By Katie Buitrago
A preface: I have a complicated relationship with fruit. Meaning: I don’t like it. Any of it. Not apples, oranges, mangoes, watermelon . . . not even [insert your favorite fruit you can’t fathom anyone ever hating here].
I know this is shameful, and bizarre, and horrifically unhealthy. I know. I don’t know why I was made like this, and it frustrates me endlessly. In my adult life, I’m trying really hard to rectify the situation. I can occasionally stomach a tangerine. I went on a romantic blackberry picking trip in summery Michigan, and not even bumblebees and sunsets could overcome my aversion to their seedy enfilade. There’s just something repugnant about seeds or fibers or little hairs swimming about my mouth, raining on my picnic of tart, juicy delights.
Not so with the Fruit Slinger.

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Posted on August 6, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
The Tribune has introduced its new beta platform for local blogs. Here at the Beachwood’s Chicago Blog Review Desk, we’ll be taking a look at some of the new – and familiar – faces you can find there.
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Blog: Arresting Tales
Description: Stories from Joe the Cop
Substance: Joe the Cop, a 20-year veteran of a suburban police department, posts reflections on criminal activity, analyses of cop-related news, first-person accounts of policing and its attendant madness, helpful hints, and answers to civilian questions (hopefully this last feature will happen more often). I admit: before I stumbled across this blog, I went in with some assumptions. “Oh, a cop blog,” I thought. “Another furious blog with a defensive cop ranting about ‘cop haters’ every time someone protests police brutality or a police DUI.” Not so, my friends, and I am duly chastened. Joe the Cop is both thoughtful and thought-provoking and by no means supports police no matter what godawful thing they do. He, combined with Whet Moser, changed my mind a bit about the sentencing of Anthony Abbate.

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Posted on June 26, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
The Tribune has introduced its new beta platform for local blogs. Here at the Beachwood’s Chicago Blog Review Desk, we’ll be taking a look at some of the new – and familiar – faces you can find there.
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Blog: Parking Ticket Geek
Description: Information, advice, and fury over matters driving-related.
Substance: You may know the Parking Ticket Geek from his other home at The Expired Meter. Unlike CTA Tattler, which made the switch completely to ChicagoNow, The Expired Meter is still being updated with the same content as the new blog, for some reason. The Parking Ticket Geek follows parking-related news with incisive analysis, gives a weekly advice column on how to beat bogus parking tickets, and advises drivers on parts of town to avoid when big events are going on. It’s a great mix of public service announcement and scathing attacks on Chicago’s parking policies. The Geek points out hypocrisy and even does original reporting to dig up fascinating info that mainstream reporters are missing. The downfall of many a blog is that they’re just another aggregator, but the Parking Ticket Geek actually brings new content to the table. *golf clap*

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Posted on June 5, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
The Tribune introduced its new beta platform for local blogs this week. Here at the Beachwood’s Chicago Blog Review desk, we’ll be taking a look at some of the new – and familiar – faces you can find there.
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Blog: CTA Tattler
Description: “Seen and Heard on the Chicago Transit Authority”
Substance: Kevin O’Neil has been chronicling stuff about the CTA for five years and, as of Tuesday, is now part of the Tribune’s stable of local blogs at Chicago Now (stay away from the Trib, man! It’s a sinking goddamned ship! The desk chairs, they are being rearranged!). The use of “chronicle” to describe his work is O’Neil’s own designation, and it is entirely, though not quite positively, apt. A handy search of Merriam-Webster defines “chronicle” as “an historical account of events arranged in order of time usually without analysis or interpretation.” O’Neil gathers CTA-related news and collects stories about wild and wacky sightings on our trains and buses, as well as posts service advisories and news updates from the CTA itself. It’s fun for its entertainment value, but usually I’ve already read all the news he references by the time he gets to it – sometimes days before. If you’re not a news junkie like me, it’s a useful place to read up on transportation news. But I’m disappointed that he linked to a CBS2 investigation of the CTA failing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act that was published a full week after a ChicagoTalks investigation (posted partially on The Beachwood Reporter) of the exact same thing that, for some reason, didn’t merit a mention at all.

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Posted on May 29, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
Blog: The Urbanophile
Description: “Urban Affairs and the Future of the Midwest City.”
Substance: The Urbanophile is both the moniker of and web home of the expansive mind of Aaron M. Renn. He’s a self-described “independent urban affairs thinker, strategist, and writer” who pumps the blog full of original analyses of urban issues, ranging from transportation to development to architecture and more. Sometimes he takes on recent developments in urban planning, and at other times produces his own theories of ways to improve the Midwestern city. He has one leg in Chicago and one in Indianapolis and often uses the cities as the jumping-off points for his essays. Renn clearly has a wealth for his topics and references a broad range of sources from his comprehensive blogroll and – gasp – books. You may remember him for his suburb-infuriating winning entry in the Chicago Community Trust’s competition of ideas to raise CTA ridership to 1 billion a year.

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Posted on May 22, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
Blog: The Chicago Blog
Description: “Publicity news from the University of Chicago Press including news tips, press releases, reviews, and intelligent commentary.”
Substance: When the first two words I see on a blog are “publicity news,” my first inclination is to Abort Mission Internet faster than you can say Missed Connection. Very little could be as boring as people trying to sell you stuff and disguising it as content: it’s not an ad, it’s a blog! Trust! There are comments! And links! And an About page where you can find how to spend all of your discretionary income on my product learn more about me!
But the University of Chicago Press has the good fortune of trying to sell you stuff that’s pretty damn good. The largest scholarly press in America gets to pick from the cream of the crop, both books- and staff-wise, and the result is that their blog is both smartly written and based on interesting books. Bloggers SXH and TXM (surprisingly not designer drugs) reach into the vaults of the Press several times a day and pull out books relevant to major news and trends. Occasionally, Press authors will weigh in on current affairs. Some posts are simply squees about awards and readings.
Ultimately, the Chicago Blog is what it says it is: a publicity blog. But self-promotion isn’t such a bad thing – and is even useful – when their products are interesting, relevant, and smart.

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Posted on May 13, 2009

By Katie Buitrago
Editor’s Note: This is the first in our long-awaited Chicago Blog Review series.
Blog: Chicagoland
Description: The Chicago Reader’s home for a lil’ bit of everything.
Style: The tagline is “A Reader staff blog,” but Chicagoland is dominated, happily, by web producer Whet Moser. Moser, a graduate of Deep Springs and the U of C, is whip-smart without suffering from pedantry. He’s relevant and funny with a sharp Internet-ready humor that, I suspect, comes from many hours spent online in the early days of IRC and message boards (correct me if I’m wrong, but I know my people). Media outlets’ blogs often feel like columns wrested from the pages of their print edition and dropped on the Internet with little modification. Not so here – he fits the news to the medium masterfully.

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Posted on May 6, 2009

Coming soon. Submissions welcome. Send your reviews or sites you’d like to see reviewed to srhodes@beachwoodreporter.com.

Posted on August 21, 2007