May I recommend In the Realms of the Unreal about the life and work of Henry Darger and his (coincidentally named) Vivian Girls? I saw it at the Gene Siskel Film Center a million years ago during some film festival. It's pretty awesome.

Pretty good Chicago Auto show this year. I love the Alfa display, wich by the way is worth more than all the other cars on the floor combined due to collector value(Alfa classic P3 and 159 worth 40 million. T33 sportscar worth 10 million. Total 50 million collector value. Alfa show girl priceless).

Here are a few pictures:


http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...ps24d697ae.jpg

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...psef785e99.jpg

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...psa8ccacce.jpg

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...ps6bb5b93a.jpg

http://www.wsj.com/articles/art-inst...art-1429675261

Art Institute of Chicago Gets $500 Million Gift of Art

Museum to receive trove that includes artwork by Warhol and Johns
A $500 Million Gift of Art for the Art Institute of Chicago In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Art Institute of Chicago, ...


[email protected]il 22, 2015 12:01 a.m. ET
In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Art Institute of Chicago, retired plastics manufacturer Stefan Edlis and his wife, Gael Neeson, have promised to give the museum a group of 42 Pop and contemporary artworks valued at roughly $500 million combined.

The trove includes nine silk-screens by Andy Warhol; a trio of Jasper Johns paintings; a pair of paintings by Roy Lichtenstein; a quartet of Gerhard Richter paintings and an early sculpture and painting by Cy Twombly. The gift ranks among the museum’s largest in its 136-year history and puts its contemporary holdings on par with its signature collection of Impressionist masterpieces.

The gift was approved by the Art Institute’s board at a meeting on Tuesday.

...

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...ugh-his-alumni

April 27, 2015

Hot Doug's lives on—through his alumni

It's been six months since Doug Sohn closed his wildly popular Hot Doug's,E and loyal followers have been wondering what might take its place.

Now, two of the four line cooks who worked at the restaurant have opened their own hot dog spot, Hot "G" Dog,E in Uptown, reports DNAinfo Chicago.

Brothers Juan Carlos Garcia and Octavio Garcia were long-time line cooks at Sohn's place, and were "total pros in the kitchen," Sohn told DNAinfo. "They made Hot Doug's as much as a success as I did."

The two have created a similar menu to the one at Sohn's restaurant, with alligator, snake, foie gras and lamb sausages as well as a classic Chicago dog. And yes, there are duck-fat fries on weekends.

The Garcias are using similar ingredients and the same sausage source, Chicago Game & Gourmet. ....

Hot "G" Dog is at 5009 N. Clark St.



http://www.hotgdog.com/


http://www.yelp.com/biz/hot-g-dog-chicago

Additionally:

http://art.newcity.com/2015/04/28/ne...te-of-chicago/

News: Irving Stenn Jr. Gifts Personal Collection of 105 Drawings to Art Institute of Chicago


The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) recently announced collector Irving Stenn Jr.’s gift of 105 pivotal contemporary drawings by renowned artists. Considered to be one of the most significant contributions of drawings to have ever been given to the museum, the encompassing and vast body of work heavily focuses on works from the 1960s, to which Stenn was keenly attracted. The gifts were exhibited a couple years ago at AIC but will now be part of their permanent collection, put on display on occasion when their inclusion is appropriate to the exhibitions.

Absolutely. Check out ChicagoGreeters.com. Our tourism numbers are going through the roof. European, Asian, and Latin American markets are on fire for us right now, we just opened another auxiliary center in Chengdu, China to further promote the city. Chicago, it seems, far exceeds their expections - I constantly hear "This city is so much prettier and cleaner than New York." "I had no idea Lake Michigan was that big and beautiful." "Everyone here is so friendly!" "I had no idea a city this big existed between New York and Los Angeles." We hit our 'expected number of guests' for the first quarter (Jan 1- April 30) back in the beginning of February.

The momentum is growing, we just need to capitalize on it.

Oh yeah, thanks! Funny you mention China. My girlfriend who's originally from China (Dongbei region originally but moved to Shanghai over a decade ago) and lives in NYC (I split my time between these two cities every week) was in Chicago for her 2nd time. The first time was a few years ago and she didn't seem much. Cold March weekend.

