3 October 2026
McCuddy’s, then Comiskey, if at all
The Sox are in the playoffs. And winning? That’s not nothin’.
Archive
October 2026
3 October 2026
The Chicago Scramble
Five scrambled words and one usher at Wrigley.
3 October 2026
The Chicago Cipher
The Great Fire, a young man from Maywood, and nine words in code.
2 October 2026
Correction. We quoted three more words of Dan Webb’s letter than we can prove
The meter story said “financial catastrophe for the city.” The public record holds two of those words. The story now names him and prints what we can show.
2 October 2026
The Bears Sent in Mr. Wolf
Roger Goodell sat down with the governor on Thursday. Hammond wasn’t in the room, Pat Ryan was. And his own stadium opens tonight.
1 October 2026
The Rules
Four hundred years of deals on this ground, sorted. Seven positions, fourteen rules, and one chart of who held what.
1 October 2026
A Dutch trading post sold guns for beaver, and 77 years later a deed with Chicago on it was signed in the same town
The Record adds Fort Orange, 1621 to 1701. Twenty beavers a gun, a landlord who never came, and the first paper ever signed for this ground.
September 2026
30 September 2026
The Record now runs 1300 to 1900, in four chapters
The carry, the ditch and the deed, the franchise and the fire, the White City and the company town. Six hundred years of who got paid and who paid, from the paper trail.
30 September 2026
Jerry Reinsdorf knows exactly how to win. The question has always been when he wants to.
A tax lawyer bought the White Sox for about $20 million in 1981. Forty-five years later the worst team in modern baseball is in the playoffs, the owner-in-waiting wants 80 acres of riverfront, and the public still owns the old ballpark. Part One is the man. Part Two is the land.
30 September 2026
Why would anybody pay $130 to wear another man’s name on his back?
You would never wear a stranger’s name on a sweater. On Sunday half the city does it on purpose, pays full price, and the stranger gets a check.
30 September 2026
Aldermen spent their meter votes on a sealed promise to sell a deportation airline
Aldermen traded their votes for a promise to sell a deportation airline. The vote is spent. The airline is not sold. The promise is sealed. And the buyer has no name.
30 September 2026
Chicago sold its parking meters again, 46 to 3, and drivers pay until 2084
The council sold the curb a second time. The city got a check, a slice of whatever is left after the debt, and a promise to be asked next time. Abu Dhabi got out.
16 September 2026
A 99-year lease on 440 acres of Chicago lakefront, and nobody has read it
Blue Owl kept the ground. Related Midwest and CRG are building on land they will never own. The lease runs to 2124 and the terms are not public.
16 September 2026
Why the truck, the train and the gallon showed up in your grocery receipt
Everybody is watching the stock. Nobody is watching the tank.
16 September 2026
The Bears stadium deal
Who wants the new stadium, who pays for it, and what sits under the ground they are testing.
15 September 2026
How the money moves, PILOT, Lake County, and the system that does not need a suitcase
The Chicago Bears Stadium Saga, Part Two. How public cash is designed to travel in this region. Past, present, and if this deal closes, next.
15 September 2026
A dome on slag, a tax bill on schools, and a team still called Chicago
The Chicago Bears Stadium Saga, Part One. Who wants the new stadium, who pays for it, and what is buried under the Hammond dirt.
15 September 2026
A Burnham tower Brookfield bought for $306 million just sold for $41 million
Twenty-nine dollars a foot for a full Loop block. Nothing about the building failed.
14 September 2026
Chicago cut its arts budget 15 percent, the only big American city that cut at all
The farm system is dying. The money is uneven. That is the whole column. Everything else is the receipt.
13 September 2026
A quantum campus on the South Side will be taxed at the same rate as a bungalow for thirty years
Over a billion in public money, a thirty-year tax rate, and nothing signed with the neighborhood.
12 September 2026
Chicago’s pension funds hold 28 cents for every dollar they owe, the worst of any big American city
About fifty billion owed to retired cops, firefighters, laborers and clerks. About fourteen billion on hand.
12 September 2026
Matt Suhey, 1958–2026
He was not the loudest Bear. He was the one who showed up.