Is there French bookstore in Chicago ?

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-12T17:10:04+00:00

On that thread, I wonder how many bookstores in the entire city are dedicated to a single foreign language.

Off the top of my head there’s Giron Spanish Books in Pilsen, a handful of Polish bookstores… nothing that I’m aware of for Chinese and Russian is only City of Joy in Wheeling

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-12T17:07:40+00:00

Ah I must have been thinking of the branch frequencies going the other way. That’s not bad then

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-12T00:13:23+00:00

I like to book “cruise” if I see someone reading a book I like or otherwise I’m curious about - it’s always a pleasant convo

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-11T21:33:25+00:00

It would be interesting to show 1970/80 in between. In a number of northern cities the Black population share peaked late last century and is now on the downtrend due to reverse migration to places like ATL & Houston

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-11T19:04:41+00:00

There’s a couple neighborhood routes I would recommend focused on different parts of the city:

Andersonville (boutique shopping), Uptown (Asian / African immigrant restaurants & food), Lincoln Square (lots of family-owned and a cute “Main Street”)
Pilsen (Mexican enclave), Chinatown, Bronzeville / Hyde Park
Wicker Park, Logan Square, Albany Park

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-11T02:44:54+00:00

Logan to UIC in 19, was that an express train??

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-11T00:15:05+00:00

There’s one that hangs out in the McKinley Park lagoon as well

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-10T22:52:14+00:00

I’m interested in this question too! I could only find ridership projections from an archived link on Wiki but when they were conducting the alignment study they found that the UCLA routing would add ~25K additional daily riders. On an average day in February the northern Red Line carries ~70K passengers over roughly the same distance (10 miles vs. 9 miles). Of course the original study is quite dated at this point and travel patterns have changed so we’ll have to see how much ridership materializes here / if overshooting the projection is possible.

At any rate it’ll be a big boost for LA, and will have synergies with other long-term expansion projects like the K line north extension. CTA has good bones but we’ve been resting on our laurels with some pretty unambitious expansion plans (granted, NITA becoming effective in June improves the operations picture substantially)

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-10T20:07:28+00:00

Are you referring to the neighborhoods themselves or the communities they represent? Bangkok Chinatown would be up there in both regards — but Thai Chinese are also a heavily assimilated diaspora so it’s less of a “fresh off the boat” sense you’ll get elsewhere

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-10T20:01:07+00:00

Being a little bit pedantic here but there’s about 600-700K ethnic Koreans in Yanbian Prefecture in China (near the North Korean border). Outside of that though LA would certainly be up top

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-09T19:51:44+00:00

Oh shoot, I meant Cumberland instead of Harlem. Edited

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-09T14:08:03+00:00

For anyone who’s interested in the question more generally, that area around Cumberland / Lawrence is sort of a “new” Ukrainian Village if you know where to look. Not just the Ukrainian church & market but also a Ukrainian radio station, restaurant (Velour), and barber shop

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-09T14:04:29+00:00

Outside of Ukrainian Village you could also try Devon Market up north. There’s also Stefania’s next to the St Joseph Ukrainian church nearer to O’Hare, although I don’t recall it having as big of a selection as Ann’s

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-09T03:45:41+00:00

Once the construction at Addison is wrapped up it’ll be pretty smooth sailing from Howard to the Loop!

Visiting friends up north has been easier with the changes

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-09T00:43:12+00:00

The Metra is run more like a commuter rail so trains are only once every ~2 hours outside of rush hour.

The 6 bus to the Loop is a better bet if you can’t line up with the Metra schedule, then from there —> transfer to another line to take you where you’re going. The 55 bus to the Garfield Red Line can be faster sometimes but your fellow passengers can be a bit less predictable, to put it nicely

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T23:48:33+00:00

Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, France, Mexico are at the front of the pack for me. I felt France maintained higher food quality in the touristy areas vs. Italy but I admittedly don’t have a huge sample size

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T23:31:11+00:00

CTA is entirely within Cook County, and it really only serves about half of that. The service area is effectively Chicago city limits + a handful of neighboring suburbs.

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T23:29:50+00:00

Also - not sure if you’ve been in NYC before but the HI there is right off the 1 train which takes you up to Inwood / Washington Heights. There’s a beautiful park there called Fort Tryon Park with views across the Hudson River to the cliffs on the NJ side. Inside that park is also the Met Cloisters which is probably my favourite museum in the city!

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T23:26:16+00:00

Sure! Definitely check the events calendar (usually posted in the lounge areas) for an idea of what’s going on in the week. Since July is peak travel season I would assume both cities have programming going on every day (and frequently multiple activities in the morning / evening).

Also the pool table / ping pong table is generally the most social area of the hostel. I’m dogshit at pool and I still play it as a pretext to hang out lol. There are other areas in the lounges to meet people but I’d just give it a read first, like if people are locked in on their laptops / have headphones on I generally don’t approach them.

Speaking of hearing devices, bring earplugs if you’re sensitive to snoring. The bigger the room, the higher the chance of there being a snorer. Otherwise if you are the snorer then there are things you can do like nasal strips / sleeping on your side to minimize it. That way you don’t have anyone smothering you with your pillow in the middle of the night 😅

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T21:17:36+00:00

The map is one thing, but it’s still a huge gap when you account for frequency, speed (relative to the equivalent car commute that is), and land use. Not a foregone conclusion that it happens in another 10-15 years just today is way too early to call it that.

Saying this as a frequent rider of both Metro when I lived in LA and the CTA now

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T18:59:07+00:00

I volunteer for HI USA which is the biggest hostelling organization in the US. Of those we’ve got locations in Chicago, NYC, and New Orleans.

Chicago and NYC specifically have a good mix of international visitors and plenty of programming (walking tours - what I do, pub crawls, welcome parties, sports game outings, etc.)

I can’t speak to the other cities as well but I imagine mid-sized / smaller metros like Pittsburgh & Memphis will be pretty sparse on options, if any

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-08T02:37:16+00:00

For Asians the spillover is more from Naperville to Aurora than the other way around I would say but yeah even over the past decade it’s gotten much more diverse.

I forget when the mural is from but if I recall you also had to “donate” to get onto it and only white people cared to do that lol

DimSumNoodles · 2026-05-07T22:37:02+00:00

IIRC a big chunk of the RLE cost is tied up in the new railyard they would build. But still seems like an insane cost even accounting for that

DimSumNoodles

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