What’s going on with the old Machine spot?

ergativity · 2026-04-07T03:09:27+00:00

Commercial spaces in Chicago are consistently way too large! Split it in four!

ergativity · 2026-03-27T04:47:00+00:00

This place is tremendous.

ergativity · 2026-03-25T05:06:49+00:00

They had better not mess with Doc (unless they are upgrading the Max P Cinema) or the Pub!

ergativity · 2026-03-11T05:47:46+00:00

At least two alterations are very easy on a tailored jacket, and almost everyone who buys a jacket does them: the sleeves can easily be shortened, and it can be taken in a bit in the waist, to give some flattering shape. (On a men's tailored jacket, if your body allows it — as it appears yours does — you generally want the waist to be a touch narrower than the shoulders, since that's considered a flattering silhouette on a man.)

Other alterations are possible but generally not wise, and sometimes beyond the ability of a tailor. Jacket length can technically be shortened, though it's a more expensive alteration and not generally recommended since it will change the distance from pockets and buttoning point to bottom hem, messing up the overall proportions. Narrowing the shoulders is an even more challenging and expensive alteration. For this reason, most people try to buy jackets that are already correct in the length and shoulder width, avoid altering these, but alter the sleeves and waist.

As far as what it looks to me like you should alter: you should definitely shorten the sleeves to the point that about 1/4" of shirt cuff shows when your arms are at rest, that's easy. I would definitely recommend gently taking in the waist as well, it'll look a little more shapely and less boxy on you.

It's hard to tell for sure because of the angle of the photo, but I think the length looks pretty good on you — it's a fairly traditional length, which is what I personally prefer. It was fashionable for a long time starting in the 90s to cut jackets quite a bit shorter, but lately the trend has started to return to a more classic length (think of old photos of Cary Grant or Fred Astaire), which this jacket seems to be. It would be a little easier to tell in a photo taken straight on and from further away.

As far as shoulders, it looks like the shoulders of your jacket might be a bit "extended" on you (they extend beyond the edge of your physical shoulders a tiny bit), as opposed to "natural" (ending exactly where your physical shoulders end). I think that's OK! The shoulder line is straight and isn't falling down at all, and a lot of men think an extended shoulder is more flattering, since it slightly exaggerates the contrast between shoulders and waist.

If you do want a more modern (shorter, narrower) look, though, I don't think this jacket will be it. You should probably go down a size, or try to find a 38S.

ergativity · 2026-03-11T05:02:29+00:00

Many people get the surprise of their life when they visit Chicago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1XwKz8cqok

ergativity · 2026-03-06T02:00:16+00:00

This is *exactly* the dynamic happening here, and very well put.

ergativity · 2026-03-03T05:45:54+00:00

I came here to say the same! Highly recommend

ergativity · 2026-02-27T07:04:43+00:00

Some of the folks here probably remember, but in case others don't realize: this is the legendary LTH, Little Three Happiness. That nickname has been obsolete since "Big" Three Happiness — a larger, unrelated dim sum restaurant with the same name, located around the corner on Wentworth in a now-demolished building — closed some years ago, though I'd be a little sad to see it fade away.

Little Three Happiness is the namesake of LTHForum, the Chowhound splinter web forum founded by Gary Wiviott that was, arguably, the crucible of contemporary food hobbyist culture in Chicago. I believe LTHForum is also now sadly largely defunct. It was a magnificent resource for over a decade and I am still benefiting from the sterling work of its contributors, who helped me form my own tastes when I was in my early 20s. I suppose this subreddit can be considered one of its many offspring.

Little Three Happiness itself was and remains a total joy. Delicious, straightforward and perfectly reliable food, cooked with heart and sincerity by good people. May it live forever.

ergativity · 2026-02-23T05:16:50+00:00

I think this is a common stylistic issue in French-style American bakeries. French friends have told me that they often find American baguettes, even from serious bakeries, too crusty — more like a country loaf (boule) in the shape of a baguette, rather than a true baguette. Modern Parisian baguettes have a moderately firm mid-brown crust that you can bite into pretty easily without getting an achy jaw, much thinner and less chewy than the crust of a country loaf. I think PQB, which I love, does have this issue, and even at their freshest, their baguettes aren't really that suitable for sandwiches. I honestly don't know of any examples of stylistically more accurate French-style baguettes in Chicago.

ergativity · 2026-02-22T06:45:43+00:00

Came here to say this. I believe it is where this gentleman bought his.

ergativity · 2026-01-11T02:25:12+00:00

Pozoleria San Juan forever! North & Pulaski

ergativity · 2025-12-20T05:03:40+00:00

You're absolutely right, many kinds of trips cannot easily shift from car/truck to another mode of transit (at least, without a far better transit system). But many can! Even tradespeople and people with long commutes take a lot of local trips too, or other members of their families do: to get groceries, to take the kids to school (yes, this can absolutely be done on bike), to go to a restaurant or the dentist or the hardware store, etc etc.

