The List

Curated list of Local Small Businesses committed to providing high level customer service and quality products and services. Categories include Retail, Business Development, Beauty, and Special Services.

“When you support a small business you’re supporting a dream”

RETAIL

Sneaker/Streetwear Boutique •BUY •SELL •CONSIGN *Enjoy 10% off Diplomacic 1750 branded apparel

https://www.diplomatic1750.com/

• Children’s Clothing Boutique *Enjoy 15% on total purchase. Use promo code “TheLook”

https://www.mimistotscloset.com/

•Collection of graphic apparel to inspire others to be their true authentic self

https://www.bonfire.com/store/iam-legendary-collection/

BEAUTY

B-Fragranced •Fragrance and  Beauty essentials  for Women and Men *Enjoy 25%  off purchase Use promo code “TheLook”

https://www.bfragranced.com/

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT 

•Resume Writing •Career Coaching •Salary Negotiation •Interviewing Coaching * Free Cover letter with resume purchase use Promo Code “TheLook”

https://llf-consulting.com/pricing-plans/

•Virtual offices •Events •Business Development

https://www.thebluelacuna.com/en

•Certified Nurses Assistant Program $750 Special Program Pricing

https://www.ssccareers.org/

SPECIALTY SERVICES

•Assortment of sweet treats and desserts. Local shipping and drop off available. Enjoy 10% off total purchase until 4-30-21

https://www.peekassweettreats.com/

•Children’s activities for all ages. Virtual Character play, Indoor soft play set up, Indoor/outdoor Inflatables. Enjoy 20% off all services promo code “TheLook”

https://www.ctotsplay.com/

•Canvas paint kits in a box *Delivered to your door *Enjoy Free Shipping mentioning “TheLook”

https://m.facebook.com/1954567684846084/albums/2279503139019202/

Our third stay-at-home edition of the Car Stuff Podcast kicks off with a discussion of insurance agencies giving savings to their customers because people are, you know, staying home — which means they aren’t driving. If your agency wasn’t discussed during the podcast or if you don’t know if you’re getting a discount, you should call your provider and ask.

We also talk about Tom’s test car, the 2020 Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio. Though I haven’t driven it yet, I pointed to an article in the current edition of Auto Exotica Magazine, which I edit, that does a comparison between the Jaguar F-Pace SVR and the Stelvio Quadrifoglio — both of which were new for the 2019 model year.

The bulk of our discussion centered around the goings on at Hyundai Motor America with our guest Mike Evanoff, manager of product planning for Hyundai Motor America. Some of the things we touch on: “Smaht Pahk” and the Digital Key as well as the all-new Sonata, Sonata Hybrid, Elantra and Venue.

While I will continue to post the podcast to my blog each week, you can subscribe to the Consumer Guide Car Stuff Podcast on any podcast subscription service or visit the Buzzsprout link. New episodes are usually posted on Friday, and then the show itself airs on WCPT 820 AM on Sundays from 1 to 2 p.m.

Be sure to let us know if you have questions or if there are any topics you’d like us to cover on future podcasts.

You can follow us on social at:

• Jill: @jillciminillo (instagram/twitter)
• Tom: @car_guy_tom (twitter)
• Damon: @DBell72333786 (twitter)
• Consumer Guide Automotive: @cgautomotive (twitter/facebook)
• Consumer Guide Car Stuff on facebook

As many of you know, I am in my final weeks of finishing my undergraduate degree at Southeast Missouri State University. And as many of you could imagine, I have had a crazy and abrupt ending to my college experience.

(If you want to read my thoughts and emotions from when the university announced they were closing, here is a link to my school newspaper opinion piece I wrote: Column: It still sucks (3/28/20))

Anyway, even though yes I am still extremely emotional, angry and upset at the situation that I am in… I am trying to focus on the positive and all that Southeast and college gave me.

Now, let’s begin…

I would have never ever pegged myself as a sorority girl.

The chanting… the glitter… the posed pictures…

Those three things alone were enough to scare me away from Greek Life.

And if it wasn’t for my roommate and a very persistent friend who lived on my floor freshmen year, I would have never even signed up to go through recruitment.

