Burnin’

The Chicago Tribune looks at James Allen Smith’s documentary film, Floored, about open-outcry traders at the Mercantile Exchange.

Here’s how the paper describes their lot:

Open-outcry traders always stood apart from the rest of the financial crowd, or maybe their rough-and-tumble grab for megabucks just made it seem that way. With their colorful jackets and a swagger born of fast money, they were the gaudiest ornaments in the downtown Chicago business world.

Floored is currently in production. It will be released in 2009.

Chicago-based In These Times offers a look at a political struggle taking place in Chicago’s city government.

Chicago’s labor unions decided to send Mayor Richard M. Daley a message: The “city that works” doesn’t work for working families. In the February and April elections, the labor movement broke with the city’s fabled but feeble Democratic machine, and helped oust key Daley allies and elect seven new members to the 50-seat city council.

Unions spent roughly $3 million and fielded a political operation stronger than Daley’s that backed challengers to the mayor’s council allies.

University of Illinois at Chicago political science professor Dick Simpson says, the new council bloc will be pushing a “working-class, middle-class agenda, as opposed to the global economy tilt of the Daley administration.”

According to Chicago Tribune, Chicago is governed under a “weak mayor, strong council” system. But that hasn’t been the case for much of Daley’s 18 years in power, with critics contending the council has all-too-humbly served as a rubber stamp for the popular mayor.

I returned to Chicago this week for the first time since I moved from the city 16 months ago. It was a good trip. I stayed at Kimpton’s Hotel Monaco on Wacker and Wabash. I enjoyed some salmon downstairs at South Water Kitchen before venturing out to The Map Room, “A Traveller’s Tavern” on the corner of Hoyne and Armitage. While there I finally got my first taste of Victory’s HopDevil Ale.

The brewer’s site describes it thusly:

Menacingly delicious, with the powerful, aromatic punch of whole flower American hops backed up by rich, German malts. HopDevil Ale offers a roller coaster ride of flavor, coasting to a smooth finish that satisfies fully.

I had reason to cheer. Since, my hotel was but a block from 233 N. Michigan, I could not help but reflect on how much things have changed for the better since I stopped working in that black building. Which is not to say I don’t love Chicago, because I do. Without a doubt, it’s one the great American cities along with San Francisco and New York.

While we don’t have the number of amazing restaurants, neighborhood bars or limitless live music possibilities, life in Lowcountry or Slowcountry, if you will, has its own advantages–natural beauty, great weather, affordable housing and recreational pursuits like beachcombing, boating, fishing, surfing, etc. Yet the thing that trumps all of this is the fact that I now have the job I was looking for in Chicago and could not find.

Image courtesy of Luke Adams

I love this romanticized image of our old neighborhood. It makes the place seem so quaint, and it is quaint for a few blocks in each direction. But this neighborhood is also surrounded by concrete and traffic and noise in every direction for miles upon miles. I guess that’s the beauty of photography–the focus.

It got a kick out of seeing The Trib’s Lifestyle feature on squash. Notice the paper did not place it in the Sports section. That area’s reserved for men of the gridiron, and such.

“Squash, the racquet sport, not the rustic vegetable, has built an impressive resume since graduating in the mid-1800s from Harrow boarding school in Britain, whose alumni include Winston Churchill. Advancing across the British Empire, it also secured positions in the Ivy League, Wall Street, the Pentagon and enclaves beyond.

Some prep schools and elite universities have been known to prize varsity squash the way others do football. As a high school student at Francis W. Parker in Chicago, Beau River, 27, who now plays on the pro squash tour worldwide, was probably “85 to 90 percent of the academic package that Ivy League schools are looking for,” he said. “But suddenly, when they found out I played squash, I was a lot more desirable.” River, who is competing in the Windy City Open, chose to attend Dartmouth.”

Action from the Windy City Open

As it happens, I went to school at a squash powerhouse. I recall a particularly satisfying win over the Princeton Tigers, on the road in ‘84. F&M is currently ranked 16th in the nation. Since this will most likely be the one and only chance to ever make mention of it, I’m taking the opportunity to do so.

Participants in last Saturday’s Blog Walk 6.0 have been posting their summaries of the event. Here are some of my favorite comments:

“More than anything else, what blogs and social software do is make it drop dead simple to make the conduct of knowledge work visible.” -Jim McGee

“If I like what you write, it stands to reason that I might like what you read. This is the ’social’ piece that I was thinking about it. Through things like blogrolls, subscriber lists and listings of who else bookmarked a specific page, I am able to be connected with other like minded people.” -Steve Dembo

“One concept that really crystallized for me is that bloggers are the the new starving artists — we allow our passion for producing our product (the information in our blogs) to adversely impact our ability to rationally place a value upon it.” -Matt Homann

“At the end of the day, Mark Bernstein (Tinderbox!!!) said something to the effect that blogs should be changing the world.” -Dennis Kennedy

“There’s a sense in this crew that the real action is Somewhere Else, that they’re at the margins.” -Mark Bernstein

“BlogWalk 6 was a fantastic event for conversation and idea exchange. It was not a place for decisions or conclusions.” -Tom Sherman

On a snowy, windy (but nice) day in Chicago, 16 bloggers from all parts of the country and Europe gathered for the first Blog Walk held in the United States. The first five were conducted in Europe. Today’s took place in Room 22 at the Seabury Theological Seminary in Evanston.

The bloggers present represented a variety of industries–education, law, advertising, publishing and high tech to name a few–and thus individual concerns were also varied. I wanted to talk about blogs and wikis as external marketing tools. But other topics took the day. Still, it was highly informative and a pleasure to meet 15 other bloggers on a face-to-face basis.

For a more thorough examination of the event, see Tom’s detailed summary.

North Branch, Chicago River at Lawrence Avenue bridge

My friend Chris May, a.k.a. Evil Vince, has turned his web site into a photoblog. It’s good to see. I’ve been helping friends set up their sites for a number of years now, but I just started implementing blogs for others.

It seems the distinction between blogs and web sites may soon fade as all sites become blogs, or blog like. Forgetting the “frequently updated” part of what a blog is for a moment, and just looking at the content management tools (all available via your web browser), one might think of a blog as the fastest and easiest route to publishing on the web. Ease-of-entry is clealry one of the blogosphere’s major selling points.

Our friendly neighborhood bookstore on N. Lincoln Avenue

See more of Lincoln Square care of my new Flickr account.

I love maps. I love blogs. Hence, I’m naturally drawn to maps that pinpoint where the bloggers are.

Click on the map to visit ChicagoBlogMap dot com. From there you can search for Chicago bloggers by their CTA train stop.