Building Chicago: A tour of the Windy City’s rich architectural heritage
Forget the blues. Forget da Bears, or da Bulls. For all its blue-collar bluster and bratwurst, Chicago emanates a world-class aesthetic that helped define modernism. The city echoes a condensed New York skyline and Boston’s eminent walkability, but its upstart sensibilities embracing modern art, daring architecture and stunning sculptures are…
OUT THERE October summons living souls to cemeteries
We mortals become thin-skinned and thick-souled around this time of year. As a certain pagan celebration approaches, the boundaries between the seen and the unseen become more tenuous, sliding the two worlds into a spiritual overlap. As the physical border between life and death, cemeteries re-emerge in our public consciousness….
BEWITCHING HOUR TV, movies cast witches in better light
THE WITCHING HOUR has arrived. If you doubt it, just turn on your television. For two years, “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” has been blending magic and teen angst Friday nights on ABC. On the darker side, there’s the new WB drama “Charmed” with three sisters they’re gorgeous, of course who…
BUILDING CHICAGO A tour of the Windy City’s rich architectural heritage
Forget the blues. Forget da Bears, or da Bulls. For all its blue-collar bluster and bratwurst, Chicago emanates a world-class aesthetic that helped define modernism. The city echoes a condensed New York skyline and Boston’s eminent walkability, but its upstart sensibilities embracing modern art, daring architecture and stunning sculptures are…
SPEND AN EVENING AT THE DRIVE-IN Three Bay Area enterprises have yet to yield their land to development
Dusk unrolls its blue-black backdrop earlier and earlier these days. Fussy weather patterns blow hot and cold, forcing Bay Area residents to make costume changes faster than Superman in a public telephone booth (or, these days, a three-minute souvenir/passport photo booth). This fleeting interim the respite between hot, languid summer…
OFF-RAMP ADVENTURES, PART DEUX Fearless commuter, inhaling exhaust, explores the options along the jammed traffic corridors of the southern East Bay
THERE’S GOING TO BE more than 7 million people in the Bay Area in the next century. Where are they all going to go?” I may not have heard the numbers correctly, but I got the message. When the radio announcer starts waxing philosophic during traffic reports, you know the…
DETOUR Getting beyond the off-ramp
I HAD TO GET MYSELF caught in traffic. The radio sounded the 6 a.m. alarm, knocking me out of my dream state. The KCBS-AM traffic bugle call every 10 minutes helped me grope for consciousness. I finally shuffled into the shower at 6:38 a.m. and heard a traffic dame say…
OFF THE COUCH Let your book be your wilderness guide: Here’s some suggested reading for tips to get you out there to enjoy nature
YIKES, where did August go? All those books to read. All those places to go. All those extra daylight moments to drain until autumn. Now, we’ll have to do everything at once. If you want an adventure by the books, we have a few suggestions. Read them and reap. Enough…
SPIRITED RETREATS Havens abound to nurture the soul
A FEW YEARS BACK, we rode a hover ferry and the Light Rail Transit to the New Territories of Hong Kong, in search of spiritual revitalization in the tropical heat. It took a great part of the morning before we finally exited in an emphatically urban neighborhood of concrete thoroughfares,…