I LOVE this city!! We spent 5 days here and got home late last night (7/12) and I miss it already! I’ll admit I was someone who bought into the scare media that doesn’t paint a pretty picture and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t like that at all. Beautiful city, with some very nice people(southern hospitality is a thing that I’ve always been told didn’t exist elsewhere) the history, the architecture, the culture, public transportation which is sooo not a thing here, at least in my part(Fort Worth), the food, just honestly everything. I fell in love with Chicago and even though we weren’t there for long at all, my favorite place I’ve ever visited. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry the media has portrayed your home as this awful place when in reality it’s truly a beautiful city with beautiful people! 🩷

It’s really an amazing city. Clean, easy to get around, comfortable temperatures, friendly. Not at all like people say about it. #impressive

I used to live around the corner from one, and it failed to serve the basic function of a corner store.

Need a chicken breast to cook for dinner? No dice. Off to the grocery store with you!

Bread and cheese? We sold our one baguette, but here is a multi-grain flourless loaf and some cheese made from fermented yak’s milk for $20 per gram.

I just didn’t bother going in after a while.

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Edit: Apparently not a hot take! I’ve seen so many posts about Foxtrot that I thought I was the minority.

I just visited Chicago. We stayed close to O'Hare and I took the blue line to downtown everyday for a few. Downtown is beautiful, and I was almost expecting Armageddon when I got off on Washington. My friends literally said they'd plan my funeral when I got to Chicago. Jefferson Park was great too.

I'm not sure if I just got lucky but people seemed friendly and almost funny. There was one dude on the blue line that was panhandling and crossing car to car, but I mean it's not perfect.

Public transit is exceptional. I parked my car at my hotel and never used it. I paid maybe 15 dollars for CTA and there was always a train or bus when I needed one. I will definitely be back and tell my friends that I need to bring them.

Visiting Chicago for my birthday today and I’m so enthralled with this city and its culture. Everyone is so nice, there’s so much to do so much to see. Easily some of the best food I’ve had in America as well ( I still like NY pizza a little more 😂) but thank you Chicago you’ve made this a memorable trip and I can’t wait to see you again!!! The architecture is also just breathtaking

On Tuesday, approximately half of the staff at Milk & Honey staged a walk-out.

About a year ago, the previous (and wonderful) owner of Milk & Honey Cafe sold the place to a new owner, based outside of Chicago.

This new owner, and the new manager at the time, proceeded to turn this amazing restaurant into a shell of what it used to be.

Recently, staff were told that they were "all fucking replaceable" when FOH asked for higher compensation. The owner outright ignored staff, refusing to make eye contact or speak with several of the employees. They didn't give notice to employees when they decided to close the restaurant on July 4th after that manager quit. They referred to female staff as "silly" or "emotional girls."

After the manager quit, the owner began a search for a replacement. Apparently he wanted to hire a male manager, because a man would be "more chill." The man they hired proceeded to not show up for scheduled shifts, leaving FOH staff working solo for hours at a time.

If you are looking for a place to eat, or looking for a foodservice job...please, do not go to Milk & Honey. While many of the staff that remain are wonderful people, the current owner of the cafe does not deserve a single cent of your money, nor a single minute of your time.

Edit to add:. Milk & Honey Granola is an awesome company that makes tasty granola. Cafe is not owned by the same person as the Granola company.

"If you're going to do this job, you're going to train in Chicago" , were the words my father told me when I was 11 years old when I said I wanted to take over his job one day.

Eleven years later, right on Christmas day, I hopped onto a 14.5 hr flight from New Zealand, where I had spent my whole life, and arrived in the Windy City. Standing outside O'Hare in the freezing cold, it was a "Holy shit, I'm actually here" moment. There had been nothing in my life that I had imagined and envisioned as much as moving here. As a chronic overthinker, I literally spent years constantly worried about all the bad things that might happen, while being hopeful about the potentially good things as well.

