Lisa E Freedman, My Journal Through Life, is the Home Base & Blog for LF Media Ink, a Boutique PR/Marketing Company specialized in the Arts, Entertainment & Travel Industries. Enjoy!
Lisa E Freedman, My Journal Through Life, is the Home Base & Blog for LF Media Ink, a Boutique PR/Marketing Company specialized in the Arts, Entertainment & Travel Industries. Enjoy!
Ivy on the walls, a hand-turned scoreboard, and one of the last truly old-fashioned nights in American sports Throughout the planning stages for our Chicago trip, Paul's biggest request for the visit was to see a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. We were fortunate enough to book tickets for a game there on our last night in Chicago. An avid baseball fan, Paul spoke endlessly about the significance of Wrigley Field, and why it mattered, along with a...
Cheezborger! Cheezborger! No fries, cheeps! — the Chicago dive that became an SNL legend Some Chicago stops are about white tablecloths and tasting menus. Others begin with a line you’ve been quoting for decades. For my partner, Paul, Billy Goat Tavern was the latter. Long before we ever planned this Chicago trip, he knew the place through Saturday Night Live — the relentless rhythm of “Cheezborger! Cheezborger! No fries, cheeps! No...
Where the Art Institute leaves off, and the genuinely new begins If the Art Institute is where we went to stand in front of paintings I'd already studied for years, the MCA was where we went to be surprised. Set on the Near North Side near Water Tower Place, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago picks up almost precisely where the Art Institute's historical collection ends, devoting itself entirely to art made since 1945. With a background...
Nearly 10,000 square feet of wizarding world magic, tucked into the Magnificent Mile And then there was the Harry Potter store. Not every stop on an Insider’s Guide has to be important. Some just have to be fun. After museums, galleries, architectural landmarks and more than a few serious meals, we found ourselves ducking into the Harry Potter Shop on Michigan Avenue. Neither of us needed another souvenir, and we certainly hadn’t traveled...
A Chicago deep-dish institution, and a wonderfully uncomplicated stop after a week of serious dining After a week of tasting menus, Michelin-starred dining rooms, carefully planned lunches, and more than a few white tablecloths, our Chicago food tour brought us somewhere wonderfully uncomplicated: to a pan of deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati’s. There was something deeply satisfying about it. We had spent the week discovering Chicago through its...
Where Chicago turned public space into an outdoor museum, featuring The Bean, Crown Fountain (also known as the spitting towers) and a 24.5 acre celebration of public art. The best public art doesn’t just give you something to look at. It gives a city somewhere to be. Following our visits to Macy's and The Chicago Cultural Center, we took a short walk to Millennium Park to experience a different kind of art site. The Park sits directly across...
A former public library, two monumental stained-glass domes, and the best free afternoon in the city Having just spent an afternoon admiring the Tiffany dome tucked above the cosmetics counters at Macy's on State Street, we were perfectly content believing we had already seen Chicago's greatest Tiffany masterpiece. We hadn't. The Chicago Cultural Center, a few blocks away on Michigan Avenue, proved us wonderfully wrong. It holds...
A Gilded Age masterpiece hiding in plain sight above the cosmetics counter, in a building that will always be Marshall Field's at heart Given my background cataloguing decorative arts for the auction world, I have a soft spot for masterworks hiding where shoppers least expect them. There may be no better example in the country than the Tiffany dome inside Macy's on State Street, Chicago — a building that, no matter what the signage says, will...
A childhood memory from 1965, and the strange comfort of finding it exactly as I'd left it My mom (left) & me (right) listening to the story of Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle on the handsets at the Exhibit, Summer 1965 photo credit: My Dad, Edwin J. Freedman Some exhibits you visit out of curiosity. This one I visited out of memory. I have a distinct recollection of standing in front of Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle on a family trip to Chicago...
Housed inside the last surviving building of the 1893 World's Fair, on the shores of Lake Michigan Most museums ask you to imagine the past. This one puts you inside it. The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, set in Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side, occupies the last remaining building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition — and that alone made it worth the trip out from downtown, before a single exhibit was even in view. A...
