Fans of the television show Mad Men, set in the mid-1960s, are often shocked by the near-constant presence of smoldering cigarettes in nearly everyone's hands. Indeed, if if you told any of the show's characters that in just a few decad…
It’s no secret that Chicagoans love their dogs. In 2011, DogFriendly.com ranked Chicago the second most dog-friendly city in the United States (Portland, Oregon, ranked number 1). The criteria was based on the number of lodgings, attrac…
As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and for homebuyers, that first impression is almost always the view from the street. No matter how deluxe the accommodations inside, if the property’s ext…
According to the most recent U.S. Census, an estimated 285,000—or roughly 10 percent—of Chicagoland's population is over the age of 65. Older Chicagoans live in all parts of the city, both integrated into their longtime neighborhoods and…
The economy cratered—to use a term in popular parlance at that time—in September 2008, with the collapse of too-big-to-fail Lehman Brothers. While the measures undertaken by the federal government and the Federal Reserve averted complet…
As the economy sputters along and unemployment rates remain steady at more than nine percent, there isn’t call for celebration. Whereas the real estate market was also lumped in with these aforementioned Great Recession causalities, in …
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 136 million tons of construction and demolition waste was generated in 1996, which was the last time these figures were made available, and those numbers have most likely ri…
Holidays are usually synonymous with good cheer, smiles, and a festive atmosphere—but occasionally, they can be the cause of friction and ill will as well. When people of various faiths and traditions all live in the same high-rise buil…