The Carnival
Excerpted from Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, coming in August from Belt Publishing. By Paul Dailing When I was a kid, [...]
The Urban Rural
When I have written about Roseland it is usually about tragedy and trauma as the result of generations of neglect. When I tell white people where I live, their response always begins with a recollection
How to Win Reparations
Somewhere between his 12th and 13th hour inside a Chicago Police interrogation room, Lindsey Smith decided to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. The year was 1972. Multiple officers had pistol-whipped, stomped on and beaten him, again and again.
Pullman and Ideal Communities in Chicago, the Rust Belt, and Beyond
I’m obvious, driving slowly down the residential side streets on Chicago’s South side, looking left and right at the Victorian-style homes in Pullman. Though I have lived in Chicagoland all my life, I am seeing this neighborhood for the first time.
Introduction: Beyond The Belt
Chicago is built on a foundation of meat and railroads and steel, on opportunity and exploitation. But while its identity long ago expanded beyond manufacturing ...
Forthcoming in 2018: The New Old Town: Early Gentrification in Chicago
The story was the same in Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago: once-booming cities had started to shrink. Historic neighborhoods [...]
Check Out the Cover For The Chicago Anthology
We’re unveiling the cover for Belt Publishing’s forthcoming Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, and we couldn’t be more excited. The cover was designed by legendary Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick, known for his style of vibrant collages.
The Great Lakes are sicker than we think
By Matt Stansberry In The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, journalist Dan Egan makes the case that the [...]
The View from Chicago’s Favorite Suburb
When I moved to Phoenix three years ago I expected to feel disconnected from my Midwestern roots. But it turned out a lot of Chicago had made its way here.
Shop Small Business Saturday … And every day
Independent retailers nationwide are celebrating "Small Business Saturday" this weekend and direct sales to you, our readers, are the lifeblood of [...]
Experiencing History With Dad
As a native Clevelander, my loathing of Chicago sports began somewhere in Chicagoland while visiting a traitorous childhood friend who adopted the Bulls after moving there in the early 1990s. By then, Michael Jordan had sunk "The Shot" to eliminate the Cleveland Cavaliers from the 1989 playoffs.
Game Seven: It’s more than just two words
Game Seven of the World Series is more myth than reality. I would estimate that my friends and I, in games of wiffleball or whatever in our parents’ backyards on Cleveland’s suburban west side, probably played in "Game Seven of the World Series" maybe fifty more times than the event has taken place in the history of Major League Baseball. (For the record, this year’s is just the thirty-seventh.)