More Hofstra photos are coming soon. Before I get to those, here's an image from my drive home from O'Hare this afternoon. It's the last Cabrini Green high-rise in its death throes:
The site, on Division between Halsted and Larrabee, contained the last two high-rises of a blighted urban complex that covered over 2.5 sq km and had some of the worst crime in the city. The Encyclopedia of Chicago describes the history:
The large new apartments and large swaths of recreation space failed to mend the area's poverty. The difficulty blacks had finding better, affordable housing gave Cabrini-Green a permanent population. CHA failed to budget money to repair buildings and maintain landscaping as they deteriorated. Cabrini-Green's reputation for crime and gangs rivaled Little Hell's. The murders of two white police officers in 1970 and of seven-year-old resident Dantrell Davis in 1992 drew national attention.
Increasing real-estate values in the late twentieth century led housing officials to propose replacement of the complex with mixed-income housing. Residents argued however that such a move would displace them permanently, completing the slum removal effort begun with the building of Cabrini Homes half a century earlier.
Those "increasing real-estate values" mean that you can now spend $500k on a townhouse in the former no-go zone around Wells and North, and the Cabrini-Green site could wind up selling for many tens of millions. And if you're wondering what happened to all the project's residents, you're not alone.
The Chicago Tribune reported today that coyotes living on the North Side sing along to ambulance sirens:
In a posting on his website, Ald. Patrick O'Connor, 40th, says many residents near the hospital have reported seeing coyotes. Additionally, residents have reported hearing what sounds like a chorus of coyotes howling in response to ambulance sirens.
Coyotes vanished from the Chicago area by the end of the 19th century, but they've made a comeback in recent years.
Alderman O'Connor says the coyotes live in nearby Budlong Woods, which is great for them but not so good for outdoor cats:
Small animals can easily become coyote prey even in fenced yards so keep an eye on your pets while they are outside the home Though coyotes generally hunt between sunset and sunrise, they can be observed at all hours of the day and night. The City does not trap or disable coyotes and encourages extreme caution upon encountering one.
I live close enough to the Lincoln Park Zoo that I can sometimes hear the wolves howling. They're not technically urban wildlife if they're in the zoo, but Parker doesn't know that, and their howling freaks him out.
Photo: Wikipedia
Reader DM commented on yesterday's lament about Inbev acquiring Goose Island Brewery:
This is definitely not a good thing, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. The brewpubs are reported not to be in the deal (I'm not sure how that is), but that is what I've read.
They are also bringing in Brett Porter to run things, who is a pretty good brewmaster from Dechutes Brewery out in Oregon. I've have a few of their brews and they are pretty good.
It makes absolutely no sense for AB to change the beers or water them down. In doing so they will lose the customers they currently have. Let's face it, the people that drink Goose Island will notice a difference if they begin to drop the quality and turn it into a Bud Light Wheat. And there is no way they will pick up the Bud Light drinkers of the world in doing so.
I think what is more likely is that we might see some of the less profitable beers dropped from production and they will start to push the more profitable beers like 312 and Honker's Ale. Hopefully they'll continue some of their more complex beers like Bourbon County Stout, Sofie, Matilda, Green Line and the IPA.
I'm in no way advocating this change. Having a great indie craft brewery sell out to one of the big beer corporations is never a good thing. I just don't think it will be nearly as bad as most think. At the very least we need to wait and see what happens. I guess if they do change things for the worse there is always Half Acre, Metro, Haymarket, and Revolution brewery for Chicago craft beer drinkers.
Still, I think we may have seen the last of the cask-conditioned ales. And will I still have MBA (Master of Beer Appreciation) privileges at the brewpubs? Will I want them?
More on Anheuser-Busch's sad acquisition of Goose Island Brewery. First, Brewmaster Greg Hall told the Tribune about the trouble he's seen:
In an interview with the Tribune last month, brewmaster Greg Hall said the company’s sales had “outpaced our forecast in 2010, so that we weren’t quite ready for all of the growth we got.” Goose Island also hired an investment banker to assist the family in securing funds for expansion.
Although the Craft Brewers Alliance’s 2006 investment in Goose Island has technically exempted the brewer from craft-beer status, the company’s popular brands have shared the problem of other craft beers: increasing capacity to meet surging demand.
Goose Island is best-known for its 312 Urban Wheat Ale, and respected in craft circles for other products like Matilda and Bourbon County Stout. Goose Island has been outsourcing some production and seeking additional investment to expand capacity.
And Chicago Public Radio had some local bar owners on to wring their hands:
[B]ar owners like Phil McFarland, who runs Small Bar in Chicago's Ukranian Village neighborhood, said he's conflicted about the merger.
"I don't guess that Anheuser has bought them to make Budweiser knock offs and part of the appeal of a brewery like Goose Island is that they have the recipes they do that have the, sort of, respect in the market that they have and from a business point of view, I would have to think they'd be sort of crazy to mess with that too much, but time will tell," McFarland said.
Meanwhile, Chris Staten, the Beer Editor of Draft Magazine, said the acquisition shows Anheuser's further commitment to the craft brew market.
In other words, this is a classic "bookend" story. Goose Island has already become a major beer producer, no longer really a craft brewery, so no one can really do more than shrug. And Inbev, which owns Anheuser-Busch, is too big and stupid to make their own beer up to Goose Island's quality, so they just figured they'd buy the place. Hey, big companies buying small companies happen every day; what could go wrong?
Four years after starting a distribution deal, Goose Island Brewery announced today that they've sold out completely to the megabrewery:
Goose Island Beer Co., the Chicago-based brewing powerhouse, announced this morning that it will be taken over by Anheuser-Busch.
Brewmaster Greg Hall will be stepping down.
