CHICAGO | Politics and Current Events

[rgolch]

I think he means the loss of some 3 stared Michelin restaurants, like Charlie Trotters and L2O. Also, a good number of high end restaurants are repurposing their spaces in less formal, more approachable restaurants. I think Sixteen at Trump has or is in the process of doing that. And if I remember correctly, that was a 2 star Michelin restaurant.

But for my purposes, I think the Chicago food scene is fantastic.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by rgolch

I think he means the loss of some 3 stared Michelin restaurants, like Charlie Trotters and L2O. Also, a good number of high end restaurants are repurposing their spaces in less formal, more approachable restaurants. I think Sixteen at Trump has or is in the process of doing that. And if I remember correctly, that was a 2 star Michelin restaurant.

But for my purposes, I think the Chicago food scene is fantastic.

This is a lot of it. Many of my favorite restaurants have closed in the past two years. Chicago isn't as good at the very top as it was. Too many places have downgraded themselves. I can only take so many hipster-cutsie "gastro-pubs." To be sure I like gastro-pubs, but I also like many, many other styles and I just feel like the variety is reducing and consolidating on a mass market version of that.

Chicago is excellent at the upper-middle level, the level most people eat at when they want a nice night out. But above that it's slipping. Chicago's top-tier used to be competitive with New York except for sheer scale. I don't think that's true anymore. I wouldn't even be shocked if, like LA, we lost our Red Michelin guide.

Also, they loss of Tony Hu has really hurt our Chinese food game.

[the urban politician]

Well, the churn is a good thing.

I think we have way more options than we did 10 years ago, even if we lost a few top notch places. And the ethnic variety is improving. To each his own, I guess...

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Well, the churn is a good thing.

I think we have way more options than we did 10 years ago, even if we lost a few top notch places. And the ethnic variety is improving. To each his own, I guess...

I think there are way more people eating out, more frequently, than ever before and our dining scene has evolved to fit this reality. There's also an expanded realization that even "lowbrow" categories like street food and comfort food can be prepared with the same kind of creativity, skill, and artistry as $100-a-plate seafood dish at an expense account restaurant. I just went out to Half Sour and had an amazing fried fish sandwich where literally every part of the sandwich was made in-house, from scratch, with plenty of loving care. That same restaurant also serves creative, unique and delicious pasta dishes for half the price of a fancy nouveau Italian joint.

Chefs just don't have as much interest in becoming "elite" chefs like Thomas Keller or Jean-Georges Vongerichten when they have plenty of freedom to experiment by opening a cheaper, more neighborhood focused place. The barriers to entry are far, far lower and you can be successful without having to lure a Wall Street (or LaSalle Street) clientele.

[LouisVanDerWright]

^^^ Yeah it just goes back to what I said earlier about Chicago having a less pretentious dining culture. Honestly while accolades like James Beard Awards and Michelin ratings are great and all for city vs city pissing matches, I'm actually interested in what actual innovation is happening and on what scale. From that perspective Chicago hasn't slowed a bit with interesting establishments popping up all over the place including in former backwaters like Bridgeport, Pilsen, Little Village/Tri Taylor, etc. Sometimes these places get a Michelin Star, sometimes they don't. I don't really care.

L20 was great, so was Charlie Trotters, but those aren't what make Chicago interesting. Frankly I'm more interested in the origins of the Kronos Gyro, the hotdog, italian beef, etc. in Chicago's working class past than I am in the fact that a restaurant closed because the proprietor died.

[Vlajos]

Wow, two polls now showing Prekwinkle getting crushed. Makes this dreary day a bit brighter.

[the urban politician]

Precwkinkle’s biggest liability is that she is an absolutely horrible politician.

[SamInTheLoop]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I don't think the 'ideological fight' thing has any legs to it.

The CTU stuff is really just a distraction. The real issue here is NIMBYism. Everybody knows that if this project didn't have a champion like Rahm, that nothing remotely of this scale will be built.

Now sure, we all agree that the plan is greatly flawed--the lack of transit access and road access, and the city is dropping the ball by not pushing for that.

But lets not kid ourselves--if we let Rahm's tenure lapse before approving a project of this scale, it's almost certain that this project will be ripped to shreds by hyenas when turned over to the NIMBYs and their every little demand; something certain to happen with a newer administration. We'd likely end up getting townhomes on cul-de-sacs and perhaps a grocery store.

