Where to eat, what to do, and what’s worth the trip across Chicago and the suburbs. Recommendations here are editorial picks; nobody pays for placement.
Chicago’s ADU preapproval applications, before and after the 2026 expansion: the city’s new file logged 495 from March 31 to September 14, 215 in April alone - more than the retired file recorded in any year from 2022 to 2025 - from 42 wards, 17 of them new to the record, with 90.1 percent pre-certified at a median of 9.3 days. No names or addresses read.
Chicago’s ARPA transaction file, read whole: 50,961 rows and $1,859,400,552.15, with 77.9 percent of the dollars dated in December and 62.8 percent in two rows under Essential City Services. The other 50,959 rows run through June 30, 2026, mostly under $10,000 - and the file matches the city’s summary to the cent.
The city’s list of TIF vendors paid in excess of $10,000, read whole across report years 2017-2025: $3.58 billion, with the Chicago Transit Authority the largest vendor at $510.8 million. The file labels 44.9 percent of the money Public Improvement; ten vendors drew 53.1 percent; a line named City Staff Costs appears on 118 district labels; and since 2022 the list has carried more money on fewer rows each year.
The Park District's beach weather stations and water sensors, paired hour by hour: four water sensors within 1,281 meters of an air station read warmer on 30.9 to 33.9 percent of matched hours, and no month cleared half. In the largest pairing, the exception has a direction: when the Oak Street station's wind direction read 0 to 90 degrees at 2 m/s or more, the Ohio Street sensor read warmer on 79.3 percent. Associations only; no swimming claim.
Top is not a column in any city file - but variety is countable. The Park District's facilities layer (4,467 records, 562 park labels, 75 types, stamped November 2016 - the portal's newest) ranks a clean top ten by distinct facility kinds, Lincoln first with 36. Plus the eight one-of-a-kind facilities: a carousel, a band shell, a model yacht basin. Labels as filed; no park judged.
Cocktail bar is not a class in Chicago's license file, so this page ranks by what the file does classify: five on-premises permission classes. Of 754 establishments holding Tavern, none holds all five; five hold four, all missing Music and Dance; exactly nine hold the late-dancing trio, every earliest Tavern row reaching early 2002. Late Hour concentrates on six streets. Permissions counted, no venue judged.
The five-best-bars-by-Soldier-Field question, answered from the city license file: the five closest establishments holding active Tavern-class licenses (Buttercup at 814 straight-line meters to Bassline at 1,405), an inner ring of museum and harbor licenses before any of them, zero Late Hour licenses in the circle - and the nearest queried license filed at the stadium's own address. Dates as filed, distances ours, no venue judged.
OBM's quarterly transfer file read whole: 125 mid-year moves of appropriation authority totaling 10.87 million dollars across budget years 2025 and 2026 so far, each with its one-line justification quoted as filed. The City Council label sits on 92 rows at a median of 15,000 dollars; three seven-figure moves carry 38.1 percent of the money; 84.7 percent of the dollars never leave their appropriation series. Transfers move authority, not spending - and the page says so.
Six Chicago Public Library 2026 files read whole and side by side: 4.94 million visits through August, 8.1 million circulation items through July - 77.3 percent of them on non-branch lines led by Auto-Renewals and Downloadable Media - holds placed on online lines and filled on branch labels, 2.77 million WiFi sessions, and a label new to the visitors file already third. Each file summed to its own through-month, as filed; events, not people.
Chicago's employee-indebtedness file read whole: 693 weekly snapshots since October 2011 counting how many people on city department and sister-agency payroll lines owe funds to the City. September 5, 2026: 8,832 employees owe 7.46 million dollars across 41 lines; the all-time peak, 10.78 million, came this February after a one-week 3.7 million dollar jump the file never explains. No names in the file, none here; what the debts are for is not recorded.
