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a post office returns, vaguely. wicker park is getting a post office again, on damen near the park, next to a lou malnati’s. the old one on ashland closed in early 2025 and is now a chick-fil-a. usps confirms it’s happening and confirms almost nothing else. block club’s headline literally says “details are scarce.”

the rta is dead, long live nita. on sunday the regional transportation authority became the northern illinois transit authority, or nita, the kind of name a committee reaches around hour four. it comes with a 0.25% sales tax bump across cook, dupage, kane, lake, mchenry and will counties starting august 1, projected to raise about $553 million next year for the cta, metra and pace. so your groceries now help fund the blue line.

bagel discourse, again. call your mother, a d.c. bagel chain, opened in wicker park, and the neighborhood resumed a fight it’s had for years about whether anything good is allowed to also be popular. indie vs. corporate, round nine thousand. the bagels are reportedly fine, which helps no one.

the bee bill. illinois now has an official state bee, the black-and-gold bumblebee, because barb bell and emily barlog, eighth-grade science teachers at lincoln junior high in naperville, made it a class project. their 280 eighth graders ran a statewide survey, narrowed it to three finalists, and sent students to testify in springfield. the bill passed unanimously and now awaits pritzker’s signature. the kids already have a better legislative record than most adults.

cream of wheaton. the festival runs june 4 to 7 at memorial park and downtown wheaton. carnival, beer garden, business expo, the works. the carnival moved to lot 9 at liberty and carlton, the most wheaton sentence ever written.

street sweeping season is on, all 50 wards, april through november. the city posts the temporary no-parking signs two days ahead, and the ticket is $60 starting at 7 a.m. parksafe chicago lets you look up your block.

set a reminder. it’s cheaper than the alternative.

eat: the henry (wilmette) opens wednesday at plaza del lago. all-day place: coffee in the morning, short rib potstickers later, a bar at night. it’s brand new, so go in week two unless you want to be part of the soft-launch experiment.

do: chicago blues festival runs june 5 to 7 at millennium park, free. taj mahal closes it out sunday, ruthie foster and billy branch saturday, and the annual reminder that the city is excellent at exactly one festival format.

avoid: halsted at the river. the chicago avenue bridge and the halsted viaduct are torn up through the summer, both directions closed near the river, the #8 and #66 rerouted. find another way north.

hey — if you’d like to put your business in front of the readers of this very email, reply with a little about what you do. small, weird, or local: we like all three.

the 57th street art fair is june 6 and 7 in hyde park, free, 79 years running. nearly 200 artists, food trucks, and a family activity area so the kids can make their own art instead of touching everyone else’s. blues and jazz courtesy of buddy guy’s legends.

pandan is having a moment here. the southeast asian plant, floral, faintly vanilla, aggressively green, is turning up in sundaes at crying tiger, sylvanas at crumbs nd creams, and margaritas at a place named, simply, pandan. call it “the new ube” to exactly one person, then stop.

why it’s worth your time: before charlie trotter and grant achatz, there was louis szathmary, a hungarian immigrant and trained psychologist who opened the bakery in lincoln park in 1963 and quietly invented chicago fine dining. chicago magazine’s oral history runs all the way to 1989, told by the people who were there.

the eighth graders got a bee through the legislature.
the rest of us got a 0.25% tax and a new acronym.
normal city.

tips, corrections, your best wicker park hot take?

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

talk thursday.

-sam