Despite a lot of fear-mongering, there’s little reason to believe that big projects won’t get approved after Rahm. Calculus will change, and concessions may increase and/or shift, but profitable megadevelopments - even in a location as politically tricky as LY’s - will still be planned and move forward - maybe with better planning results....hopefully much better.

[ardecila]

Well, we'll have to see what happens with One Central Station.

It's not requesting a TIF, as far as I can tell, so it doesn't "steal" from CPS or any other taxing bodies. The only opposition will come from South Loop NIMBYs and left-wing socialist types who just can't stand the idea of anybody making money. Hopefully Mayor Lightfoot will push that one through after the usual rounds of proposals and concessions.

[BonoboZill4]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Well, we'll have to see what happens with One Central Station.

It's not requesting a TIF, as far as I can tell, so it doesn't "steal" from CPS or any other taxing bodies. The only opposition will come from South Loop NIMBYs and left-wing socialist types who just can't stand the idea of anybody making money. Hopefully Mayor Lightfoot will push that one through after the usual rounds of proposals and concessions.

I'm confident Lightfoot will end up being more developer and business friendly than Preckwinkle, so at least we are getting the better one. Not perfect, but I would have been depressed at the thought of getting someone as pathetic as Toni

[skysoar]

Originally Posted by BonoboZill4

I'm confident Lightfoot will end up being more developer and business friendly than Preckwinkle, so at least we are getting the better one. Not perfect, but I would have been depressed at the thought of getting someone as pathetic as Toni

The election is April 2, did I miss something. What makes you think Lightfoot is more business friendly .What is her known position on LY, 78, etc. Ironically yesterday while Lightfoot was at an endorsement with one of her State political allies, whining about someone outing her sexual preference , which is already known, Preckwinkle was at a business center speaking on how to improve investment in small business...hmm, sometimes the devil you know..

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by skysoar

The election is April 2, did I miss something.

there are two post-election polls that i know of so far.

both of them show lightfoot crushing preckwinkle.

i don't think there's much hope for preckwinkle to overcome the burke taint.

unless something major happens in the next 3 weeks, lori's got this in the bag.



run-off polls:

Jason McGrath - lightfoot 59% - preckwinkle 29%

FM3 - lightfoot 58% - preckwinkle 30%

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_C...ection#Polling




speaking of polling, i actually got to participate in one yesterday. i almost never answer unknown phone numbers, but i thought it was my kids' daycare calling me so i answered it, but it turns out it was an election pollster. i got to register my "very strong support" for lightfoot as a "very likely to vote registered voter".

[emathias]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Yep, and what I love about Rosa and Guzzardi is that those idiots got EVICTED for not paying rent. What a bunch of losers. I'd love to know what their credit score is.

I'm sure their answer would be that credit scores are EVIL. I should not be judged on my past behavior, that's a violation of my civil rights!

Not paying rent is pretty stupid. Even at times when my budget was chaos, rent was always the first thing I paid simply because without a place to stay everything else would probably fall apart or become incredibly difficult. For similar reasons, I always keep one credit card paid up even if I didn't have enough money to about being late on some other consumer credit - in today's society, you need a credit card to function. Pretty much when I was fine financially everything got paid of course, but if things got tough the priority list was rent, electric and gas, phone, insurance, one credit card, internet, other credit cards, any other random payments. I haven't owned a car in two decades, but even when I needed a car and had a car payment, it and/or car insurance came after rent - I wasn't about to risk criminal charges if I had an accident.

I get that rent for an office is a little different from over home, but you still need to have a base of operations if you want to be successful.