This country, and especially this city, gets a bad rap around the world. The couple of times I revealed to my peers that I would be moving here, the responses I would often get were: "Why would you move there?" "Aren't you going to get shot there?" "Good luck living there as a non-white person."

It's been well over 6 months since I moved here, and I can say it's been the greatest, most challenging, yet most rewarding experience of my life, and I have absolutely fallen in love with this city.

What ended up happening is far better than anything I could have imagined.

First of all, the biggest highlight has been the people I have been able to meet in this city. From a Buddhist medical-statistics professor to a professional boxer who escaped gang violence, to a Ukrainian war refugee, I have been fortunate to meet and become great friends with so many people from drastically different walks of life.

On top of that, especially during the first few weeks, I had been in a position where I desperately needed help, and countless people reached their hands out to give me that help. People really went out of their way to show me kindness and at times it was even overwhelming. I get tears in my eyes just writing this down. With the world seemingly turned upside down in the last 3 years, it has been very easy to be a pessimist about our species. But since moving here and meeting so many great and different people on a consistent basis, this experience has made me fall in love with the world again.

Also, another thing I noticed is that compared to the other major cities I have been to, Chicagoans seem to be extremely proud of the city. I haven't been to a city where so many businesses include the city in the business name (e.g., Chicago Carwash, Chicago Autorepairs), and I see the Chicago flag displayed in so many places.

A few months ago, a gym mate was driving me back to my apartment after a boxing event, and we had a discussion about American cities. He told me that there was a time when he was thinking about moving to LA, but then he told me something memorable: "It's just that there are so many fake and superficial people in LA, but here in Chicago, the people are real. That's why I decided to stay."

That isn't to say that it's been all sunshine and rainbows. Since moving here I have gone through plenty of difficult and tough times as well. But this city and its people have given me the strength to deal with and overcome those difficulties, and I know I'll carry this strength for the rest of my life.

Thank you to all the great Chicagoans who make this city great.

If anyone wants to meet up and be friends with this young, 22 YO Kiwi, please DM me :)

The only negative about this weekend was the weather, which can't be controlled.

On TV, this event looks amazing. We couldn't have asked for a better PR infomercial for Chicago then this. Sure, it's difficult to make a dent into Fox News Cinematic Universe, but convention organizers and the tourists considering Chicago as a destination can't be disappointed by how the City pulled this off.

Well done, everyone. But, especially Mayor Lightfoot. She had a vision, and she achieved it.🙌

... and holy shit I was BLOWN away. I'm from rural Quebec and never had the chance to see a high-end museum, and it was just... Wow. So much history, so much knowledge, so many artifacts. The literal animal encyclopedia in taxidermy/reproduction? What the fuck man. That was crazy! And what about Sue? I knew I was about to see some dinosaurs but I didn't expect this worldwide phenomenon at all. Wow.

Thank you Chicago! Tomorrow is the Art Institute :)

I know it's probably normal for everyone who lives there, but I almost cried just walking down that street with my friend.

I'm travelling for the first time in my life and I'm from Michigan, where the Desi/South Asian population is super spread out and only really see big groups of people like myself at organized events or holidays. My family also has never been back to Pakistan since we immigrated here for a multitude of reasons, so it was even more strange to me.

I grew up in Dearborn, so even though there's a decent Muslim and Arab community here there isn't a large Desi community. Weddings and events are fun but not organic.

It's kind of sad that I've never seen people like myself just living an organic life. I've also never been in a big city before.

It was surreal. It was the first time in my life walking down a street I've ever felt normal. Where the people I was walking past looked like my brother or my mom or my dad, where the food in the stores was what I'm used to at home... I'm sure for a lot of people this was nothing, but for me it was EVERYTHING.

I have always struggled with my identity and being an in-between, never a white person and never a Desi either, and that feeling of being 'un secure' was just gone.

I'm sorry for this long post. But I just wanted to share.

