Cheers to baseball once again becoming must see television in Chicago. It’s almost impossible to imagine enjoying a game at Wrigley or at Guaranteed Rate Field without an ice cold beer. Seriously south siders, Guaranteed Rate? What the fuck does that even mean? Anyway, baseball...
The 1920’s saw women bob their hair and raise their hemlines, of course, but in the post World War I era, women wanted more. While most famous bootleggers and gangsters were men, women were having a moment, too. The political and economic climate of the 1920’s...
Twas’ the Night Before Prohibition—Party Like it’s 1919, Chicago Style Prior to the 18th Amendment, Chicago became subject to the Wartime Prohibition Act on June 30, 1919. If you were in Chicago, you might have enjoyed a perverse, reverse-New Year’s Eve of sorts with the drinking...
While gangsters, flappers, and bootleggers were largely enjoying the 1920’s, the situation was very different for Prohibition agents charged with enforcing the Volstead Act. Badly outnumbered by gangsters and speakeasies, the Prohibition agents were often fighting against history and public opinion. Of the articles written...
In the twenty-first century, we like to imagine that we’ve created everything. Every idea is new, every exception to the rule is new, too. So when Illinois created a medical marijuana card and immediately began arguing about what conditions might qualify for the illegal pain-reliever,...
Picture Chicago in the summer of 1924. Liquor is banned, the city is growing at an increasingly rapid pace, and nowhere in the city is quite as exciting as a small strip of real estate inside the Cook County jail known as Murderesses Row. You want...
The greatest unanswerable question about Al Capone is whether Chicago made him, or if he made Chicago. Why is Capone revered almost one hundred years since his rise in Chicago? This country has revamped the way we talk about early American history, yet, the glamour...
How Chicago Owned the 1920’s Chicago may be called “Second City,” but it’s second to none when we’re talking about Prohibition lore. Gins and guns and glamour, and literally “all that jazz,” made Chicago the historical epicenter of the 1920’s. (I’ll explain, New York, but first,...
Have you ever seen a woman with short hair, wearing a dress cut above the knee, holding a cocktail in public? Literally, right now in Chicago no matter what time you’re reading this, yes, women are having a drink in public. Had the Temperance movement...
If you’re the government tasked with enforcing Prohibition but you can’t find a rational way to make people stop drinking illegal liquor, what do you do? Turn a blind eye to the problem? Take a payout from the Chicago gangster scene and at least profit...