She was amazed by how clean the city was compared to NYC. She never saw Lake Michigan her first time and couldn't believe it - how blue it was, how big, etc. She took pictures of it, posted it on the Chinese equivalent of FB and asked "Guess where!?" A handful of people thought it was Miami. She started asking me about real estate prices here and was absolutely amazed at how cheap everything is relatively compared to SF, DC, NYC, etc and Shanghai. She kept remarking how the South Loop's skyline reminded her of some cities in China - the architecture, modernity of the buildings, and spacing of the buildings. She said Roosevelt Collection looks exactly like where her parents live in an outer ring of Shanghai and asked if a Chinese architect had designed it.

I guess recently she's been telling some of her Chinese friends about Chicago. Most of them just say "Yeah, but the winters!" -- and yes winters are rough, but the difference in winter between NYC and Chicago isn't really THAT great minus the snow totals. This last winter was about even between the two cities too with temperatures. I'm usually in both cities every week and I see the potential for Chicago to really grow again right now.

In the context of China, our climate, including winters, are very similar to Beijing for that matter.

At the risk of steering this ship further off topic: I've had similar experiences with friends who had never been to the city. One dude gazed out at the lake for the first time and remarked, "I thought you'd be able to see to the other side?!" (...a real idiot, that one, but I hear this is a depressingly common exclamation among first-time visitors. I guess "lake" sounds quaint? Perhaps to get a real sense of their scale, it would probably be better to describe the Great Lakes as inland seas.) A friend from college, originally from Calgary, visited one weekend with her fiance. I took them to Watershed on a Saturday night. We walked around River North a bit, and, observing the nightlife there, she made a surprised comment about how Chicago, "is, like, a real city!" Another friend from college made a similar remark about Downtown's scale the first time she was here.

The gulf between what people think they know about Chicago and the reality of the city never ceases to amaze me. Lots of people get defensive about their hometowns, but, IMO, few are as justified as Chicagoans.

the word "lake", really does throw a lot of people off because to 95% of the world's people, lakes are smallish bodies of freshwater that you can always see the other side of. "freshwater sea" would really be a more accurate, if verbally cumbersome, term for the great lakes.

this reminds me of a conversation i had years ago with my british friend's father who was visiting chicago for the first time. i took the family up to milwaukee for a little day-trip. upon arriving at the milwaukee art museum, my friend's dad looked out across the vast blue expanse of lake michigan and remarked:


friend's dad: "my god, another great lake just like the one down in chicago. these lakes truly are remarkable, we've nothing like them back in blighty."

me: "oh no, this is still the same lake as the one down in chicago, it's all lake michigan."

friend's dad: "you mean we've just been traveling for a couple of hours on the motorway and we're still along the shore of the same lake?! unbelievable. exactly how large is this lake?"

me: "about 300 miles long in the north-south direction."

friend's dad: "bloody hell! 300 miles long! that's almost the length of england itself! and you yanks call this vast sea a mere lake?"

me: "well, it is all freshwater....... and there are 4 more of them to boot."

friend's dad: "unbelievable." <shaking his head in disbelief>


he had some prior awareness that the great lakes were big, but in his mind, when we traveled up I-94 from chicago to milwaukee, he had assumed that we had traveled from one great lake to another great lake, his mind had come nowhere close to wrapping itself around the true size and scale of the great lakes, because back home in britain, what he knew as "lakes" are simply small puddles in comparison to a body of water like lake michigan.

Yeah, I find that most people, especially foreigners, have absolutely no concept of the true scale of the interior USA. This is a useful image I've sent to my friends in the UK:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6mm_Y-CIAA8j1x.jpg
Peter Campbell on Twitter


One of my business partners from there said something along the lines of "Well, that's a proper city isn't it!" when the skyline first came into view while driving in from O'Hare. I feel like Chicago is lumped in with all the lesser Central US cities like Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, etc in most people's minds until they actually see it and realize few cities globally are even on Chicago's scale.

Another great bit of fun with foreigners is forcing them to drive across the great plains. I had one of my British friends remark "What city are we in now? St. Louis" after we sat in traffic for a bit more than an hour and arrived in Oakbrook. I was like "We haven't even left the outskirts of Chicago yet..." Same guy was asking if we were "almost there" when we were rolling into Omaha. Broke his heart to find out we were not quite halfway to Denver yet.

They must not have been too traumatized though because they opted to drive from Vail to Las Vegas instead of grab a flight the next week.

Yep, and she's from NE China and so are some of her friends. The winters there are worse than Chicago - at least as bad as Minnesota if not worse. They think Chicago is somehow worse than that - lot of misinformation.

