Events

Yesterday I went out to the exurban village of New Lenox to review one of the most remote breweries on the Brews & Choos list, near the Laraway Road station on the Southwest Service. (Fun fact: After decades of living here, I have now taken every one of Chicago's commuter rail lines at least once.) I had planned to walk from there to Rock Island train station in the center of town, as the Southwest Service didn't have a return train until 10:30pm. I knew the first 2 kilometers of the walk would have...

The problem with having 8 billion people on Earth is that every single one of us has different ideas and opinions. If there's an opinion out there so fringe and so bizarre that only 1/10th of 1% of us share it, that's still about a quarter of the population of Chicago. I thought of that because of how much news we have. And I imagine that from the ancestral environment thousands of years ago until the last century, we just didn't have all that much. I don't think that's entirely because of light-speed...

My plan this evening will take me to Arrowhead Ales in New Lenox, the only Brews & Choos brewery on Metra's Southwest Service. Because the SWS has such an inconvenient schedule, getting home requires me to get to the Rock Island District station 4.3 km away. Now, I could simply take a Lyft, but given that I'll have almost 2 hours between arriving at Laraway Road and the train departing New Lenox (with another train an hour later), and also given the weather forecast, I plan to walk there. The only...

The hot, humid weather we've had for the past couple of weeks has finally broken. I'm in the Loop today, and spent a good 20 minutes outside reading, and would have stayed longer, except I got a little chilly. I dressed today more for the 24°C at home and less for the cooler, breezier air this close to the lake. Elsewhere in the world: I was waiting for Russia expert Julia Ioffe to weigh in on last week's hostage release. The Chicago White Sox failed to set the all-time record for most consecutive...

This shit amused me: The Chicago White Sox have tied the American League record of 21 consecutive losses, with the MLB all-time record of 23 a distinct and shitty possibility. CrowdStrike has taken enough of Delta Airlines' shit, thank you. In addition to all the other shit that Hurricane Debby turned up over the weekend, the storm flushed 25 kilos of cocaine onto a Florida beach. Apparently, this happens all the time. Finally, Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the Dave Matthews Band tour bus...

Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate: In picking Walz, 60, Harris is elevating a relatively unknown second-term governor from a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president in more than 50 years, passing over swing state contenders such as Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Harris and Walz will kick off a tour of battleground states Tuesday evening with a rally in Philadelphia. Initially seen as a second-tier...

A combination of a mild winter and the decline of natural predators has led to a rabbit explosion in Chicago: The abundance of rabbits could be due to the milder winter Chicago experienced this year, said Seth Magle, director of the Urban Wildlife Institute at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The brutality of a cold winter and limited food availability during the snowy, frigid months can take their toll on the rabbit population. But if winters are mild, then with spring comes abnormal population growth, Magle...

As you may have seen below, yesterday I went out to Kankakee on a $15 round-trip Amtrak ticket to visit Knack Brewing for the Brews & Choos Project. Not only did the brewery surprise me—I mean, just look at it on Google Street View—but the city had a lot more going on than I anticipated. I've been through Kankakee a bunch of times, and maybe even pulled off I-57 on some trip to Champaign or St Louis. I've even landed at IKK once, in March 2002, getting checked out in a Piper Warrior. But until...

Welcome to stop #114 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Knack Brewing, 789 S. McMullen Dr., Kankakee, IllTrain line: Amtrak Illini, Kankakee Time from Chicago: 70 minutesDistance from station: 900 m I have to say, both Kankakee and Knack Brewing surprised me. I'll have more about the city in a subsequent post. For now, I'll say that this little 2-year-old mom-and-pop brewery in a rural city 100 km from my house was worth the trip—especially with the $15 round-trip fare I got from Amtrak. The...

One of my co-workers and I got into a good-natured debate about the efficiency of my Prius Prime. In addition to boasting that I used no gasoline at all last month (and only 41.6 L—11 gallons—all year), I pointed out that Illinois gets a majority of its power from nuclear fission, so yes, my car is net-positive on carbon emissions. He challenged me on that, saying that Illinois uses a lot of coal and natural gas, obviating the benefits of my car's electric drive. Well, the New York Times has a really...