Can't imagine why:
Anheuser-Busch reached an agreement to purchase the majority (58 percent) equity stake in FSB from its founders and investors, held in Goose Holdings Inc. (GHI), for $22.5 million. Craft Brewers Alliance Inc. (CBA), an independent, publicly traded brewer based in Portland, Ore., that operates Widmer Brothers, Redhook and Kona breweries, owns the remaining 42 percent of FSB and reached an agreement in principle to sell its stake in FSB to Anheuser-Busch for $16.3 million in cash. Anheuser Busch holds a minority stake (32.25 percent) in CBA.
Goose Island sold approximately 127,000 barrels of Honkers Ale, 312 Urban Wheat Ale. Matilda and other brands in 2010. To help meet immediate demand, an additional $1.3 million will be invested to increase Goose Island’s Chicago Fulton Street brewery’s production as early as this summer.
"Demand for our beers has grown beyond our capacity to serve our wholesale partners, retailers, and beer lovers," said Goose Island founder and president John Hall, who will continue as Goose Island chief executive officer. "This partnership between our extraordinary artisanal brewing team and one of the best brewers in the world in Anheuser-Busch will bring resources to brew more beer here in Chicago to reach more beer drinkers, while continuing our development of new beer styles. This agreement helps us achieve our goals with an ideal partner who helped fuel our growth, appreciates our products and supports their success."
This means the Goose Island brewpubs will become Applebee's but brew Bud Light on-site. And with increased production, Goose Island beers will have to lose complexity and quality to compensate for larger batch sizes. But hey, $16.3m is a fair pile of cash. And Tyranena isn't too far.
Still, I'll miss the great beers.
Chicago got the name "windy city" from...well, no one really knows, but in fact Amarillo and New York top the league chart for average windiness:
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Notice Chicago isn't even in the top 10. Which isn't to say we're not blowhards; we're just not that windy.
(Full-size image at The Chicago Tribune.)
Beautiful (though unseasonably cool) weather in Chicago today. I took these around the North Pond:
WGN and the Chicago Tribune reported last night that Chicago has experienced the most snow in any February since records began in 1883, breaking the old record set in 1896. As of Thursday Chicago had received 683 mm (the old record was 706 mm). The forecast predicted significant accumulation overnight, but O'Hare didn't get enough to break the record, falling 13 mm short.
All we Chicagoans want is validation. But, you know, it's like the Cubs on a record-setting losing streak and then winning one just before breaking the record: we get sad when they can't even do that right.
Aren't we a cheerful bunch?
The AP and Mayor Daley are calling it; the Chicago Tribune isn't ready to commit yet. But with 55% of the vote, it looks like Rahm Emanuel has avoided a runoff and so will be the next mayor of Chicago:
City Clerk Miguel del Valle had 9.4 percent and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun was at 8.7 percent.
Despite a tremendous amount of attention on the mayor's race and a slew of hotly-contested aldermanic races, election officials say turnout could be as low as 40 percent. That's far less than the 50 percent turnout officials were hoping for on Monday.
If no candidate scores a majority tonight, the top two finishers will square off for six more weeks of campaigning. A runoff election will be held to determine Chicago's next mayor.
Mayor Richard Daley, who is out of town today, isn't on the ballot for the first time since 1989. He'll leave office on May 16 when his successor is sworn in.
No word yet who'll be my next alderman. I assume it will be the one who outspent her opponents by an obscene margin. More later.
Update, 20:35 CT: Gery Chico has conceded; Emanuel has won.
I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 4½-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page almost two years ago, so it's time for a quick update. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.
The Daily Parker is about:
- Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006.
- Politics. I'm a moderate-leftie by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States.
- Software. I work for Avanade (a company that has no editorial control over this blog and which wants me to make it clear I'm not speaking for them), and I continue to own a micro-sized software company in Chicago. I have some experience writing software, which explains why Avanade continue to tolerate me. I see a lot of code, and since I often get called in to projects in crisis, I see a lot of bad code, some of which may appear here.
- The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than ten years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many weather posts also touch politics, given the political implications of addressing climate change, though happily we no longer have to do so under a president beholden to the oil industry.
- Chicago, the greatest city in North America, and the other ones I visit whenever I can.
I strive to write about these and other things with fluency and concision. "Fast, good, cheap: pick two" applies to writing as much as to any other creative process (cf: software). I hope to find an appropriate balance between the three, as streams of consciousness and literacy have always struggled against each other since the first blog twenty years ago.
If you like what you see here, you'll probably also like Andrew Sullivan, James Fallows, Josh Marshall, and Bruce Schneier. Even if you don't like my politics, you probably agree that everyone ought to read Strunk and White, and you probably have an opinion about the Oxford comma (de rigeur in my opinion).
Another, non-trivial point. Facebook reads the blog's RSS feed, so many people reading this may think I'm just posting notes on Facebook. They would like you to believe this, too. Now, I've reconnected with tons of old friends and classmates through Facebook, I play Scrabble on Facebook, and I eagerly read every advertisement that appears next to its relevant content. But Facebook's terms of use assert ownership of everything that appears on their site, regardless of prior assertions, and despite nearly three centuries of legal precedents. They want you to believe that, too.
Everything that shows up on my Facebook profile gets published on The Daily Paker first, and I own the copyrights to all of it. All the photos I post are completely protected: send me an email if you want to republish one. I publish the blog's text under a Creative Commons attribution-nonderivative-noncommercial license; republication is usually OK for non-commercial purposes, as long as you don't change what I write and you attribute it to me. With apologies to King James and Yaishua ben Miriam, render to Facebook the things that are Facebook's; and to the original authors what is not.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you continue to enjoy The Daily Parker.