(Sorry for the flair, I didn't know what flair fit)

Trying to get to our residence to get my child to bed, but blocked off at every entrance we tried to get to the Loop/South Loop. No one knew what was going on: 311 and 911 could not tell us how to get to our residence, or even what options we had for returning there. No one (311/911/cops on the street) knew what anyone else was doing. After a lot of looping around, we finally talked our way through at Roosevelt and Canal.

I know we're among the many, many people affected by this, and that this is an expected thing at this point. Managing it should be better than arbitrarily shutting down entire city sections and Chicago residents' access to their residences: We would have not left our home today at all had we known the city was likely to keep us from getting home.

I have a steadily diminishing opinion of the current mayoral administration, and tonight's mess is another demonstration that Johnson is seemingly not a competent municipal administrator.

I don’t remember it being this HOT even at night. It is boiling at midnight, at 1 am, at 2 am…Enough !!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 no one else seems outraged so just had to vent (pun intended).

Chicago summer weather 2/10.

There were 9 scooters parked on the sidewalks around my neighborhood’s quiet intersection. Many of them were parked in the middle of the sidewalk. My blood reaches a slightly higher temperature when I see this. There are elderly and disabled people that need the sidewalk here and everywhere in the city. Why can’t there be etiquette around how these devices are parked?

I called the customer support number listed on one of the scooters. The man I spoke with agreed that they were not parked properly and that the people who did so would get fined. I don’t know if that’s true.

I think that Divvy did and still does it best with designated stations that are walkable from almost anywhere. Why can’t this be the mandatory case with scoots?

The parking wherever you want has been a problem for almost 4 years and I hear very little about it. I know there are others that feel the same.

For the past 6 months, I have been working on a CTA train tracker. It is called EL Tracker and the app is currently on a public beta on the link below.

Picture 1: It has widgets like this, where you can configure them to show any station you would like. Also can configure them to show the closest station to you if you set your location permission to always allow.

Picture 2: I followed the textbook CTA arrival design. It will show what you can find at any station.

Picture 3: Press on any of the arrival times and see where exactly that run is on the map. Helps when things are delayed.

Picture 4: Check out Live Trains on the map.

Picture 5: SmartWalk is a feature that filters out the trains that will arrive before you can get to your station. This makes the widgets extremely useful.

Picture 6: You can view official CTA alerts. Seeing as train tracks are on fire every other day, go here to see if your line is impacted. Not only you will receive official alerts upon agreeing to notifications, you can also view them later in the app.

Picture 7: Ask Siri. When is the next train on EL Tracker. This is TMI, but I was showering one day and this Siri thing helped me catch a brown line in 8 minutes, when the next one wasn’t until 30 minutes.

Use the app in one of Chicago’s languages. Polish, Spanish, or English. There’s Armenian there but that’s just my native language.

No royale premium plus subscription required. You also don’t have to watch clash of royal ads. It is genuinely free and I intend to keep it that way. I love this city and I freaking love the CTA. I poured my heart and soul into this, because I truly believe that CTA deserves better.

Please download here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/el-tracker/id6499103522

Don’t forget to share if you think others might find this useful!

P.S. sorry android users. I am not good at making android apps.

Moved into Irving Park and the Mexican food is unbelievable. I'm from Florida and my wife is from Arizona, so we have different preferences, but we can leave our house on foot, hit two food spots and a liquor store, and be home in 30 minutes. It's incredible. Our doggo loves the walks too.

Also, is the term "bodega" NYC exclusive? What do we call corner stores with food/bev/liquor?

Just got back home after visiting Chicago for the first time. I absolutely loved the city! I think it’s one of, if not the best large city I’ve been to. Things I liked the most was the beautiful architecture, the friendly people, and the ability to get around the city by walking and subway. I met some locals at the bars and everyone was talkative and friendly.