Now, sitting here four years later I am genuinely so THANKFUL because Tri Delta has brought me more than I ever could have imagined and it has undoubtedly been one of my hardest goodbyes.

You might be one of those people rolling your eyes because you think that I “paid” for my friends or because you think that I am being dramatic and it is just all of the stereotypes you hear about… but you could not be more wrong.

Throughout this experience, Tri Delta has brought me so many unique, confident and empowering women who completely changed my life.

I found a friend that will FOREVER keep me on my toes.

I found a friend that has the absolute biggest heart and sweetest soul.

I found a friend that I will forever be able to rely on in all aspects of my life.

I found a friend that has been THROUGH it, yet continues to set an example for all of us other women.

I found a friend that pushes me and challenges me to be the best version of myself.

I found a friend that doesn’t just accept things the way they are but instead does her part to change it for the better.

I found a friend who just doesn’t give a shit about the materialistic things but cares about the things that truly matter.

I found a friend who always speaks it how it is, even when you don’t want to hear it.

I found a friend who will always make me laugh.

I found a friend who is so intelligent and will change the world someday.

I found a friend who continues to fight to find herself and encourages others to do so as well.

I found a friend who no matter how hard things get, I know if I needed her she would be there.

I found a friend who stands up for what she believes in.

I found a friend who is so creative, we all wished we had her talents.

And within all of these friends and so many more, I found this sisterhood.

A sisterhood that believed in me. Encouraged me. Supported me. Provided me with resources and assistance when it was needed. A sisterhood that presented me with challenges and obstacles that I had to endure and conquer so that I could grow as an individual and as a leader.

A sisterhood that eventually allowed me to find a woman that I am so lucky that I found… me.

Tri Delta changed my world.

It not only gave me my best friends, best memories and bridesmaids, but it also allowed me to find myself even when I didn’t know that was what I needed.

Yes, there are things that I will forever be upset that I missed like my last philanthropy event, last greek week and last chapter… but the memories and people that I will forever have because of this experience outweighs that completely.

When they say this isn’t just four years, that it’s for life… they mean it.

Adding to my Chicago knowledge has been a fun diversion during isolation and a useful activity for a Chicago Greeter.

I wish I’d taken notes while watching nine of Geoffrey Baer’s Chicago tours. His more than three dozen programs are available on the WTTW website.

I did note new facts learned from Chicago Days: 150 Defining Moments in the Life of a Great City, published by the Chicago Tribune for its 150th anniversary in 1997. Perhaps some of the following examples from the book will be new to others as well.

• Chicago engineer Octave Chanute, builder of railroads and designer of the Union Stockyards, was an inspiration for the Wright Brothers. Wilbur Wright wrote Chanute after reading about the latter’s experiments with biplane gliders at Miller Beach in northwest Indiana. They kept up a correspondence, and Chanute was invited to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903 to watch the Wright Brothers’ first attempt at powered flight.

• Chicago medical firsts include the first diagnosis of a heart attack (1912), successful open-heart surgery (1913), blood bank (1937), and liver transplant (1989).

* Market Square in Lake Forest, opened in 1916, was the first suburban planned shopping center in the country. Real estate investor Arthur T. Aldis hired architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, who lived in Lake Forest, to design the development. In the shape of a U facing the train station, the center had shops at street level and offices and apartments above. Market Square was decades ahead of its time as a shopping center planned, built, and run as a unit.

• While storied Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick was “starched and formal” and Republican, his cousin Joseph Medill Patterson was a one-time socialist with a sense of humor and an instinct for the common person’s tastes. In 1917 Patterson, then Tribune coeditor, introduced the comic strip The Gumps, and it entertained newspaper readers across the country for the next 42 years. Patterson often wrote story lines for The Gumps. He left Chicago in 1925 to run the New York Daily News.

• The idea for the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game came from Mayor Edward J. Kelly, who wanted an adjunct event to the World’s Fair held in Chicago in 1933. Kelly passed the idea by Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick, who committed the Tribune to underwriting the game, its sports department to tabulating fans’ votes to select the players, and sportswriter Arch Ward to getting American and National League offices and team owners to buy in. On July 6, 1933, before 47,595 fans at Comiskey Park, the American League won 4-2, with Babe Ruth hitting the first home run in All-Star history.

