Arts & Culture, Chicago Reader

Summer Guide: Mount Carroll's small-town insecurity

Gwynedd Stuart — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Summer Guide: Go to Mount Carroll for the year-round haunted house, stay for the town's eerie small-time charm. by Gwynedd Stuart Mount Carroll, Illinois, is populated by more dead bodies than living people. At least that's what Mount Carroll lifer Jim Warfield told us after a marathon tour of the Raven's Grin Inn, the year-round haunted house he operates and also lives in.…

Summer Guide: Golf cart livin' in Northport

Kevin Warwick — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Summer Guide: Northport, Michigan, is as peculiar as it is gorgeous. by Kevin Warwick Not since between the ages of three and five, when I made it my short-term mission in life to convince my parents to buy me a Fisher Price Power Wheels truck, did I covet a lazy-moving, four-wheeled vehicle as badly as I did a golf cart following my visit last summer to Northport, Michigan. Located in Leelanau Township, near the tip of the mitt's little finger, the low-key, resortlike village sits about 45 minutes north of Traverse City (and nearly six hours from Chicago) and is scattered with the no-longer-working man's preferred mode of electric transportation.…

The Reader's guide to summer

Reader staff — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Our Summer Guide offers suggestions for weekend and overnight trips as well as a 110-day calendar of summery action. by Reader staff Summer is complicated. The three-plus months that fall between Memorial and Labor Day are often less a reason to rejoice and more an incredible scheduling nightmare, as every last grill-out, every last music festival, every last minute of sunshine has to, has to, be crammed into an already fat agenda.…

Summer Guide: Meet me in Saint Louis

Aimee Levitt — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Summer Guide: No, Saint Louis is not just a smaller, inferior version of Chicago. by Aimee Levitt Until three months ago, I lived in Saint Louis. I was there for five and a half years, and I loved it, even in the summer when the temperature reached 108 degrees, but I could never, in good conscience, call myself a Saint Louisan.…

Summer Guide: Fairs & festivals

Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Our rundown of the various fairs and festivals for art, food, crafts, or all of them at once.

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Summer Guide: Two cycling day trips to three brewpubs

Julia Thiel — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Summer Guide: A cycling guide to three brewpubs outside the city's limits—yes, Three Floyds included by Julia Thiel A note on these rides: You'll want a good map. The Chicagoland Bike Map is available for $10 at most local bike shops; the City of Chicago's bike map is free and good but doesn't cover the suburbs.…

Marc Maron laughs to keep from crying

Drew Hunt — Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Marc Maron stars as himself in Maron, the new IFC sitcom about his less-than-sunny outlook on life. by Drew Hunt Less flippant than Curb Your Enthusiasm and more derisive than Louie, Maron is the latest self-referential sitcom based on the life of a stand-up comedian. It stars Marc Maron, the acerbic 49-year-old comic whose podcast, WTF With Marc Maron, is easily one of the best and most compulsively listenable shows on the Web.…

HBO unleashes its Vice squad

Gwynedd Stuart — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Vice on HBO is news for a generation with a steel belly and a short attention span. by Gwynedd Stuart There's a K-8 Christian academy in Albuquerque that trains pupils what to do in the event that their school is attacked by an insane gunman with an automatic weapon. Certain older students are instructed to bombard, disarm, and pin down the hypothetical perpetrator.…

Children for fun and profit on ABC's new Bet on Your Baby

Gwynedd Stuart — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

Children for fun and profit on ABC's new Bet on Your Baby by Gwynedd Stuart Apart from a deep-rooted and socially crippling inability to care about anyone more than I care about myself (just kidding?), I don't have children because I've never seen the point. From what I can tell it's a lot of work, and if I had the time to pick Cheerios out of some groaning homunculus's ears, I would spend it doing things that weren't that.…