Hayward

These are mostly big projects I'm posting, so here's a small one The new 12th District police station breaks ground. Chicago PBC In the last decade the area had explosive growth. There's a large highrise planned on the wedge to the left. Chicago police stations are built off a prototype, and there are other identical buildings in the city. They are brick, and limestone with a large curving curtainwall. The interiors have a two story lobby and lots of polished granite. It's not mentioned whether the roof can be occupied or not, though it sure looks like it in the renderings A west loop highrise Curbed Chicago West Loop Nonsense. Once again, the NIMBYs ruined things and successfully pushed developers to reduce the height of this proposed West Loop office tower. As demand rises again for more office space, that area will be seeing a lot more. It seems like Chicago suffers from a curse where anything beyond 800 west can't be built higher than 12 floors. But West loop NIMBYs are nothing like the ones up in Lincoln Park. For the past year, this has been the most controversial development in the city Curbed Chicago Consider this....you have this abandoned HOSPITAL in the middle of your neighborhood, and this ugly addition to it on the back. Across the street an ugly parking structure. Let's say a developer comes along. Promises to demo all the ugly parts of the hospital, replace them with condo midrises and keep the older part but turn it into condos. Level the ugly parking garage and replace it with a high end grocery store. It seems like a good deal to me, but apparently not the residents...or the alderman. Fortunately the planning commission and council both approved it....twice actually. Yet the alderman still tries to appeal or sue over and over. I'm happy the developer isn't standing down, though maybe the residents deserve to have a rotting abandoned hospital in their backyard.

^ That building is not being demolished. That was a rumor started years ago after residents were evicted and the building conversion flopped. But it's not going anywhere soon. The asking price is absolutely outrageous for a building in that condition or even the land....

I was happy to hear the Yellow Pages buildings was being rehabbed at the same time horrified they were taking the sign down....it's really what makes that building special.

Lake Meadows / Prairie Shores Extension. This is less than a mile south of McCormick , and north of Bronzeville. The southeastern part of the lake meadows neighborhood has already been rebuilt into townhomes and 3 story walkups (not visible in renderings)

From curbed national / curbed chicago http://chicago.curbed.com/archives/2011/05/05/the-home-alone-house-in-winnetka-hits-the-market-for-24-million.php#home-alone-house-3

No one ever complains about Ohio drivers in Chicago. But Wisconsin drivers move soooooo sloowwww

That's weird. I would assume it's more a software issue. My phone when I got it would repeatedly dial a contact on occasion. You could just set it on a table and watch. The phone self updates its software and immediately corrected the problem on its own

^ Hmmmm that's odd. I'm trying to think...I got a driver to work with my Dell Monitor hooked up to iMac. Without the driver it was okay, but I wanted the monitor to be perfectly color matched with my imac. I remember getting a driver to do this, but I think it was some third party site. Maybe you'll have to search around the internet for one. There's sites that have drivers for almost anything out there.

Love this horrible sounds of steel against steel in this one. The Columbus Ave bridge is the newest bascule bridge on the river, it's also the loudest and seems to be the slowest. They don't build em like they used to I guess.

It's spitting image of Ashley Terrace in Ann Arbor

Yep, you sure did. I've been dealing with this since about 16 years old. I don't even have an intimidating appearance. I'm like 5'11" and only 160 and have more of a grungy hipster style of dress as opposed to the hip hop style of the sterotypical black person (kinda Kid Cudi-esque). Just last week, I experienced this twice. While walking in Clifton, a small Asian girl and I were approaching each other from a distance, and once we got closer, she crossed to the other side of the street. Antother instance was when I was leaving Barnes & Noble in Kenwood going to my car, I passed a mid 90's model Oldsmobile and I heard "cli-click" (doors locking). I glanced inside the car and sure enough, it was an elderly white woman. *sigh*. The worst though was when I used to work in retail and some of the older white women would say I speak "so well" and I'm so "articulate." What the hell is that supposed to mean? :-D :whip: I've been robbed twice in my lifetime, both more than 35 years ago, both times by clean-cut white boys. One was wearing dress pants and shirt and tie, all perfectly coordinated and topped off with a navy windbreaker. He was light blonde with magazine-model looks. He was hitchhiking in downtown Fort Wayne when there still was nightlife there, and my guard was completely down. Where that large-bore revolver came from, I still haven't figured out; it looked like a .44 Magnum. The other time, I was where good judgement would have said, no, screamed, "Are you crazy? Don't go there at night!" I'm not counting the time I was drunk on the CTA Red Line at 1a.m. in a nearly-empty car and got shaken down for change and a transfer by a couple of black teenagers while the conductor watched from the end of the car and said/did nothing. That's awful. But as far as the CTA, the conductors I believe can't actually do anything except call it in, UNLESS they know they can take control of the situation. I guess it's a matter of putting themselves at risk, or even the CTA getting sued or something. It's horrible I know. As a good citizen I would try and intervene if I could. The CTA is horribly sketchy at night. People mill around the stations with large duffle bags and hide in dark areas. Some people will never board the trains. This is probably the reason why the brown line ceases operation at night....the areas along it don't want the crime or the drunks -------------------- Back to the freeloading topic. There's alot of restaurants that just give away food at the end of the day. Most is donated to shelters, but many places will let you take the stuff sitting out all day at no cost. Not my kind of thing to do, though getting to know employees at places has its benefits.

