Recycling Week

Paul Konerko's midseason beaning at the hands of the Cubs' Jeff Samardzija: an omen of what was to come.

Baseball prediction update

by Ted Cox on September 29, 2012 at 2:00PM

A lot is riding on the last week of the White Sox's season—most of all the pride I can take in my season-opening predictions. Kind of like the Sox themselves, I was flying high for a while only to see my pursuit of the Golden BAT go up in smoke of late.

Nope, Punk is still not punk

by Kevin Warwick on September 28, 2012 at 9:36AM

As Miles Raymer explains in his smart Bleader post "Punk isn't quite punk," navigating punk before the Internet was something of a vision quest. It basically consisted of blindly diving into an already dodgy culture and building from whatever limited resources your small town or obscure suburb had to offer.

Mark Rothko, "Untitled (Brown and Gray)"

Pathos in a shit storm

by Kate Schmidt on September 28, 2012 at 6:41AM

In the midst of shipping off from our well-worn quarters to the shiny Sun-Times building back in August, many of us took Moving Week literally, chronicling packing up shop, staying put, moving or not moving, as the case may be. Reader film critic Ben Sachs gave the theme a different take, writing about an autistic and severely retarded man he cared for through the direst of circumstances.

Regrets, I've had TKHOWMANY

by Sam Worley on September 27, 2012 at 6:00PM

While we spend the week revisiting past glories on the Bleader, I want to look back on the most shameful thing that was not my fault (as opposed to the most shameful thing that was my fault—a different matter entirely, and once it's identified I'll be sure to atone) that I've endured this year. It was on the occasion of the Reader's inaugural Valentine's Day issue, which a couple of coworkers and I were tasked (against our will) with putting together.

Revisiting working hard and playing hard, but not "work hard, play hard"

by Steve Bogira on September 27, 2012 at 10:36AM

"I was raised on the feminist ideal that I, too, could be a metaphorical rock star, not just a rock star's girlfriend," Andrea Bauer wrote in July. "By the time I was 25, I subscribed to this ideology with all of my heart, so much in fact that the mere mention of 'babies' and 'suburbs' had me bowing down to the gods of no-fault divorce and riding directly off into Chicago's seedy underground to further my career as a photographer."

Have the NFL and referees finally come to an agreement?

by Jerome Ludwig on September 26, 2012 at 2:26PM

Not necessarily. "The league and referees have agreed to create a developmental program as a compromise to the NFL's demand for the addition of 21 officials to the current contingent of 121 NFLRA members, per an NFLRA source."

Chicago Gourmet: a look back

by Julia Thiel on September 26, 2012 at 6:48AM

This year is the fifth anniversary of Chicago Gourmet, the upscale alternative to Taste of Chicago that's supposed to put Chicago on the map as a culinary destination. Time really flies—it seems like just yesterday that I was wandering around first the Pritzker Pavilion rooftop, then Millennium Park, desperately searching for edibles at the much-anticipated and generally disastrous first Chicago Gourmet.

The terrorist mind—a look back at a 1972 plot to poison Chicago

by Michael Miner on September 25, 2012 at 6:46AM

Wendy: We should call tomorrow, call the airport. Find out what's what.

All week long, revisiting old Bleader writing

by Tal Rosenberg on September 24, 2012 at 6:47AM

This week's Variations on a Theme is recycling, as inspired by Sam Worley's feature story, "The floating forest," about the changing world of wastepaper. While a large part of Sam's story is about China's steady takeover of the wastepaper business, another part was personal—namely, that he grew up in Manistique, Michigan, where the wastepaper plant Manistique Papers was a major industry in the town.

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