iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Meet Lee Bey? I've met this guy and he's alright. Come see him at this free event. And he'll also show a few photos from his upcoming West Side book, and South Side images he's shot since Southern Exposure was published -- can you believe? -- seven years ago this month.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I agree. It certainly does for me

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The way Rollo sez "What's happ'nin' Mama," tho.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My architecture column today. "Built in 1927 as the Avalon Theater, the building was designed by John Eberson, who modeled the work after an intricate metal Persian incense burner he found in a Royal Street antique store in New Orleans’ French Quarter."

chicago.suntimes.com

Historic Avalon Regal Theater in play for $250,000 in repair funds

The theater is among three projects recommended for a total of $666,400 under the city's Adopt-A-Landmark program, including a North Lawndale church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Am digging the Audi RS6 Avant that Henry Da Souza drives in MobLand.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This weekend's architecture column. "Other highlights over the last 100 days: four marriage proposals at the center; three bald eagles sighted; 11,424 Obama Burgers served up at Tafari’s Kitchen restaurant and 150 people dancing the Electric Slide on the John Lewis Plaza."

chicago.suntimes.com

Obama Presidential Center's price tag: Almost $1 billion

The construction price was among a score of new figures released by the Obama Foundation to mark the center's 100th day of operation.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Some late breaking reporting this evening on the MSI carbuncle: "But the park district must now review final construction drawings — a step that could represent a potential firewall in the museum’s path toward constructing the arch-backed, 458-foot wide limestone and glass structure."

chicago.suntimes.com

Is the planned Griffin MSI 'carbuncle' a done deal? Not yet, says Chicago Park District

The agency, which owns the museum, said it has "not given final construction approval" for the project.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

In a letter to the editor in today's Sun-Times, the distinguished author and city historian Tim Samuelson said the MSI's "current proposals to significantly alter both the building’s north and south elevations display gross disrespect for a masterpiece."

chicago.suntimes.com

Griffin MSI's new design proposal is an affront to Chicago history

Plans to build an entry pavilion would disrespect this architectural masterpiece. Also, why restaurant careers should be more accessible and the paradox of AI in education.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Got an email from a publicist telling me about an upcoming biopic on architect Louis Kahn, called Joy Will Prevail. "The film offers an intimate exploration of the professional and romantic relationships that inspired Kahn’s final residential commission. Griffin Dunne plays Kahn. I'm interested.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Btw, in the 1938 movie "In Old Chicago," this is how the fire started.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My architecture column today. "The new hall would be almost 30-feet tall and a whopping 458-feet — nearly three-quarters of a city block — in length: A big old wide-brimmed hat blocking the screen at the movie theater."

chicago.suntimes.com

Griffin MSI's new design must go back to the drawing board: 'Carbuncle in the park'

The two-story, 458-foot long entry pavilion threatens to visually overpower the landmark museum's historic entrance and great lawn.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Today's architecture column. The building was designed by David Haid "whose most recognized work is the auto pavilion where Cameron Frye’s dad kept that ill-fated red Ferrari in the 1986 movie 'Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.' The architect supervised the repair of the pavilion’s glass after the scene."

chicago.suntimes.com

Chase bank shouldn't demolish its modernist Evanston branch

The bank wants to demolish the 47-year-old building designed by an architect whose work appears in a pivotal scene in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yes, game on! And "libretti" is pretty good tho.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I agree. The column mentions this and urges them to hire an actual person to do their renderings going forward.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Back on the architecture beat today after a month off to work on the West Side book and start another project. So I'm resuming gawking at buildings. Like the old Rand McNally HQ, 536 S. Clark by Holabird & Roche from 1912. Offices & printing plant, then. Federal offices & immigration court now.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Where the meat industry in this country seems to be headed.

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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Me crossing beef off my shopping list …

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Spotted earlier this afternoon. St. Anthony's church, 300 E. Kensington, 1960, Saverio "Sam" DiMaio architect.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Why did I like this sitcom, given I was only 9 years old when it premiered in 1974? Lasted 15 episodes and I can't remember a single one. But the opening credits of Paul Sand lugging his double bass past some of Boston's finest architecture stayed w me.

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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 04/09/2026

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “The twin towers were a product of their time, the mid-1960s, and what has replaced them is still, sadly, in too many ways a product of that same time,” the former architecture critic Paul Goldberger writes on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

nyti.ms

Opinion | What Ground Zero Should Have Been

25 years on, some regrets.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Off the grid on South Torrence Avenue.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Loved this show (and Cupid). They filmed it at the old Sun-Times HQ during my first stint there. I still remember when photo editor Rich Cahan joked, "Hey, *we* know what's going to be on tomorrow's paper and it doesn't do *us* any good."

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Here's a nicely restored version of Steely Dan's "Second Arrangement," the famously lost track from the Gaucho album. I've heard scratchy and incomplete versions. This is one sounds good.

music.youtube.com

Steely Dan - The Second Arrangement (Restoration New Cassette & DAT Mix)

YouTube video by Andreas Mixes

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Karrie Jacobs @karrieurbanist.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Cool to look at the Obama Presidential Center through the eyes of the typographers at Pentagram (Michael Bierut and team) who did the big letters (5350 point Gotham Bold) up top. www.pentagram.com/work/the-oba...

pentagram.com

The Obama Presidential Center

The typographic installation on the façade of the new museum in Chicago features an excerpt from President Obama’s 2015 ‘You Are America’ speech.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

That's a shame. The rotation of wbez bloggers then was a pretty cool thing: me on architecture and place, Rob Feder writing about media and Steve Dolinsky on food. Most of the archive we left behind is gone now.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I think I might have, for the old Beyond the Boat Tour blog I wrote for WBEZ between 2010-2014

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I was re-watching this last night, and it holds up really well: V for Vashon, the 1972 three-part episode of Hawaii Five O. The pampered scion of a mob family decides to pull off scores like his grandfather did in the olden days -- and sets off a chain of events that ruins everything.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The ending of The Wildman of Wildsville, a 1962 ep of Beany & Cecil that embraces and pokes fun of midcentury hipster/beatnik culture. Tons of puns and wordplay, Jackson Pollock-inspired backgrounds, jazz, and Lord Buckley (look him up) voicing the Wildman.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Took a break this morning in one of the coolest spots in the city, the Pullman Club Coffee shop, 605 E. 111th

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Early Edition didn't come along until a decade later. Great show. I was working in the old Sun-Times building @ 401 N. Wabash when the program was filmed there.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

A follow-up of sorts to yesterday's post on the Lou Grant show: The only other print journalism tv series of the era that I can remember is The Insiders. It was ABC's answer to Miami Vice. Lasted just a season.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Printers Row Lit Fest is coming up next month. I'll be there Sunday Sept 13 in discussion with Trygve Thoreson about his excellent new book, Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture. We'll be on Center Stage at 4pm.

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Chicago Sun-Times Guild @cstguild.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Today our members showed up to bargaining to once again tell Chicago Public Media we're asking for real protection: • No layoffs due to generative Al • No cutting hours or pay because of GenAl • No eliminating future jobs to make room for GenAl • GenAl can't write or create our editorial content

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The 1976 movie Monkey Hustle, filmed largely in Woodlawn and on 63rd St between Cottage Grove and Dorchester, a strip that was demo'd in the 1980s and 1990s. Everything in this scene from the building they're in to buildings outside --including this section of the CTA Green Line -- gone.

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Lauren FitzPatrick @bylaurenfitz.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Our readers and members deserve reporting from REAL HUMANS!

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Chicago Sun-Times Guild @cstguild.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

The Chicago Sun-Times Guild is fighting for generative AI protections at the bargaining table. Follow along as we continue to push for a fair contract.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Ran across this image from 2022: a much-appreciated co-sign from @josephsikora4.bsky.social, the actor who plays Tommy in the Power series universe.

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Lee Bey @leebey1.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

This is a cool slice of Old Skool from 1980. And I'd like to hear Michael McDonald take a run at this too.

music.youtube.com

Hot City

YouTube video by Shadow - Topic

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