Chicago 101

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn's "Are You a Real Chicagoan?" quiz posted on his weblog is the talk of the town these days, and now he's added a second questionnaire for the younger Chicago crowd. "I talked to people who have lived here a long time to help make questions for the first quiz," Zorn says, "and we basically came up with fifty questions I didn't know. I was trying to write a quiz that I would fail." More than 19,000 people logged in and took Zorn's original exam. "But," he says, "there were some responses from people forty and under that were like, `This is crap. I've lived here all my life, and failed your quiz'." Zorn, who's lived in Chicago for twenty-four years, made a second quiz to calm readers' nerves. "The `whipper-snapper' version is all from the eighties and nineties, where the `geezer' version was from the fifties, sixties and seventies. The second quiz was done to placate the angry Chicagoans who are under forty." The new quiz, since it's been posted, has had 8,700 responses, and Zorn takes the attention in stride. "It was a ton of work," he says, "just an amazing amount of work. I just did it for fun. Now I'm thinking that I want to do a real Chicago history quiz, going way back. There have been over one hundred letters from people suggesting other questions... . There's just a ton of interest."

Empty Nest: Volume 2

Last week, Newcity reported that Crow's Nest, the record store located in DePaul's Music Mart, is closing in the near future. "The owner of Crow's Nest decided to close the store," says Robin Florzak, the Director of Media Relations at DePaul. "DePaul and (Crow's Nest's) owner are currently in private discussions about the back rent he owes." Despite Crow's Nest manager Brad Hathaway's report that DePaul will build a food court in the empty space, Florzak insists the school hasn't chosen its replacement. "DePaul has not made a final decision as to what will go in this space after the store closes," she says.

(2004-02-25)

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