CHICAGO — Happy Monday, Chicago! Here's what we're reading today.
Creepiest Bar Bathroom Ever: You'll need a shower after this one ... and probably some bleach for your computer. Reporter Ariel Cheung was reading this Jezebel story about a two-way mirror in a women's bathroom and realized it was in the Chicago 'burbs. Chicago comedian Tamale Sepp posted a YouTube video exposing the peep-able mirror in the Cigars and Stripes BBQ Lounge in Berwyn. When Jezebel called the bar, the owner said (and this is a direct quote):"I will burn this f***ing place to the ground before I get rid of that mirror. Do you know how much joy that mirror has brought to us?"
Killer Beauty Tips: Think those plastic surgery fails on "Botched" are a nightmare? They've got nothing on beauty practices from centuries past. Mental Floss provides gruesome detail on women's often deadly attempts to conform to prevailing standards of attractiveness — like eating arsenic to produce a "blooming complexion." Reporter Patty Wetli confesses she's a sucker for any moisturizer labeled "anti-aging" but hopes she would have thought twice before eating tapeworm eggs to lose weight or had the sense to not put lead powder on her face to cover a zit.
Steak, With a Side of Shade: Heather Cherone is reading the Reader's Mike Sula take on the menu at Community Tavern, the newest — and most anticipated — restaurant to open in a newly revitalized Six Corners Shopping District. Sula gives the new eatery kudos for its "beautiful, rosy pink" steak. However, Sula throws a heaping helping of shade at the restaurant from Quay Tao of the Portage Restaurant for having a "banal" name and at Chef Joey Beato for executing dishes in "unorthodox, even puzzling ways." But Portage Park itself is the real subject of the review, and Sula pronounces Community "probably good enough" to succeed in the "steak desert" of the Northwest Side while "its eccentricities might not fly in a more restaurant-rich neighborhood."
The Most Important Restaurant in Chicago?: No chef in American cooks dinner quite like Phillip Foss of Chicago's EL Ideas, according to Eater. Paul Biasco is reading the lenghty feature on the inventive restaurant by Eater which kicks off with a narrative describing the first course, a mirror with a razor, a gram of white powder and a tiny straw — "culinary cocaine."
"I do think Chicago is the food capital of America," Akiko Moorman, the restaurant's director of operations, told Eater. "It has the most interesting food. The most soulful food. The most thoughtful food."
Apocalyptique Préparateur: They tend to be labeled "doomsday preppers" in the states, but there are people across the world driven into the woods by an urge to get off the grid in search of self-reliance. Sam Cholke is reading The Morning News' interview with photographer Antoine Bruy on his "Scrublands" series, which shows how people in Spain, France and Switzerland interpret that nagging desire to leave for the country and live a more primal life.
Road Rage: You can thank (or blame) Chicago for the monster truck phenomenon, says senior editor Andrew Herrmann. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the Chesterfield, Mo.-based creator of "Bigfoot" says he was building his oversized pickup for fun in the mid-70s when a promoter saw it and asked if he could get it to Chicago for an event at Soldier Field. "He said, 'I'll pay you.' I'm thinking, 'I can get paid to do this?'" said Bob Chandler, now 73. The noise, the smoke, the car crushing: it was a hit. As for MPG, Chandler explains, "It's not so much miles per gallon, but gallons per mile."
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