Yeah. I find that most people don't actually have a clue. I mean, I'll admit it too. I grew in Minnesota but didn't have a real clue. People also always say "lake" like it's some small lake in Maine. They don't have a clue of how massive that thing is. At 500 mph, it will still take a plane 15 minutes to fly over it between Michigan and Illinois.

Even regarding culture - a lot of people come for the first time and expect to see people who look like hicks all over the place with no swanky anything. It's just funny - I have a coworker in NYC who's never been there and the way she talks about Chicago is just hilariously wrong. I show her that she hasn't a clue and now she wants to visit.

yeah i visted the great wall and chengde in december.
cold, and WIND.

most people dont have a clue about anywhere outside of their immediate surroundings. ask an average American to find Poland on a map and I suspect they will fail, much less articulately be able to describe what life is like there or any level of its history/geography/culture. this isnt somehow unique to chicago, although people here do seem to take it more personally.

the fact is everyone forms sterotypes about places, and most will see a mere fraction of the planet in their lifetimes, even if theyre lucky. we have kids on the southside who have never seen the lake or a world outside of their neighborhood, much less a forest or a mountain.

No, it's not a matter of accurately knowing what life is like elsewhere, it's about the manner in which their expectations tend to be inaccurate. Certain places tend to be over-exaggerated and certain places tend to be under-exaggerated. You always hear the tales of immigrants from Europe expecting the streets to be paved with gold in NYC. People tend to underestimate Chicago in many ways while also overestimating some of our negatives like crime. And, Chicago, still being a relatively young city, perpetually feels like it has something to prove when it comes to the other great cities of the world. So we take it personal when people underestimate us and we collectively seem to feel the need to correct that. That's why we're the windy city, it really hasn't changed much at all from the days of the Tribinue and other paper chiefs on the next train to NYC the day after the fire. Always boasting, but usually backed up with the facts. Always the city on the make, trying to prove itself.

Chicago Tribune, Nov. 20, 1892

^ Spot on, LVDW.

The issue Chicago deals with is that it really is such a great city which is so under recognized. Hell, the city right now even is changing at a whirlwind pace. It's hard for its reputation to keep up with what is happening. If you aren't on the ground here you will just expect a glorified Cleveland. Chicago needs to do away with this perception problem for once and for all with a dedicated, expensive global marketing campaign.

I went to the NFL draft Saturday with my son and brother and his boy.


There were tons of people from out of town wowed by the city. " Chicago is so beautiful I never knew it." "Look at the view of the Lake !!!" ect all heard from the many first time out of towners.


The draft experience was a good time really and heavily attended at least the day I went. Plus the weather was just about perfect that day. I certainly hope Chicago can continue to host the Draft. Its 3 days of national showing the city exposure viewed by millions. Most all of the broadcasts were outdoors and lots of skyline backdrops vs the inside of theater of NYC that has held them for decades.





http://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/n....html?page=all

NFL Draft —judged by attendance numbers — was certainly not lacking

May 4, 2015, 1:53pm CDT Updated: May 4, 2015, 2:34pm CDT


The hype was unending.

But when it all finally did end Saturday night, the 2015 NFL Draft — unfolding in Chicago for the first time in more than 50 years — had attracted an estimated total 200,000 visitors to both the Draft Town fan festival sprawled across Grant Park and to the NFL Draft ritual itself across the street inside the relatively more intimate Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University.

NFL executives did not break down the size of the crowd that congregated at each location. But undoubtedly the much larger majority of the total attendance was mixing and mingling in Draft Town, which covered an expanse equal to several football fields.

...

Chicago's deal to host the event was for one year only. But with Chicago Mayer Rahm Emanuel, —who took a large part of the credit for luring the Draft to Chicago — back in office, it's likely he will push hard to get it back in the Windy City as early as next year

It feels like Chicago's finally getting a critical mass of high-profile cultural events. Consider this roster, and how many of them are recent additions: James Beard Awards (food), Chicago Architecture Biennial (design/architecture), EXPO (visual art – gaining momentum, and before Miami, Chicago was America's art fair town), Lollapalooza (music), and the NFL Draft (sports).

That might be true, but at the same time, we are on the verge of financial calamity in the city and the state. Our precarious financial position may limit what we are able to do to promote the city's cultural assets going forward. I hope I'm wrong. :runaway: