JOE M500

60 years from now people will look at pictures of our contemporaries at the Rainbo in the second picture and think what you are thinking about the first picture, from Rainbo from the 1940s. More Ukrainian Village/East Village history and bars and pictures, and more. Light posting today; consider this a tribute to if charlie parker was a gunslinger, there'd be a whole lot of dead copycats.

Top: Gerald Grofman. Bottom: Detail from 2008 Rainbo calendar.

* What became of John Dillinger's hideout and funeral home.

* Mr. Overbrooke on language.

* Second City Cop argues that rifles are necessary for the CPD, but is pessimistic they'll actually get them.

* I'm not in the Klan--I just work for the Astros!

* Mick Dumke recently appeared on Outside the Loop Radio.

* "Fire Departement"

* Dump Site plays with historic aerials.

* The G Spot laments Caitlin Flanagan's National Magazine Award. 

It's vogue to say that Obama's promise to bring hope is worthless, but if a politician is going to promise me something he or she can't deliver on, I'd much prefer that it be a vague, ethereal concept than something stupid that obviously won't work. Perhaps I'm not alone. The sad thing is that she has entirely sensible domestic-policy proposals that even Obama fans prefer; why she dropped a plainly idiotic gas-tax suspension on comparatively high-information voters (i.e. primary voters) I'll never quite figure out, other than to chalk it up to the general incompetence of her campaign staff.

Also, is John Kass being ironic here or does he just hate Obama that much?

"And though many of us can't stand her First Laddie, you can't help but admire how she knocked back those Crown Royal shots to show she's not elitist and how she changed personalities, repeatedly redefining herself, refusing to quit, trying to cut down Barack Obama."

Update: More on the not-just-craven-but-also-dumb gas-tax suspension.

Armando Iannucci: It's one small step for chumps in my brave new world | Comment is free | The Observer

"the bulk of us achieve enough but nothing special, while historians propagate the myth that the course of mankind is set by pioneering brilliance"

Websites Go Crazy Tracking Urban Eccentrics

"I don't think Juan the Frye Apartment Guy wants to be a celebrity in any way"

ESPN - Rouse in oblivion five years after Baylor scandal - Men's College Basketball

"The conversation exposed Bliss' plan to paint Dennehy, the murder victim, as a drug dealer in order to cover up Bliss' NCAA-violating payment to Dennehy."

Sadly, No! » Ramengate Comes To A Boil

"Let the diamond-studded plutocrats sip their boughten Kool-Aid."

Irvine Housing Blog - The Ultimate Post

"There are bad loans, there are really bad loans, and then there are loans like this one. It boggles the mind. If this property sells for its asking price, the total loss to the lender will be $648,700 assuming a 6% commission."

Economic Troubles Affect the Vegas Strip - New York Times

On Stroger's list: F. Daniel Cantrell, who in the late 1980s was president of the Mile Square Health Center on the West Side, which failed to pay more than $1 million in payroll taxes and went bankrupt.

[snip]

[Sister Sheila Lyne, president and CEO of Mercy Hospital & Medical Center] was instrumental in reviving the Mile Square Health Center after Cantrell's crew drove it to bankruptcy. She ran Chicago's Health Department in the 1990s, and ran it very well. But not well enough for Todd Stroger.

More where that came from. A good read.

And it comes down to Gary, the second most liberal city in America, or thereabouts.

Between this, Gavin Floyd, and Boston/Cleveland, my head is spinning. Back to the TV!

Update: More it-comes-down-to-Gary news: will Obama actually win?

Update II: The Times (of Northwest Indiana) has updates.

Update III: Quoting an American history grad student friend: "I love that one of the CNN talking heads just raised the possibility of electoral fraud because Lake County isn't releasing its totals, yet failed to comment on tiny Union county, with maybe 5500 voters, which has yet to provide any data either. . . . The 'ol downstate/slicker jockeying is an old pattern in our political history and cities definitely do not have a monopoly on electoral corruption."

Update IV:  "We're [staying late] for one delegate."

Update V: IV makes this sound kind of silly, so it's probably worth noting that this down-to-the-wire stuff has more to do with indicators and momentum, by which I mean generating as many things as possible to speculate about, and possible arguments that could be made, since there are many more networks and Web sites to fill up. The indicators, for Clinton, are not good. The Huffington Post already has the huge V-Day-size headline PRESUMPTIVE NOMINEE with a picture of Barack, which would be very DRAMATIC but for the word PRESUMPTIVE. Hillary said she won Indiana a couple hours ago, as did CBS. The poor bastards who were responsible for the DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN headline were just born too soon.

Update VI: And Hillary pulls out a squeaker. Everybody get a good night's sleep so we can get up bright and early and figure out if that actually matters! Worth noting that FiveThirtyEight called IN almost exactly and the explanation is fascinating. I'm with Kos on this --"Another benefit of the extended primary -- a serious political lesson for all of us. I've learned more about state regions and counties and towns this year than the entire rest of my life combined."

I haven't followed it as closely as him, of course, but the information being generated is amazing. I know that an extended primary season drains budgets and sharpen attacks while the GOP gets to kick back, but I can't help but think that pushing this further down the line will help the Democrats in the fall with, to put it bluntly, target marketing. Just speculating. Anyway, if you're bored, you're reading the wrong sources.

WHEREAS children, at least boy-children for the most part, love cars;

WHEREAS everyone loves the Berwyn Spindle, an important part of our film heritage;

WHEREAS WHY DO YOU HATE CHILDREN? CHICAGO IS ABOUT CHILDREN! SPITTLE FLECKS!

WHEREAS the Spindle is Brutalist;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

Kind of off-topic, but since I came up with a plan to save journalism and America I thought I should share it: fire all the political writers and replace them with advice columnists. Let me explain.

As a case study, let's take Chicago native Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate. He was in the news awhile back because he wrote a book called The Bush Tragedy. In his essay "The Bush Who Got Away," he explains that Bush wasn't the moderate he sometimes said he would be, and that sucks. I guess we all learned something?

Not, it would seem, Weisberg. In 2006, when one would assume his thesis was becoming clear, he wrote "McCain's not really a conservative," which is all about how McCain is the "Teddy Roosevelt progressive" he says he is sometimes, and when he says he's not, he's not lying exactly, he's:

"a politician in genuine flux"; "uncharacteristically calculating"; "temporarily turned into a performing elephant"; "choosing his battles far more selectively"; "pandering to the Republican base in a way that is politically shrewd"; "Discount his repositioning a bit"; "smoke signals"; "if you watch closely, you still catch plenty of signals"; "the old new McCain isn't dead, just hiding out"; " "lapses"; "a stratagem"; "a mandatory position he no longer believes in, if he ever really did"; "a conservative before he was a liberal before he became a conservative again"; "searching phase";

and my favorite, written without apparent irony: "Despite his professions of fidelity, the pro-life lobby knows better than to trust him." Oh, you think so, doctor? (All of those are phrases from one short essay.)

In other words, he's not lying to you, he's lying to them. Honest, baby. I'm totally different from the last guy who burned you, come back, baby, I swear.

I don't think I have to tell you that Ask Amy wouldn't stand for that B.S. Or Dan Savage, or Cary Tennis, or Ann Landers. They have various phrases ready for that scenario: "he's just not that into you," "DTMFA," etc.

So let's do it: think-tank dudes out, advice columnists in, for a funnier, more profane, more engaging, and more rational editorial section. Boredom? You'll be begging for the primaries to continue.