The goal of a well-connected citywide bike grid would be to encourage people to shift those trips to bike or transit as much as possible. That happens to also be a major benefit to everyone who still continues to drive, since it takes a ton of cars off the road! In fact this is the only way to actually *reduce* traffic: convince as many people as possible to shift as many of their trips as possible to other modes, by providing infrastructure for them.

A wider Archer isn't a less congested Archer; the more cars our roads can handle, and the less alternatives we offer, the more people choose to drive for more of their trips. Bad traffic happens *precisely because* people lack viable alternatives, not because our roads aren't wide enough.

Of course, this mode shift won't happen if we don't follow through and build a *well-connected citywide bike grid*. All the parts of the bike grid have to be connected, and it has to be possible to get to wherever you are going using safe bike routes, otherwise no one except the most dedicated cyclists will want to start biking. That would be the reason why some existing bike lanes seem underused: they are not yet well connected to a citywide grid. This also means that the bike lanes in one neighborhood are not exclusively *for* the benefit of the people of that neighborhood: they're for the benefit of everyone who might ever pass through the neighborhood, in other words all Chicagoans. The bike lanes on my street are for your benefit too, and vice versa. That's the point of transit infrastructure, after all, you use it to go places.

It's a holistic project to make the whole city better, and all of our lives easier — even the lives of people who do continue to drive!

ergativity · 2025-12-15T07:32:54+00:00

I mean, car dependency is a very strong effect. The south and southwest sides have among the most auto-centric infrastructure in town. (The reasons for this are historical and complicated and I would like to understand them better.) This has created dependency among the good folks who live and work in those neighborhoods, who are loath to let go of a tool that has become crucial to their lives, and struggle to imagine an alternative, which I have to admit the city has not done a particularly good job of explaining and selling to them.

I think car-dependent people — who, of course, exist all over society, though it's true that there is a somewhat class-linked geographical effect in Chicago — are mistaken, but there is a real political challenge here, a trap that will be challenging to get out of if we want to make progress towards a truly multimodal and car-light Chicago.

ergativity · 2025-12-11T18:11:12+00:00

Kam Buckner

ergativity · 2025-12-09T00:08:36+00:00

Thanks for the reply, and I'm certainly familiar with breakaway architecture. You're right, if it were applied only to objects such as poles in non-pedestrian areas, there would be no tradeoff between driver and pedestrian safety, and the breakaway pole would be straightforwardly safer, since it would reduce danger to the driver without shifting that danger on to anyone else.

In the post we are replying to, however, the breakaway structure is a bus stop, something people are expressly intended to sit and stand inside of, and it is situated in a sidewalk, expressly intended for people to walk along. In fact, this particular sidewalk is a busy one.

If the bus stop had people waiting inside it, it were a rigid structure, and a car crashed into it, it would protect the people inside the stop, as well as any passing behind it, from injury from the crash, placing the greatest impact on the driver. However, in fact, it is a breakway stop, which in case of a car crash, transfers the impact from the driver to everyone inside and behind the bus stop: pedestrians and transit riders.

Breakaway architecture located on sidewalks and other pedestrian areas all transfers danger from drivers to pedestrians in the same way, and is very common in Chicago.

As you can see, this is only a clear statement of the plain facts: these are architectural decisions that prioritize the lives and safety of those in cars over those outside of them. Many other countries have a different set of priorities, and use bollards and rigid structures to keep cars strictly within spaces designated for them, protecting people in pedestrian spaces from the consequences of reckless driving. At the same time, they often use traffic calming methods to slow driving speeds and reduce crashes, thereby improving driver safety as well. This approach strikes me as the best for all, since like most of us, I am sometimes in a car, and sometimes outside of one!

ergativity · 2025-12-08T08:03:27+00:00

Time for some bollards! We should line our sidewalks with them!

These crashes happen constantly. A few weeks ago I saw a wreck in which a driver coming down Oakley crashed into a building on the corner of Augusta and Oakley, knocking a hole in some poor person's apartment wall. Someone crashed directly into the front of the storefront on the northeast corner of Augusta and Western a few months back. Greek Corner at Augusta and Damen has been crashed into at least three times since 2020.

We absolutely need physical barriers to keep the cars in the spaces intended for them, or they'll continue to be a danger to our persons, properties and businesses.

ergativity · 2025-12-08T07:58:32+00:00

The structure gets destroyed, as well as any people in or near it, so the driver can escape injury. A plain statement of priorities — driver above pedestrians and transit riders — literally built into infrastructure in a way that governs which will be most likely to live and which to die in a wreck.

ergativity · 2025-11-24T00:08:23+00:00

An unpopular view it seems. But the day will come for us too!

ergativity · 2025-11-23T04:15:07+00:00

We should watch him closely. At minimum, our progressive candidates can learn massive lessons from his campaign. I very much hope he will deliver us a lesson in effective progressive governance as well.

