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the city legalized video gambling six months ago, and now it would like a do-over. last week the state approved chicago's first six video gambling licenses, including three taverns in mount greenwood and a lakeview brunch place called eggsperience. the same day, mayor johnson asked the city council to reverse the ordinance that made any of it legal. a council committee held a hearing on it monday and didn't call a vote, which is the quiet way of saying he can't find 25 alderpeople to flip. roughly 285 more bars are waiting in line for licenses while everyone figures out whether the thing that's now legal is going to stay legal. read more

a man ran every block in chicago. joabe barbosa, a brazil-born clinical psychology grad student at roosevelt, spent a year running all roughly 4,000 miles of city streets, documenting it the whole way, wearing a chicago flag as a cape. he finished sunday, running down michigan avenue to buckingham fountain, joined by as many as 1,000 other runners. the project nearly fell apart in the middle when his immigration status forced him to face leaving the country before it got sorted out. he ran the whole city anyway. read more

chicago is finally getting a frozen greek yogurt shop, which is a sentence that apparently needed saying. nathalie del valle and maya matta are turning their pop-up mikono into a permanent spot, serving tangy frozen greek yogurt in a coconut bowl. they are very confident this fills a real gap in the city's dessert situation. nobody has produced evidence that it doesn't. read more

a husky named bandit was rescued from a marsh by drone. the 12-year-old dog went missing saturday and turned up several hundred feet deep in a lakemoor marsh monday morning, spotted at 5:45 a.m. by a volunteer from an outfit called pet rescue backwoods drone search and rescue, who had already searched five hours sunday before going back out alone at 3 a.m. firefighters then put a flat-bottom boat into the marsh, drone overhead, and brought him out. bandit is fine. read more

downtown naperville has 24 dog statues and one cat. the "dog days of summer" sculpture trail put 24 hand-painted fiberglass dogs on the sidewalks, plus a single lone cat named frida katlo, painted frida kahlo-style and hiding on jackson avenue. residents can vote for a favorite through august 29, one vote per ip address, because even a dog statue contest has to be defended from fraud. one of the dogs is a giant schnauzer named valentino, modeled on an actual real estate office’s actual dog. read more

the city's outdoor pools open friday. most of the 50 of them, anyway. hamlin, holstein and tuley are running late into july. the ones that open run seven days a week, eight hours a day, which the park district is counting as an expansion. open swim is free. if the week gets hot, this is the move you'll wish you'd remembered. find your pool

eat: urbanbelly, fulton market. bill kim's asian comfort spot lost its wicker park lease after a decade and reopened last month at 950 w. fulton, in the old la sirena clandestina space. there's a 40-seat patio now, plus the bao buns, the spicy katsu ramen and the korean fried chicken that made the old room worth the trip. fulton market gets everything eventually. read more

do: chicago pride fest, northalsted, saturday and sunday. 25th year, three stages, with g flip, mnek and durand bernarr on the bill. the proud pet parade is sunday at noon, which is the part where the dogs from naperville could carpool down if they wanted. read more

avoid: waiting around for the downtown nascar street race. there isn't one this year. the lakefront race is paused for 2026 and the earliest it comes back is 2027, so if you blocked out a july weekend for the noise, you can have it back. read more

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the shedd is free tonight. illinois residents get in free from 5 to 9 p.m. tuesday with an id, and again next tuesday the 23rd. it's the kind of thing that's free often enough that people forget it's free, then pay $40 a head on a saturday. tonight it isn't. read more

the james beard awards are in chicago this week. the ceremony, which is genuinely called the oscars of food, was at the lyric opera house monday night, and chicago has hosted it every year since 2015. so the biggest night in american restaurants is, functionally, a chicago event that the rest of the country flies in for. there are 21 spin-off dinners around town this week if you want to eat your way through it. read more

why it's worth your time: mark thomas is in his 70s and looking for someone to take over the alley, the half-century-old avondale store that has spent decades outfitting chicago's punks, goths and bikers, plus the occasional rob zombie. it's a business story, a counterculture history, and a quiet question about what happens to a beloved weird institution when the person who built it wants to retire. the 50th-anniversary block party was june 14. read more

the city legalized gambling, then flinched.
a man ran every street in town.
naperville has a cat now.

tips, corrections, your favorite naperville dog statue? reply and let us know.

reply with your neighborhood and one thing that made you pause, squint, or text someone “???”

talk thursday.

-sam