I ’ve been obsessed with ships for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in Iowa, and the largest body of water I saw as a kid wasn’t big enough for more than a rowboat. Even now, I still geek out over just about anything that flo

◼ For those who think alluring fragrances only come from overseas, there is new evidence to the contrary: the emergence of Clue Perfumery, started in 2022 by childhood friends Laura Oberwetter and Caleb Vanden Boom, who live in Logan Square. Clue’s t

Another busy week, same question. @MaryAnnAhernNBC via X Looking at just the major players in sports, it’s wild but somehow fitting that no one named McCaskey appears on the list. @readjack via X I have pushed myself to the brink like this once [“The

ILLINOIS IS ABOUT to be swimming in cicadas, both alive and dead. This May, the Northern Illinois Brood and the Great Southern Brood will emerge from the soil simultaneously, overlapping in central Illinois. That means the Prairie State is about to b

Sheboygan has long been known as the home of the bratwurst (and more recently as the go- to spot for Vera Pizza Napoletana–certified wood-fired pizzas at one of my favorite restaurants, Il Ritrovo). But what I love most about this small city halfway

YOU NEVER LEAVE THE NABE,” A FELLOW ROGERS Parker once told me. “Why should I?” I responded. “I can buy my groceries here, I can go to the tavern, I can go to church. If I go somewhere else, I’ll have to pay for parking.” Neighborhood life is the ess

It’s rare to find a place where you can see the actual Milky Way spilling itself across the firmament and contemplate the cosmos on an elemental level. But one of the best spots to do so in the Upper Midwest is Newport State Park in Ellison Bay, near

THERE’S A LINE FROM EARLY IN THE SECOND SEASON OF The Bear that has stuck with me. Sydney asks Carmy what it takes for a restaurant to earn a Michelin star. “You’re going to have to care about everything, more than anything,” he says. The same holds

DRIP COLLECTIVE OPENED IN FEBRUARY, BUT IT FEELS LIKE IT’S BEEN part of the West Loop for years. The café has been drawing creative types from the start with its innovative lattes, but that’s only part of the allure: The space also serves as an incub

The Garden Peninsula, which I discovered on a drive around the Great Lakes nearly 20 years ago, is out of the way even for the Upper Peninsula. Hanging off the bottom of the mother peninsula, it is a 22-mile-long knuckle of land reaching from Michiga

ON THE GRILLING-COMPLEXITY spectrum, making the juicy Balkan sausages called cevapi isn’t much more taxing than patting together a few burgers. But the payoff is huge. “I love cevapi for the distinctive flavor of lamb mixed with beef plus some paprik

When my husband, Kurt, and I bought a 2004 Chevy Astro conversion van with two bucket seats and a convertible bed, we envisioned a future filled with epic road trips launched from the curb in front of our home. For starters, we decided to take on the

A FTER A DISMAL 101- loss season and the defection to Detroit of beloved announcer Jason Benetti, the White Sox could use a little positivity these days. And they may have found it in their unabashedly enthused new TV play-by-play man, John Schriffen

6753 N. SHERIDAN RD., ROGERS PARK A secondhand-book emporium doubles as art shop and reading room. The hook This multilevel spot is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Dominated by books you hadn’t realized you needed until you stumbled upon them, it a

THERE’S AN UNEXPECTEDLY personal aspect to Court Theatre’s staging of a new play about civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael. “Charlie used to be babysat by Stokely when he was a kid,” playwright Nambi E. Kelley says, raising an eyebrow to punctua

1 SOUL PRIME What One of Chicago’s hottest eateries of the moment, thanks to a feature on Keith Lee’s popular food TikTok, serves up soul food classics with upscale twists in the heart of Lincoln Park. Why Shonya Williams, a.k.a. Chef Royce, offers u

BACK IN THE DAY, WHEN Kenwood was considered the Lake Forest of the South Side, dry-goods merchant Edward H. Turner built himself a substantial residence at 4935 South Greenwood Avenue, designed by Brooklyn-born architect Solon S. Beman. Beman had co

Indiana Dunes National Park is a Rust Belt kind of wild space: understated but beautiful, a lonely stretch of delicately brown, grassy sand dunes that overlook a lakefront distant from the Chicago skyline visible, in miniature, across the way. But th

for billions of years, our planet was nothing like Earth. It was Earth, of course. But if you looked at it from space, it kind of resembled a giant orange jawbreaker. Most people don’t realize that Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t always the one we have rig

DURING A RECENT FAMILY DINNER, photographer Saverio Truglia mentioned he was going to be taking shots of Jacob Bean, a University of Chicago astrophysicist who studies exoplanets (“The Planet Hunter,” page 76). That got the attention of Truglia’s 7-y

I could tell you that my lifelong besties and I make an annual pilgrimage to southwest Michigan’s Harbor Country for the sunsets, which turn the sky and lake into a painter’s palette of lavender and saffron and indigo and invite us to contemplate the

MAXWELLS TRADING, WHICH opened in late December in West Town, serves “Chicago food, from children of the city,” according to its website. That raises a question I find of particular interest: What is Chicago food? “It’s not just hot dogs and pizza,”

If you follow Nick Murway on Instagram (@nickmurway), you probably find yourself craving burgers on the regular. That’s because Murway, in addition to shooting for commercial and editorial clients, keeps a photographic log of all the burgers he eats.