• Streetcars ran for 99 years until they were retired in 1958, and most city residents were no more than a quarter mile from a line.

• The first large-scale experimental cellphone system was built in the Chicago area in the late 1970s. In 1983 Bell Telephone’s local successor, Ameritech, received government permission to convert the experimental system into a commercial one. Chicago corporation Motorola was the original leader in cellphone production as what was expected to be a niche market for the wealthy became a fixture in American life.

*****

‘L’ IS OFFICIAL BUT STILL DEBATABLE

In his latest tour, Chicago by ‘L,’ Baer insists that ours are ‘L’ trains. I was interested then to see that Ron Grossman wrote “el” in a Chicago Days piece.

The spelling of the city’s railway system is a topic on which numerous people and publications have weighed in over the years.

The CTA says that materials from the early days of the more than 120-year-old system use ‘L’ (with single quotation marks). The CTA website calls ‘L’ a “now-official name originally short for ‘elevated.’” That suggests to me that the CTA decided to declare officialness not so long ago because people were writing something else.

Chicago Tribune style must have favored “el” when Grossman wrote “el” in the 1997 Chicago Days, although the paper’s more recent stylebook goes along with the CTA’s usage. In response to an email, Grossman, a Chicago native and still a Tribune writer, said, “I think [preference] depends on what you grew up with. In the elevated’s posters of my youth it was always el.”

El was the spelling for Chicago writers James T. Farrell and Nelson Algren, although Algren capitalized it and Farrell did not.

Bill Savage of the Northwestern University English department, a scholar of Chicago literature and history, told Chicago magazine in 2019 that he follows Algren’s and Farrell’s lead. “Folk usage trumps officially designated discourse for me every time,” he explained.

Chicago magazine also noted that El, with no quotation marks, is the spelling of contemporary authors Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler’s Wife and Rebecca Makkai in The Great Believers.

TimeOut magazine’s stylebook favors El, and the Chicago Sun-Times dumps the quotation marks, even though editorial style generally follows an organization’s official name. A board game released in 2019, “EL: The Chicago Transit Adventure,” put print publications that use L or ‘L’ in the awkward situation of using two spellings in the same article.

Because I wasn’t aware that the CTA deems ‘L’ official, I’ve been using el. I think ‘L’ is confusing. What it stands for isn’t obvious, as el is. Tourists familiar with the transit system in other cities, like New York, might think that it designates a train line.

But now that I know the CTA’s position, I don’t feel right using el. Over my editing career I came across many official names that I thought confusing, silly, or awkward. The State University of New York system changed its branches to University at [location]. Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism became Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, for some reason omitting “and.” I left formal names alone.

I’d like to argue that el isn’t a formal name but a nickname, but the CTA says ‘L’ is an official nickname.

I don’t know what I’ll do the next time I refer to the city’s railway system in writing. Sometimes editors find a way to write around a wording they dislike, but I can’t think of a write-around other than “the train,” which doesn’t sound like it comes from a Chicago insider.

*****

ANTI-TRUMP QUOTATIONS: 109TH IN AN ONGOING SERIES

“Trump characterized [reopening the economy] as the biggest decision of his presidency. It’s a big one, to be sure. But he already made the biggest decision of his presidency when he refused to take the coming pandemic seriously and failed to take necessary steps to respond effectively and protect American lives. Every day since then has meant one bad decision after another.”
— Heather Digby Parton, Salon

Here’s the perfect answer to “What’s for dinner”

Chicago restaurants have been doing an unbelievable job of creating original meals for takeout and delivery during their required closing due to COVID-19.

In addition to delicious food and spirits, many are also offering special prices and discounts.

Cafe Spiaggia

Delivery: Cafe Spiaggia  menus are available for delivery on Tock and DoorDash.

Special deal: For every $100 e-gift card purchase, receive a $25 bonus card.

