It's a periodic tradition for the New York Times to print something completely out of touch about Chicago, Detroit or the Midwest in general. Last year it was a travel piece written by a dim-witted bimbo. This year it was Rachel Shteir's turn. Shteir established her credibility on all maters related to Chicago by declaring in 2010 that Rahm Emanuel would never be mayor because the city wouldn't elect a Jew... yeah.
In the Sunday Book Review Stheir prefaced her limited comments on the three books she supposedly read by bashing Chicago with the great enthusiasm. As you can imagine, Chicago's local media has not taken kindly. Shteir claims to have lived here for 13 years but displays a level of insight about our City that I would expect from someone who's only seen Chicago through a layover at O'hare. Perhaps she spends her weekends in New York.
Not Quite Detroit - Chicago as Described by the New York Times Book Critic (The Reader)
Chicago- based New York Times Book Critic Doesn't Get Chicago (The Chicagoist)
Where Are Chicago's women writers? - Right Here (Claire Zulkey, WBEZ)
Keep Your Head up - you're a Chicagoan (Neil Steinberg, The Sun Times)
Why does Chicago care about New York Times' Dope Slap (Bill Savage, Crain's)
Rahm Dismisses, Disses Rachel Shteir's Caustic New York Times Review (DNA Info)
The Morning Shift (WBEZ)
Everything you need to know about why Chicago is Furious with Rachel Shteir and the New York Times (Atlantic Cities)
Monday, April 22, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Why People Perceive Some Cities as Safer than Others (Atlantic Cities)
"...Not surprisingly, feeling unsafe is closely associated with race and poverty. Resident perceptions of safety across metros are negatively correlated with the share of the population that is non-white (-.55), the share of residents below the poverty line (-.53), and the unemployment rate (-.47)."
... Metro Areas that are percieved as the safest in America are also the least diverse among major cities.
"...Not surprisingly, feeling unsafe is closely associated with race and poverty. Resident perceptions of safety across metros are negatively correlated with the share of the population that is non-white (-.55), the share of residents below the poverty line (-.53), and the unemployment rate (-.47)."
... Metro Areas that are percieved as the safest in America are also the least diverse among major cities.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Culture Clash: New history of Chicago taps into our malaise (Chicago Tribune)
"The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream," which comes out this week from Penguin Press, has a gentle title and a sanguine black-and-white cover image of the rotating beacon on the roof of the old Palmolive Building throwing light over Lake Michigan. It also has an elegant, unflinching, non-nostalgic clarity about Chicago that you rarely see in books about Chicago. It gave me a dizzying rush, the impression that I had come across a new touchstone in Chicago literature, an ambitious history lesson no one had written: The story of how, from 1945 to 1960, Chicago created the culture that shaped American culture, delivering, in that brief window, Studs Terkel, McDonald's, Hugh Hefner, the atom bomb, modernist architecture, Chess Records, The Second City, the Chicago School of Television and "Kukla, Fran and Ollie."
"The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream," which comes out this week from Penguin Press, has a gentle title and a sanguine black-and-white cover image of the rotating beacon on the roof of the old Palmolive Building throwing light over Lake Michigan. It also has an elegant, unflinching, non-nostalgic clarity about Chicago that you rarely see in books about Chicago. It gave me a dizzying rush, the impression that I had come across a new touchstone in Chicago literature, an ambitious history lesson no one had written: The story of how, from 1945 to 1960, Chicago created the culture that shaped American culture, delivering, in that brief window, Studs Terkel, McDonald's, Hugh Hefner, the atom bomb, modernist architecture, Chess Records, The Second City, the Chicago School of Television and "Kukla, Fran and Ollie."
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Chicago Makes Modern: How Creative Minds Changed Society (Edward Lifson, Architect's Newspaper)
"To end then, we quote Moholy-Nagy, from Chicago Makes Modern. He wrote his wife, "There’s something incomplete about this city and its people that fascinates me...It seems to urge one on to completion. Everything still seems possible.”
I look out of the Reliance Building lobby, on a pre-spring day on State Street. Out there, people of all backgrounds hurry by, bent forward against the elements that hit you in the face in this creative, modern American metropolis. Most peek only fleetingly through the glass lobby windows.
But we’re united by the tall towers above, some still rising, the new ones mostly of taut glass. And at ground level, as I travel through the city, I see an equal number of broken-glass-filled empty lots on which, here in Chicago, everything still seems possible."
"To end then, we quote Moholy-Nagy, from Chicago Makes Modern. He wrote his wife, "There’s something incomplete about this city and its people that fascinates me...It seems to urge one on to completion. Everything still seems possible.”
I look out of the Reliance Building lobby, on a pre-spring day on State Street. Out there, people of all backgrounds hurry by, bent forward against the elements that hit you in the face in this creative, modern American metropolis. Most peek only fleetingly through the glass lobby windows.
But we’re united by the tall towers above, some still rising, the new ones mostly of taut glass. And at ground level, as I travel through the city, I see an equal number of broken-glass-filled empty lots on which, here in Chicago, everything still seems possible."
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