That greedy companies argument could be somewhat shadowed in my post though. You have two options: 1. Throw money at the problem, and offer incentives for businesses to move downtown. Guess what? When the incentives dry up, the companies bail. Think of the film industry for example, it's simply walking out despite the thousands of people it is employing. 2. Replace incompetent leaders with government selected individuals or boards. It's already happening with the Detroit school system. Guess what, the deficit has almost thus far been shaved in half!! Down over 100 million in just a few years! Is this good? Yes, and no. It's a bad idea to be replacing elected officials by someone chosen by a few elite individuals. At the same time, I have yet to see where these actions have gone totally wrong. If the idea was to remove incompetence and lower debt...the problem was solved. It may not be popular, but the problem was solved.

It could be as simple as promoting a Twitter hash tag like #FreeFoodChicago. Or a Facebook group where people can report locations. That's a really good idea actually. Hotels/motels with breakfast buffets seldom monitor who partakes; when staying at them, I've never been asked to show a room key or anything in order to have breakfast. In fact, while staying at the now-defunct Terrace Hotel in Cincinnati, I saw a reasonably dressed guy with average grooming loading up on the free breakfast, and later I saw him on the street checking vending machines and parking meters for change. If you create a public forum that directs people to free food, you may generate so much traffic for those places that they either limit quanty and/or access, or discontinue the practice altogether. LOL. You're so right, now that I think about it. Every hotel I've stayed at that had a continental breakfast, had a completely packed kitchen in the morning despite there being very little traffic through the halls at night or even throughout the day. No one in the state-of-the-art fitness room, or pool, bar or even arcade but I'll be d@mned if there wasn't ever a guaranteed line out of the kitchen entrance for the waffle iron at 9 in the morning. The waffle line is always the worst at hotel kitchens. Everyone has to have double-stacked waffles and even more waffles for their whiney kids or lazy spouse/mistress who is laying up in the room and was too lazy to come down before the breakfast ends and stand in line for their own friggin' waffles. It makes sense that a lot of them are just travelers passing through and taking advantage of free food. I don't think I've ever had to show proof of occupancy for a room in order to eat at the free breakfast bar. Yeah, never seen hotels ask for proof. Though, ethically it would be wrong, the hotel isn't losing much on a few freeloaders, even if it were a couple dozen. Think about the low cost of buying all that stuff in bulk, and also consider how much they throw out that isn't eaten. There's no possible way they could detect a loss from unwanted guests. Additionally many hotels permit visitors of guests staying there to partake in the continental breakfast.

It could be as simple as promoting a Twitter hash tag like #FreeFoodChicago. Or a Facebook group where people can report locations. That's a really good idea actually.

I think I told this story once before. But I came back to my place with my Timberlands on, hoody, and hat, with my hands all greasy from fixing my bike, and this girl asked when I was done with whatever job I was doing, to fix the sink in her boyfriend's apartment. I told her if she needed me to loan her some tools, I'd allow it, but only after I drop off my rent check. Her reaction was like "Oh...oh I am so very sorry, I thought you were maintenance." Whatever, I don't need to impress the girls in my building...the ones I've met are bougie, except for a few who are nice, but dating other guys. And since I've been dating this girl from college for awhile, I know when to clean up nice. Wicker Park, Humboldt, or maybe Logan Square is more my place, but I like living downtown. It's way too convenient. I think about moving from time to time, but my renting experience at my current building has been way too good, to the point that I don't think I'll ever rent at a better place with as good as amenities, service, and quiet neighbors. I do appreciate Oak Street despite that I'll never be able to afford the stores in my lifetime, it's at least a cool place to walk out the front door to. I think I'd miss my views too.