Menus:

• Through April 12th, order the Puglian Menu Preview featuring Orecchiette with anchovy, rapini, chili, garlic, and olive oil. 
• Starting April 11th, order the Bucatini Home Meal Kit with Bucatini pasta, guanciale, Calabrian chili, onion, butter, pomodoro, Pecorino Romano, and parsley.
• Also starting the 11th, order Family Spaghetti + Meatballs! The best crowd pleaser there ever was.

Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap

Processed with Snapseed.

 

Delivery: Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap delivery is available on DoorDash.

Special deal: For every $100 e-gift card purchase, receive a $25 bonus card.

Menus

• Have a Pizza + Beer date night, courtesy of Jake’s! Order your favorite Detroit-Style Pan Pizza with a brew of choice and settle in for a movie on the couch.
  For barbecue fans, Pick one, pick two, or pick three of Jake’s house-smoked BBQ platters for delivery or curbside pickup. Anyone who picks three gets a free gift bag.
  Choose from a 1/2 slab of Baby Back Ribs, 12-hour Smoked Beef Brisket, Pulled Pork Shoulder, and Local Makowski Hot links plus a side.

AND stock the fridge with your favorite beers from Jake’s, also available for curbside pickup and delivery.

River Roast

Although it’s not quite the same as sitting on River Roast’s great patio overlooking the Chicago river and the Riverwalk, it’s the next best thing.

 

Delivery: River Roast dellivery is available on Tock and DoorDash.

Special deal: For every $100 e-gift card purchase, receive a $25 bonus card.

Menus

• Order a River Roast Supper Package for 2-4 people to enjoy in the company of your own home. Choose between a Whole Roast Chicken or St. Louis-style Ribs for the main course accompanied by salad or roasted veg, a side, and Chef’s choice dessert. 
• Tired of the same old bottle of bottle of red? Try one of River Roast’s Cocktail Kits also available for delivery or curbside pick-up. Kits are $40 each. Choices include Bloody Mary and Bailey’s + Cream. That’s the way to kick off the weekend quarantine-style.

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Carole Kuhrt Brewer

Arts, entertainment and dining journalist..

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The only time Senator Kamala Harris made any headway as a presidential candidate was back in June.  In a debate.  When she told Vice President Joe Biden that even though she really didn’t believe he was a racist, he was a racist.  Because he worked with racists in Congress in the past and that he’d been against busing back in the day.

She was all rehearsed and polished when she broke in during the debate to say that.  She’d practiced the attack and didn’t want it to go to waste.  And she had a Tweet all ready, too.  Which went out within seconds of her attack.  And so did the related merch; it was all ready to roll, just as fast as her new followers could get online and buy it.

Her numbers zoomed up rapidly.  But they toppled down just as fast.  As she walked it all back and changed her mind a few times in every direction.

Negative information started coming out about her, too–about her prosecutorial record, and the way she zoomed up in politics in California, going from a prosecutor to district attorney and then to attorney general of California and Junior Senator of same.

And then?  She dropped embarrassingly behind Andrew Yang–to 5th place–in her home state.  And behind Tulsi Gabbard in New Hampshire. And behind just about everyone who was anyone in Iowa.

Voters figured out she was nothingness personified.  But more than fluff, to be sure.  Because ultimately they found out she was a mean and thoughtless prosecutor who laughed and laughed, for instance, when she broached the biggest idea of her career:  she was going to “spend political capital” on, of all things, jailing California parents of truants.

(Watch that performance on the video within the whole story here.)

So who was the racist then?

She also laughed and laughed on the radio last year, when she talked about smoking pot when she was younger.  Hearing what she said angered her father no end; he called it pandering.  Which made me wonder how much she laughed and laughed when she locked up a ton of young black men for pot violations–as a California prosecutor.  Some for life.

So who was the racist then?

But Biden told Harris–virtually–at a virtual fundraiser for Harris a few days ago to retire her campaign debt that he and she were going to work together against Trump.   And that he was “coming for” her.

And I don’t think he meant he was coming for Kamala the way he came for Corn Pop.  Everyone’s said since Day 1 that she’d be his vice (no pun intended).

He’s coming for her, say the pundits–as early as this week–ever more loudly now, the same ones who’ve been saying it since they both announced their presidential intentions–that he’d be coming for her as his running mate.  If he won and she didn’t.