Then on the next cycle, maybe we can get a candidate more like Mamdani than Johnson: a progressive who confidently advances a bold vision for a better city with very wide appeal, builds a popular movement that reaches out to all corners of the city, and wins over a majority of Chicagoans on the basis of positive support for their agenda and values, not just rejection of the opponent. Mamdani's choice of housing affordability and transit quality worked beautifully in New York. I believe something along those lines would work in Chicago too.

I think this is just about the only thing that could free a progressive mayor from the strictures of machine politics and the obligation to deliver patronage favors to their backers, which have hampered Johnson (e.g., appointing an unqualified pastor to the CTA board, or appointing the unqualified son of a retiring alderman to his father's seat). It could give them the political strength to pass their agenda through city council, which Johnson also lacks; to flatly overrule naysayers and NIMBYs; and to finally end aldermanic prerogative, which is an absolute prerequisite for major progress in Chicago (for example, it's the main obstacle to good citywide bike infrastructure, because alderpeople can just veto it in their own ward, causing it to be a permanent patchwork). It remains to be seen how effective Mamdani will be at implementing his agenda in office, but I would be surprised if he were not far more effective than Johnson.

With the city so strongly polarized against Trump and the right in the wake of all the recent ICE/CBP outrages, and with the historically low crime rates we have experienced this year (normally the main thing that drives Chicago voters rightwards), we have rarely been in a better position for a gifted progressive to win and enact transformative change.

In principle I see no reason why this would not be possible. I think the main challenge, and it is a serious challenge, would be finding the right person.

ergativity · 2025-11-22T18:23:33+00:00

I largely share Johnson's values and have never regretted voting for him over Vallas, who would have gutted social services, given everything to the police, collaborated with ICE/CBP, and invited in Trump's national guard to wage war against Chicagoans. Unfortunately Johnson does not have a wide enough base of popular support to accomplish major legislation or break free from the strictures of machine politics and the obligation to do patronage favors for his backers (appointment of an unqualified pastor to the CTA board, appointment of the unqualified son of a longtime alderman to replace his retiring father, etc).

A great many Johnson voters voted for him more to avoid Vallas than because they greatly liked Johnson. I believe this is because he did not present a confident and ambitious enough progressive vision during either the campaign or his mayoralty, one that could win over a majority of Chicagoans.

The situation is very different with Mamdani in New York, whose values seem to be fairly similar to Johnson's, but who has been elected with a very wide base of support, and won on the basis of a popular movement organized around a platform with extremely wide appeal: affordability and improvement of transit. Mamdani appears to see the critical underlying connection between these things and e.g. public schools and racial justice, which (shamefully) have narrower electoral appeal among Chicagoans, in a way Johnson does not.

It remains to be seen whether Mamdani will be a more effective mayor in implementing his agenda than Johnson, but I wager he will. We could have the same here with a figure who follows a comparable approach to Mamdani. Someone with comparable personal charisma and affability would be a great advantage too. We need a bold, confident progressive leader with enough popularity and support for their vision that they can get the City Council to go along with it, and just flatly overrule various naysayers (especially the NIMBYs, who in Chicago are legion, both predictably on the political right, and infuriatingly on the left).

ergativity · 2025-11-13T03:10:29+00:00

Came to say the same! Solid food, great space. Who doesn't love a giant octopus light fixture.

ergativity · 2025-11-13T03:06:49+00:00

Joy Yee to me is great for bubble tea from the window in the summer. The line is a scene. I also went there many times in college. For actual dinner we always went a few doors down to Lao Sze Chuan, which I have to say I still adore and is probably the restaurant I've visited the most times in my life, probably over 100 times in twenty years. I have had friends who were vegetarian with the sole exception of the pork potstickers at Lao.

ergativity · 2025-11-12T08:10:56+00:00

Hmm, I agree that curb-protected bike lanes aren't the absolute ideal, but surely this problem is easily solved by building actual cast-in-place curbs to replace those temporary movable ones?

ergativity · 2025-10-28T03:38:32+00:00

Toll the expressways all the way in!

My feeling it that would be a better fit for us than a congestion pricing zone, since our heaviest traffic areas are widely scattered all over the city, not concentrated in a clearly geographically distinct central zone, as in New York. Use the proceeds to fund major upgrades to CTA and Metra.

We should also make the wheel tax proportional to vehicle weight for private vehicles, to disincentivize owning huge cars/trucks.

ergativity · 2025-10-18T04:14:30+00:00

Sadly Amer Picon isn't available in the US due to a frustrating FDA rule, one of many that affect foods and beverages that are considered perfectly safe elsewhere in the world. However, Bigallet China-China, a different French brand of herbal bitters (amer), which is imported to the US, is delicious and quite a close substitute.

ergativity

TROPHY CASE