Chicago Curiosities - More Pictures You Won't See in the Book!

Remember when you had to be good at math...

The minute I walked into Lincoln Square Bowling Alley I was catapulted back into the late 1960s. I was in high school. My two best friends and I wanted to study Russian, and the only way to do that was to have a special class with the teacher during his free period.

Unfortunately, we were scheduled to have P.E. -- which happened to be bowling -- during that period. The school graciously allowed us to attend the boys' bowling class. We formed one team to compete against the 2-person male teams. I think we were allowed to use our two highest scores or something like that.

The first game, I bowled a three. Yes. I knocked down three pins the entire game. My friend Nancy was using such a light-weight ball and throwing so daintily, she constantly needed to walk down the middle of the ball-return alley to retrieve her ball. We were amazing.

Honest Abe keeps watch over bowlers from on high.

Lincoln Square Bowling Alley reminded me of this because it still uses those old-time score sheets where you tally up everyone's score manually. Remember those? The place also has a decidedly retro look, thanks to the decor and lighting. And above the bank of neatly arranged pins there's a huge mural featuring Abraham Lincoln, gazing sternly upon the alleys as if warning bowlers not to try anything funny.

My entry about Lincoln Square Bowling Alley -- titled "A Trip Down Memory Lane(s) -- is on page 78-79 of Chicago Curiosities.

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Chicago Curiosities is now LIVE and available through the usual book-buying channels. The book is intended to be a fun read and also to act as a somewhat quirky guidebook to the wide range of peculiarities one can find in Chicago. In order to write the book and provide photos for it, I traveled all around Chicago on several different occasions (with my husband as driver and navigator). I took many, many pictures for each subject. I'm sharing a few of those in this blog.

Publisher: Globe Pequot; First edition (January 11, 2011). ISBN-10: 0762759844. ISBN-13: 978-0762759842

Chicago Curiosities - Pictures You Won't See in the Book!

Chicago Curiosities is now LIVE and available through the usual book-buying channels. The book is intended to be a fun read and also to act as a somewhat quirky guidebook to the wide range of peculiarities one can find in Chicago.

Vicki Matranga, curator of the Culinary Curiosity exhibit,
shows me how to boil water.

In order to write the book and provide photos for it, I traveled all around Chicago on several different occasions (with my husband as driver and navigator). I took many, many pictures for each subject.

On page 49 there's an entry titled "Now We're Cookin'." It's about the Culinary Curiosity Exhibition at Kendall College. This exhibit features food-related tools from 19th and early 20th century America, 18th century Europe, and a few other cultures. You can read more about the exhibit at the link above. 

In the book, the entry is accompanied by my photo of a stove from the 1800s. Here on the blog, I'm sharing a few "out-takes" (photos that were not used). If you get a chance to visit this exhibit, I highly recommend that you do so. It's fascinating!

Tea for Two. . . or 12. . . or 20!

Before crock pots there were "fireless cookers"
that resembled wooden blanket chests. 

Who Dat? Where Dat?

It's Halloween! 

Here's an appropriate photo from my book Chicago Curiosities (Globe Pequot Press / January 2011). The first person to correctly identify what this is and exactly where it is will go on my list for a free copy of the book.

Babe Ruth Calls His Shot

One of the first tasks I had to accomplish before receiving the contract to write It Happened in Chicago was to compile a list of events that I would include in the book, with a line or two about each explaining the importance or relevance.

My initial list had 100 events on it. The publisher wanted around 30 for the book. Among the many events I was not able to include was one that occurred on October 1, 1932. Here's a link to an excellent write-up on it from Chicagonow.com: Babe Ruth Calls His Shot.

Chicago Curiosities -- Page Proofs in Hand!

I am just now going through the page proofs for Chicago Curiosities (Globe Pequot Press / 2011). This is when a book starts to feel REAL. I'm seeing the pictures with the entries, and the page layouts just as they will appear in the final product.

It's "speak now or forever hold your peace" time for me, as the author. My last chance to catch errors or fix things that absolutely MUST be fixed. I have to refrain from recasting sentences and editing the manuscript unless it is absolutely necessary for some reason.

With this book, I'm feeling good about the writing for the most part, so that's a plus. I did come across two instances where the photo caption did not match the photo. The photo matched the entry topic, but I had given 2-3 options for pictures to the editor, and somewhere along the way, we crossed wires so that I sent the wrong pictures for the captions I provided in these two cases. (I suppose it's good that it's only two cases!)

Anyway, I do love this book and I hope other people will pick it up and enjoy it. It's sort of a guide book -- but not a typical guide book. Even the obvious, standard tourist sites are given a bit of a twist due to "curious" circumstances or conditions that surround them.