Why now?  If the chattering class is right, picking a running mate is tops on his list of things to do.  He seems to need help, that’s for sure.  He seems unable to handle a campaign on his own.

In four words, he’s no Andrew Cuomo.

Or maybe because Barack, half Kansan, half  Kenyan, wants his female counterpart–half Brahmin Tamil Indian, half Jamaican slaveholder, to be president someday like him?  Maybe he had a talk with Biden about that?  I helped you, Joe, and you helped me; now let’s help our girl, K….

Or maybe Barack wants to help China-toady Biden shore up his campaign chest, which appears to be close to broke–especially in comparison to Trump’s.  And Harris is an uber money-getter and a strong corporate democrat.  The strongest.  (Of course, I can’t think of any successful Democrat who isn’t a corporate democrat–except Bernie, who isn’t successful or a Democrat.)

But a Barack Obama she’s not.  She has no power to electrify or to motivate.  Or to think anything through. She’s undeserving to carry on the Obama legacy.

Even though there may be reasons to “reward” her.  Nefarious ones, to be sure.

Harris, who just started a fundraising operation with the DNC (What?  Why? Unless….) has made deep inroads into Hollywood and other rich points in the west, and in New England, and on Wall Street, too.  And she’s woven deep monied connections through the years.  It’s the California way.

And she has long tentacles into the money the corporate money-givers shower on the right kind of politicians.  The ones who won’t try to stop the gravy train like Bernie Sanders would.  They know she won’t.  And they’re right.

And oddly, even though we know she was showered with a lot of special interest money in the run-up to the primary–unlike money from the little people like Bernie was–we also know that she had to quit her campaign before the votes started being cast and counted because she had gone through a total fortune of cash, wasting everything she raised.  And getting absolutely nothing for it in the polling numbers game.

Hmmmm…. Maybe The Richie Riches don’t want their money wasted and they’re behind matching up the potential Biden-Harris duo?  Something like, We paid Kamala, Joe.  Now you pay us back.  Make her VP.

Maybe so.

Even though her campaign was ill-fated and very ill-run.  One top level staffer, her state operations manager, said she never saw a campaign treat its staff so badly and she quit.  And that was the end of Harris’ campaign. Until now.

But Biden’s coming for her, nonetheless!  And the hot mess is all in the past.

Suddenly, surprisingly and suspiciously, Harris is out there, co-sponosring Covid-19 related bills and co-chairing Covid-19 related investigations, becoming a real johnny-on-the-spot.  And in return?  A little Senate recognition to keep her name alive, perhaps?  Like she’s been doing for the last three years?  Buffering her image so she could hop, skip and jump into the White House.  Or, alternately, into Number One Observatory Circle, where the veep lives.  Until Biden retires….????

All of this, without strengthening her character, her message or her knowledge.  And with shades of doing things no one ever should:  like speaking out against big law firms at a campaign event, while at literally the same moment her husband was out picking up cash for her campaign from big law firms.

But the most heartbreaking part of all this is that right after Biden (from his basement) told Bernie what a great guy he was for helping reform the democratic party into its true self and that he was going to institute Bernie’s good ideas and all would be good forever, blah blah blah…and goodbye Bernie.  Nice knowing ya in the House and in the Senate and when I was Vice.  Oh, and don’t forget to get the bros to vote for me on your way out, OK?  OK?

Slam!

And then?  Biden turned around and said he was coming for Kamala Harris.  About the most different sort of politician on earth from Bernie Sanders.  She can’t keep a political principle in her heart or head for any longer than Corn Pop could keep his cool.  Except to live this principle: Wall Street good.  And Bernie Sanders not so good.

So what’s Bernie going to do when Kamala Harris seals the deal with the just now Bernie-endorsed Biden?  (I’m here to help you, Joe!  I’d love to be your VP.  Even though I called you a racist…Tee-Hee.)

Bernie just may, as they say, “grow a pair” like Biden–who keeps challenging anyone who challenges him on the issues to just step outside. (His security people move him along before anything serious happens.)

And Bernie just may say something like this:  Go get him, bros, teach him a lesson.  Do it for Corn Pop!  And by the way, don’t vote….