I don't think credit reports are evil, but I do think they're both overly simplistic and over-valued by a lot of businesses that use them to evaluate people. I get there is a lot of value for smaller loans to be able to have a simple way to quickly decide whether to grant credit, but the more significant a loan is the less I think relying on a credit report as anything more than a starting point for the discussion is smart. Both because someone with excellent credit who's never had to handle hard times is wildly unpredictable if they do run into hard times, so may be far riskier than they appear, and because someone with mediocre credit who's had hard times may be far more reliable than their score would indicate. I've had times when my credit score was terrible, but I've always made creditors whole and never just let something get written off. But I've had friends who had excellent credit just walk away from things, sometimes very significant things, when they ran into difficulties.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by skysoar

The election is April 2, did I miss something. What makes you think Lightfoot is more business friendly .What is her known position on LY, 78, etc. Ironically yesterday while Lightfoot was at an endorsement with one of her State political allies, whining about someone outing her sexual preference , which is already known, Preckwinkle was at a business center speaking on how to improve investment in small business...hmm, sometimes the devil you know..

Prewinkle said "I think it's very brave of Lightfoot to run as an outed lesbian" or something along those lines which sounded an awful lot like a dogwhistle to point out her gender orientation to conservative African Americans or Hispanics or whites on the NW or SW sides. I normally don't go for the political correctness thing, but that one was pretty obvious on Bigotwinkle's part...

I mean why bring it up at all? Her orientation should have nothing to do with the race either positively or negatively. When asked what she admires most about her opponent during a televised debate her response was basically "that she's a lesbian"... I mean wtf is that? You couldn't have just spit out some generic canned response about he being willing to work as civil servant or something?

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/lo...lesbian-lgbtq/

[Steely Dan]

in case anyone needs another reason to support lightfoot, here are some recent quotes of hers:


“There is no doubt in my mind that in the coming days, and weeks at the most, we’re going to see a series of indictments that come down from my former colleagues at the U.S. attorney’s office and it is going to center around this issue of aldermanic prerogative. We need to be on the right side of history on this issue.”

“No alderman should have that kind of power where people feel like the only way that they can get basic city services and get business done in a ward is to kiss the ring of the alderman. That’s fundamentally the problem. That is corrosive and again, if I’m lucky enough to be the next mayor, I’m going to drive a stake through the heart of that."


Go get 'em, Lori!

[Skyguy_7]

Originally Posted by BonoboZill4

I'm confident Lightfoot will end up being more developer and business friendly than Preckwinkle, so at least we are getting the better one. Not perfect, but I would have been depressed at the thought of getting someone as pathetic as Toni

I'm of the same opinion and still can't believe Taxwinkle is even in the conversation right now. She is disgusting.

[Vlajos]

I don't think either are good options for a city on the brink of insolvency. However Prekwinkle is backed by the public employee unions and is unlikely to cut pay and benefits which must be done. Also, Prekwinkle has proven she loves taxes with the soda tax and bait and switch on the sales tax. She has also come out in favor of rent control.

I can't support Prekwinkle in any way. So it's Lightfoot, though she will likely be a one termer with recession around the corner.

[Tom In Chicago]

^I like it. . .

. . .

[the urban politician]

Yeah Lightfoot is miles ahead of Preckwinkle as a Mayoral choice.

However, I wouldn’t go so far as to say she would be a pro-business Mayor. I just think she would be less anti-business than Preckwinkle.

And don’t assume she won anything. We don’t want complacency to stop people from voting!

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Yeah Lightfoot is miles ahead of Preckwinkle as a Mayoral choice.

However, I wouldn’t go so far as to say she would be a pro-business Mayor. I just think she would be less anti-business than Preckwinkle.

And don’t assume she won anything. We don’t want complacency to stop people from voting!

I don't think we need a pro business mayor at all which is why I wasn't all over Daley to begin with. We need a pro-fairness mayor and that, more than anything, will go a long ways towards making the business environment here better.

Let's face it, the current city structure is already pro business, you can buy off an alderman at any time and get whatever you need. But that's only pro business in the sense that it let's them do whatever the F they want. That's not necessarily a good thing and the contrived, inaccessible, system unfairly benefits those with the clout and wherewithal to navigate it over small businesses.

Think of how much time and money is collectively wasted city wide just trying to navigate building code cases sic'd on owners who piss off aldermen or minor zoning changes where you must kiss the ring? Think of how much damage is done when an alderman can just downzone or upzone property at will without regard for whether it's actually good policy. These things need to stop and, even if Lightfoot is a ways left of center, just stopping these abuses will make the entire city a more appealing place to invest. This is particularly true for outsiders who, rightfully so, view our city as a festering sore of corruption and clout mongering, a market that's not even worth trying to enter.