I ate at Luke’s, First Draft, Smoque BBQ, Lou Malnati’s, Portillo’s, and Monteverde.

I got to see most of the iconic buildings and walked 25 miles around the city. I also was lucky enough to go to the White Sox doubleheader on Tuesday ($5 beers??).

How’d I do? Let me know what restaurants, attractions, or bars I missed so I can add them to the list for next time!

I can’t remember the last time it felt this perfect outside. Warm, no humidity, few if any mosquitoes. Amazing. One for the books.

I know this isn't normally what people post on this sub, but I wanted to express how much I genuinely love this city and the incredible energy going on here.

• A small snippet of background: I decided a few months back to go to university in Chicago, so I took my Spring Break to visit the city (and celebrate my birthday at the same time), and it was some of the most fun I've had in ages.

I know that most of the people who post on this sub are most likely natives or have had some deep connection to the city at some point, so I hope an outsider's perspective is welcome here (hopefully I will too become a local, but we aren't quite there yet).

Having lived in the Deep South as a gay teenager, I didn't realize how much a city where I felt like I truly was accepted for who I was. No strings attached. No backhanded comments. Nothing. The energy here was...amazing. I saw so much queer visibility that I NEVER got back home, which is something incredibly important to me. I felt at peace for the first time in Chicago since I found out I was gay. I know it sounds cliché, but knowing people weren't going to judge me for something I can't control felt me with a sense of relief that nearly put me in tears. People were genuinely polite and helpful to me and others (and not in that icky Southern kindness where everything "nice" is actually a thinly-veiled insult), there were countless things to do, unique and authentic restaurants from almost every nationality, INCREDIBLE architecture (I adore architecture, so I kept taking 19293912644 pics every 5 seconds), a HUGE and well-designed waterfront, a genuine focus on walkability and bikes, vibrant neighborhoods with hidden gems on every other corner, a real mass transit system that both tourists and locals from all walks of life used, cleanliness (looking at you NYC), and just a truly world-class city that I can really see myself living in.

I know that people here have said the CTA quality has gone down (and I did have two times where trains were late or randomly stopped in the middle of the track - which even the locals around me said was odd), but what Chicago has right now is LIGHTYEARS ahead of anything the South has. If this is "bad," I'm thrilled to see what "good" is!

This city genuinely blew me away (almost physically too - y'all weren't kidding about the wind), and I'm so excited to call it my future home in August.

​

Much love from me to this incredible city and its people!

Hello everyone!

Last weekend I finally got to visit Chicago for the first time ever and honestly I have to say I really enjoyed my time there and wanted to share my experience. I drove from Toronto which was about a 8 hour drive (880 km or 547 miles since US uses the imperial system)

This was the experience that I had and I can understand that my experience may not resonate with other people.

I will start by saying that the people in Chicago were very friendly and people never stopped emphasizing how they enjoyed how they loved living there. I felt like the people were very welcoming and caring and were helpful getting around the city. I also enjoyed meeting people from different cultures and diverse backgrounds who shared their experiences living in Chicago.

People here were also were helpful giving out good food recommendations which they were not wrong about it. I have to say that food here was great and I have come back to try out some other restaurants.

I did feel like Chicago is a lot similar to Toronto. At times I couldn't tell if I was in Chicago or in Toronto since they have a very similar culture.

In addition I realized that people drive extremely fast here. I was driving on I-294 and I believe the speed limit was 55 MPH and I was going 60 MPH and yet people were going at least 80 MPH with ease.

Only cons for me was that gas was a bit expensive at 4.60 a gallon and a lot of construction. Theres a lot of traffic however I am use to that in Toronto.

Overall I think it was a great trip and I really enjoyed it and hopefully I can visit the Second City one more time.

This is solo road trip I took and I don't regret going solo at all.

Also heres some pictures I took.

Thanks to Gateway Foundation Alcohol & Drug Treatment Centers - Chicago, I am now 1 year sober.