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SARS-CoV-2 is a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome caused by a novel coronavirus, one that’s never been seen before. The illness caused by the virus is called COVID-19, a coronavirus disease that surfaced in 2019.

I’ve been critical of Donald Trump since I first saw an episode of The Apprentice back in 2004.  His presidency has been an eye opener as to the fragility of American democracy and the ever present threat of authoritarianism.

When Trump referred to the novel coronavirus as the Chinese virus, Liberals, and even some Conservatives called him a racist.

While it might be true that Donald Trump is a racist (it’s true), referring to a virus by its point of origin is not only not racist, it’s a common scientific practice.

If anyone asks me, which they won’t, I like the name Wuhan virus, to give it a more precise point of origin without stigmatizing an entire nation.

Science has historically named diseases after the places where they were first discovered.

Lassa virus emerged in the town of Lassa in Nigeria in 1969.  Ebola was named after the river that was thought to be the closest river to the village of Yambuku, where the virus first appeared in 1976.

As it turned out, scientists were looking at a bad map, there were at least three other rivers closer to Yambuku.

Lyme disease is named after the town of Old Lyme, Connecticut, where it first surfaced in 1975.  The Zika virus first appeared in the Zika Forest of Uganda in 1947.

We have the Hong Kong and Asian flues and the most deadly influenza of all, the Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people in 1918.

Bubonic plague was the most deadly of all pandemics though, killing 75 million people in the 14th Century, when the population of Earth was only about 360 million.

Trump’s own grandfather died of the Spanish flu, although he first said that he didn’t know that people die from the flu.

Trump is right about the whole political correctness thing, though. We’ve gone way overboard with it and it’s blurring the meaning of free speech.

I remember feeling like my blood was boiling back in 1978, when Nazis wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, then home to many Holocaust survivors and their families.

The ACLU defended the Nazis right to march, but they ultimately settled for a rally in Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago.

I still believe that Nazism is antithetical to American values and that their brand of hate speech, the same kind of hate speech that led to the murder of 6 million Jews has no place in America.

Or anywhere.

Somehow, we still have to protect the right of people who want to say things that make our blood boil.

This business of “safe spaces” in colleges, which are the last stop on the train to real life is ridiculous. There are no safe spaces in life.

Colleges cancelling speakers because this group or that group is offended goes against the very meaning of free speech.  That’s a pretty damn slippery slope.

This form of Liberalism that makes it stylish to stifle free and open discussion is a greater threat to us than anything any one individual has to say.

History will not be kind to Donald Trump.

He will be remembered as a petty tyrant, a threat to our institutions and a destructive force in the history of America.  His single minded, self interest will be cited as a factor in the deaths of thousands of Americans.

Let’s be responsible Liberals though, and not pummel him needlessly.

Chinese virus is completely apropos, although I’m hoping Wuhan virus is the name that sticks.

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On Dec. 30, 1990, Orlando Magic point guard Scott Skiles dished out an NBA record 30 assists against the Denver Nuggets.

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“It’s actually an old man’s rocket to tell you the truth!”

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the dramatic Apollo 13 mission to the Moon, the second launch aboard a Saturn V and the final time Jim Lovell would liftoff to space.

Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell describes what it was like launching on a Saturn V rocket. Photo Credit: Michael Galindo/Cosmic Chicago

Lovell flew to space with NASA for a total of four launches, Gemini 7 and 12, and Apollo 8 and 13. Gemini missions launched aboard the Titan II rocket, after modifications were made to the launch system to rate it for manned missions.

“The Titan booster was built for ICBMs. And so, when Gemini was on top of it, it was like you were sitting on top of the warhead of an ICBM when it takes off.”

The Saturn V rocket was specifically designed as part of the Apollo program, with thirteen rockets launching to the Moon. Astronaut Jim Lovell was one of only three astronauts to ride the Saturn V rocket twice.

In a recent video interview with Cosmic Chicago, Lovell described what it was like launching on a Saturn V rocket.

Throughout the week we are publishing clips from our full interview with Jim Lovell. Subscribe to Cosmic Chicago to get updates delivered directly to your inbox!
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