Ah fort street. Is that Matty's-you-shall-accidentally-drive-to-Canada-wall I see? That's an odd question, considering Detroit has gotten as much help, if not more than it deserved. While it's still fresh on our minds, its biggest companies got bailouts. The problems that plague Detroit are highly internal. People simply don't want to live in this city, except for a handful of people who see an advantage or opportunity. But it's not enough to offset the exodus. Any kind of action to change Detroit's direction would not be viable in any way. Throwing money at the problem won't help when it comes down to the population and businesses choice where to locate. Your only option to keep status quo or improve the future immediately is to literally force people to stay, and you are only making their lives worse. Detroit will fix its problems on its own. It will continue to lose more people, more business, close every single library, most schools, shut down more parks until it becomes rightsized. Right now, many parts are just not pleasant places to live. Many neighborhoods within close proximity to downtown are literally the inverse of many American cities. While most cities have a couple vacant homes on each block and maybe a vacant lot here and there, Detroit has a couple occupied homes on each block and maybe an occupied house here and there. People who go out and get an education receive their degree have their ticket out of the city to go to a place where they can buy or rent a nice home in a nice neighborhood or have a street filled with bars, stores, and restaurants instead of vacant storefronts. For those who stick around, I give you a ton of credit for sticking it out, and hopefully you are rewarded when things pick up, but most of us can't wait that long. I think of Detroit like a big forest fire. It's still burning, but starting to go out. You see a few shoots of green here and there, but wait another decade and you'll see alot more progress. Meanwhile, much of greater of Detroit will continue to spiral into decline, but you'll start to see a well stabilized core. Hopefully by then, Michigan will have a more favorable business climate, both nationally and most important....internationally.

I'm Chicago Oak Streets worst nightmare. My mere presence lowers property values. But I wasn't exactly placed in this apartment by choice (finders service) I had this idea at work today. All over downtown companies give away free food and beverages. I wonder if you could just live off promotional food and beverages, just by going to all the right places. The State office buildings seems to be the perfect place for free stuff, but then it's offset by being accosted by panhandlers, people selling hip hop, and magazines.

^ It should. I have the 24" imac, the generation just before you with duo core. I've had excessive workload before with dozens of heavy .AI files open, and a 200 page ID document with tons of imagery + photoshop and after effects. I don't know the reason to be honest, it should be able to handle it. You certainly have sufficient memory What else is running? The only time I run into slowdowns is when I run Mac OS and Windows 7 at the same time

I interned way back in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago for a small architecture firm that did houses for very wealthy people. Your ideas aren't crazy, because we had to think like that. I worked on the design of a house that had a rotating bookshelf which led to a secret passageway. There was bathroom with a large shower, toilet, and urinal, or you could open another door which was an elevator. The elevator took you either down where it split off to a wine cellar or garage, or upstairs to the bedroom suite, which attached to the "his" walk-in closet. The house had another elevator which serviced the kitchen and a larger garage on the lower level and hallway connecting additional bedrooms on the upper floor. Residential elevators aren't as expensive as one might think, and they don't take up all that much space. For the cost of redoing a sizeable kitchen with new cabinets and counters is equal to the cost of a residential elevator. It's actually worth considering if you want to grow old in a large multi-level house.

Oh trust me people fly through. This is where I cracked my head open when my axle failed last summer btw. This city is really worried someone is going to die, which probably made a good case for all thad federal money. I hope we can get even more for extra lanes on the trail

^ I seem to recall a forumer on ssp saying he got the same sort of approach from a dude. I guess avoid the pool table Here's my latest bicycling video of the defective LSD bridge Navy Pier bypass. The city plans to demolish it and replace it with a new $40 flyover with separated usage lanes and elevated interchanges. The federal funding has been secured. Sorry the video was glitchy. I was putting it together on my lunchbreak and eating at the same time. I didn't realize I had overlapped some frames that show twice. The video is also DOUBLE speed http://www.flickr.com/photos/ifmuth/5610238587/#secrete688a9c42din/photostream

AT the bar, and dancing with this girl to big poppa and she starts waving her hands up and down and f-in hits the top of my beer and the glas goes right into my hand WTF. I was on the subway pulling shards out and people were staring.

Which on the survey response, is considered normal. So basically, the chick that told you that talking bs

^ Pretty much. It may as well be a parking garage entirely So the Grossinger Cadillac development has begun construction and it looks like a new firm was chosen for the design. Curbed Chicago The design is an improvement over what would appear to be ye old traditional vertical strip mall architecture.

It doesn't make you an "alcoholic" unless you are unable to control your drinking. Rather this is a question of whether you are binge drinker or not. Of course this depends on: Frequency Number You can compare shots to drinking beer. The general rule, as defined by most states is 1 shot = 1 beer. So the person sipping 3 beers for one night consumed the same amount as someone who took 3 shots. But some people take shots because they are quick way to get alcohol in them. That's why in a rush so many people pre-party with vodka because it's quick way to loosen up before they got out to a party or club. I know some of us have already gotten our health assessment survey that will determine the health insurance rates we will pay based on our lifestyle. One of the questions is how much and what you drink when you go out. Obviously, people who drink too much, smoke, and overweight will pay much higher premiums