Secret Chicago: The Unique Guidebook to Chicago's Hidden Sites, Sounds, & Tastes (Secret Guides) [Paperback]

Sam Weller (Author), Linda Rutenberg (Photographer)

Book Description

Series: Secret Guides | Publication Date: March 2000

16 colour photos

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Armed with a sharp wit and healthy sense of the absurd, Sam Weller explores the exciting, exotic, and esoteric Chicago that few natives know. Follow him." Mark Lukas, Chicago Tribune Writer Nelson Algren once said Chicago was like a beautiful woman with a broken nose. Other travel guides don't tell you about that broken nose. This one does. Why? Because in order to truly understand Chicago - to experience it and love it like you've lived in it forever - you have to appreciate all its sides. You can't just visit the Art Institute of Chicago, or shop at the glitzy Water Tower Place mall, and expect to walk away with a feel for the city. Secret Chicago warns you away from the realm of the tourist and directs you instead to the leafy neighbourhoods and the tiny "ma and pa" stores. It leads you to a dark and smoky blues club where the daughter of a blues legend wails well past the witching hour - singing to a small crowd of neighborhood regulars. It invites you to a Polish deli on the far Southwest side to sample garlic kielbasa, and afterward to wander to a nearby all-night bowling alley with 80 lanes. It opens the door to a vegetarian restaurant where you can sit out on a screened-in porch as the nearby elevated train rumbles by overhead. It takes you to the best place for punk rock, and to the place the punk rockers get their tattoos. Secret Chicago will also save you money with a naughty tip on how to cheat the tollbooths on the local expressways, and with clear-cut advice on how the city's train system operates. It will direct you to one of the most expensive hotel suites in town, but also show you how to lodge comfortably for a whole week for little more than $100. It takes a local to know these things, and with this book you'll have local Sam Weller as your guide. You can leaf through this book, choose a topic ("Secret Jazz, or Secret Ethnic Bakeries, for example), and explore. Before long, you'll be a local too.

From the Author

Sam Weller is the Midwest Correspondent for Publishers Weekly. He is also a longtime contributor to New City, Chicago's alternative news and entertainment weekly. He has written for the Chicago Tribune and Playboy Magazine Online

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Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: ECW Press; 1st edition (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550224050
• ISBN-13: 978-1550224054
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,700,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book but... Not necessarily for natives, June 1, 2000

By 

John G. Sturm "blues fan/beer nut" (Yellow Springs, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Chicago: The Unique Guidebook to Chicago's Hidden Sites, Sounds, & Tastes (Secret Guides) (Paperback)

I found this to be an informative guide for adventurous tourists or new residents of the city. However, I would not necessarily recommend to adventurous residents of the city. If you already live in Chicago and you are, for instance, a blues fan it is no secret that Buddy Guy's Legends and the Checkerboard Lounge are premier venues. In other words while I wholeheartedly endorse this book for the aforementioned groups I would not recommend it to adventurous residents on the lookout for new experiences. You may certainly find a few but most of it will be old hat.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Travel With a Twist!, August 13, 2000

By 

John Carlisle (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Chicago: The Unique Guidebook to Chicago's Hidden Sites, Sounds, & Tastes (Secret Guides) (Paperback)

I bought this guidebook on a whim and was not disappointed! "Secret Chicago" goes where few travel guides go. . . it's informative while highly entertaining. It's also really funny! As a new transplant to the Windy City, this book has been a great help. Weller's recommendations for restaurants are superb. I have visited several spots named in the book and they were all great. And since moving here (from Kansas City), I have seen Weller's name in the Chicago Tribune and New City often. Most guides are written by some unknowm. . . not this one! I'd love to meet this writer! He's really funny and knows Chicago like nobody's business.

I highly recommend this book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not as detailed as I'd like, November 1, 2001

By 

M. J. Walters "dargelos" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Secret Chicago: The Unique Guidebook to Chicago's Hidden Sites, Sounds, & Tastes (Secret Guides) (Paperback)

This is a great idea, and I wish it had been expanded just a bit, to get more of a flavor of the places Weller writes about. There are places in this book which, even as a Chicagoan born and bred, I never knew about. He even has a short chapter about prostitution in the city! You don't get much more secret than that, methinks. But the information amounts to little more than a few lines about each site, and leaves you wanting a bit more.

I also have to wonder how some of the places in the book were chosen. How secret is the Chicago El (elevated) system after all? And why, for example, with literally thousands of little fast food joints in the city, were there only three listed? And how were they chosen? I recognize that there was a space limit on this book, and that Weller covers a great deal of ground here, but as I read I'm occasionally bemused by both inclusions and exclusions. Still, it doesn't pretend to be comprehensive and Weller does do a good job of giving the reader an overview of some of the roads less traveled in a city this size

This is a fun book. Keep one in your glove compartment for impromptu road trips, or give a copy to your Chicago-loving friends. They'll get a kick out of finding new reasons to love this city.