The Friday after Thanksgiving has become known in the last few decades as one of the busiest of the year for retailers, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. One of the names used for this day is Black Friday, which some say comes from the fact that it is the biggest shopping...
Outgoing state representative Michael Prufrock’s concession speech late last night in the Twilight Ballroom of the Hilton Garden Plaza was but one in a long line of such speeches given in that spot over the decades. Since its opening in 1906, the hotel’s elegant decor and central location has made it a favorite spot...
:: Number of outdoor cafes in the Downtown & Central Corridor in 2006: 115 :: Number of outdoor cafes in the same area before the mysterious seven year mayfly “problem” ended, in 1990: 2 :: Of the thirty-five tests conducted by the City Elections Commission on new electronic voting machines delivered this week, the...
When people move here, especially those with young children, a top question on their minds around this time of year is “When exactly is the mandated trick-or-treat time?” (Another popular query is “When the hell is the leaf collection time, as my bags of leaves have been sitting out for two goddamn weeks?” But...
Throughout the history of civic planning, there have been countless grand ideas and concepts which have never been carried out for various reasons- expense, impracticality, that sort of thing. If one were to go through the planning archives of this city alone, you’d see many plans which never came to fruition- the Northwest Expressway,...
Ten years ago, the there was an initiative to install more trashcans in the Downtown & Central Corridor areas with a promise that they would be emptied by the Sanitation Department at least three times a day. After an initial burst of hard work, the collection frequency dropped to once a day on a...
:: Best views in town… the top of the World War One Memorial tower in Baxter Park… the WKVD-AM hot air balloon at the zoo… the West Side Highway… from U-City park across the river into the Downtown… 22nd floor of the City Hall Annex… any others? E-mail or comment and let us know....
This Friday, the Typesetters Club will once again be holding its annual banquet/dance at the downtown Hyatt, the first one they’ve held in six years. The club was founded in 1897 as a place for newspapermen to get together and drink, smoke cigars and eat badly cooked steak. At the time, and for a...
The American Society of Professional Industrial Chemists has a problem. No, it’s not that they’ll soon be observing their 100th anniversary; they’re rather happy about that. It’s just that they don’t know exactly where they should be celebrating the occasion. You see, the national trade group was founded here in 1907, but no one...
Shortly after its construction in 1936, the Fleming Tower (800 block of Bradburn Street) became rather infamous for a rush of people repeatedly attempting to commit suicide from the top of its sixteen stories. Newspaper records show that, between the building’s opening in May 1936 and November of that year, twenty-eight people attempted the...
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