve Lopez
Los Angeles Times
July 6, 2008
The sun cast golden light across the metropolis, flowers overflowed baskets hanging from every post, people by the thousand strolled through massive parks or sunbathed on sandy beaches, enjoying public spaces with little or no trash, graffiti or homeless encampments.
This city's got pride, I thought while walking along the river under swaying cranes. It also has a clear sense that someone's in charge, ruling with an iron fist and rallying support for even greater imaginings.
Unfortunately I was not in Los Angeles or even in California.
I was vacationing in Chicago, the city that beat out L.A. last year in a bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
"I said from the beginning never count Richie out," L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley at the time. "This is a man who has no peer. . . . "
By coincidence, Villaraigosa was in Chicago just before I was. I'd like to think he took a good look at the place and came home with a few ideas, but that was definitely not his main reason for being there.
What was? You guessed it. Money. His pal Daley co-hosted a June 3 fundraiser, where if recent fundraising excursions are any indication, Villaraigosa may have picked up a pile from slobbering mugs who have had, or will have, business before the city.
But let's get back to Chicago.
I can guess what some of you are thinking: "Hey, Lopez, you live in the Mediterranean clime of Southern California, which happens to sit on the Pacific Ocean, and you vacationed on the prairie, which only thaws out long enough for a brief, steamy summer that leaves everyone praying for snow?"
Here's the deal: My wife had always wanted to take an old-fashioned Midwestern lake vacation, and we decided to squeeze in museums and other city stuff along with a trek through Michigan.
So we landed in Chicago, where folks in museums, hotels, restaurants and shops seem to have formed some kind of a pact to be helpful, polite and welcoming.
If we'd stayed more than three days, I would have had to start slapping people.
Having been to Chicago before, I know that comparisons to L.A. -- which has its own infinite charms and frankly is a far more interesting place to live -- make for an apples and oranges game. Chicago was built on a different scale and in a different era, pedestrian-friendly and transit-heavy, and it's not chopped up into indifferent municipalities with competing interests.
And to be fair, Chicago is no Emerald City, despite the presence of the yammering munchkins who run the Tribune Co. While I spent most of my time in the showcase parts of town, murder was out of control on the South Side, corruption is never far removed from the inner workings, and Daley has critics on everything from taxes to tact.
But why does a city that's under ice half the year have a better system of bike lanes, not to mention a bike-riding mayor, while Villaraigosa has a deputy mayor for transportation who dopes around L.A. in his Hummer?
Why has Chicago more aggressively improved full public access to lake and river, two of its greatest natural assets, while L.A. never gets anywhere with river development and didn't have the sense or leadership to build a western rail line all the way to the airport, let alone the beach, despite crippling traffic?
Why was Daley able to take over all of his city's ailing schools while a beaten-back Villaraigosa, after promising something grand, had to settle for a measly few campuses?
With a whole lot of help from his police chief, Villaraigosa has done reasonably well on cops and crime, and he's got a decent dream of making L.A. green, particularly at the port.
But his self-induced loss of momentum, along with funding shortages and a City Council that never veers from its quest for mediocrity, have conspired to knock the shine off Antonio's Holy Card smile.
Ron Kaye, the former L.A. Daily News editor, was born in Chicago and went to school there, and on a recent return visit, was struck by the same contrasts that were so obvious to me.
"There always has been an establishment in Chicago that had a greater sense of purpose than just getting rich or self-aggrandizing, so you have great works that came about," Kaye said.
Chicago has smarter corruption than L.A., Kaye said, because it's a strain of graft that gets things done rather than just lining pockets.
For better and worse, the dictatorial Daley family has been unafraid to reward friends and punish enemies and has used its power to keep the machine in line all the way down to ward heelers and block captains.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating a system of corrupt machine politics for Los Angeles. But is it too much to ask for a mayor capable of both inspiring and muscling people to create a better city?
In the absence of leadership, Kaye has embarked on the least rewarding of all L.A. challenges -- leading a public revolt. He's promoting a July 14 rally at City Hall for something that's being called the Saving L.A. Project.
"The slogan is to take back Los Angeles, to demand a great city," he said. "There's a group of community activists who want great bike paths and great schools and want to live in a great city that's the equal of our climate."
OK, I'm all for revolution.
But at least for a while, couldn't we work out an exchange program in which we trade Villaraigosa for Daley and see what happens? |
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