The 78

Tom Barnas
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Places & Travel
  • Updated Weekly

Historically, Chicago is made up of 77 neighborhoods with their own stories to tell. Only separated by blocks, woven in the microcosm that gives Chicago its unique taste, its people are the epitome of true grit. Each neighborhood, held together with blood, sweat, and tears that are now traditions, giving us this amazing collection of stories from each neighborhood. That is true Chicago. Chicago's newest neighborhood is being developed right now. It's called 78. Chicago, as in the 78th Chicago neighborhood. There you have it, this site is dedicated to all the stories in the 78 neighborhoods.

  1. Aug 29

    Reading the Season: Inside Bridget’s Intuitive Guidance Process

    There’s a quiet moment that happens between seasons. It’s not marked on a calendar, and you won’t find it on a weather app. It’s that subtle shift when something in your life feels ready to turn, evolve, or reset. For Bridge Rose, founder of Intuitively Bridget, that moment is where her work begins. Through her Season Guidance Package, Bridget offers clients something deeper than a reading. It’s a structured yet intuitive process designed to help people understand where they are, where they’re going, and how to move forward with intention. Think of it less like predicting the future and more like learning how to read your own internal map. The process starts with grounding. Before any insight is shared, Bridget creates space for clarity, helping clients step out of the noise and into a more present state. From there, she begins identifying the “season” they’re currently in. Not winter, spring, summer, or fall in the literal sense, but energetic seasons that reflect cycles of growth, rest, transition, or action. Once that foundation is set, Bridget moves into a layered exploration. She looks at patterns, emotional cues, and intuitive signals that reveal what’s been shaping a client’s recent experiences. It’s part reflection, part discovery. Clients often find themselves connecting dots they hadn’t realized were linked. Then comes the forward-facing work. Bridget outlines what the next phase could look like, offering guidance on how to navigate it with purpose. This isn’t about rigid instructions. It’s about giving clients tools and perspective so they can make aligned decisions on their own terms. What sets the Season Guidance Package apart is its balance. It’s equal parts structure and intuition, practical insight and personal reflection. Bridget doesn’t position herself as someone with all the answers. Instead, she acts as a guide, helping clients uncover clarity that already exists within them. In a world that constantly pushes for more, faster, now, Bridget’s work invites something different. A pause. A recalibration. A chance to move in rhythm with your own life instead of against it. Because sometimes, the most powerful shift isn’t doing more. It’s understanding where you are in the season you’re already in. For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.

  2. Aug 22

    The Fields Studios: Inside Chicago's Largest Sound Stage

    There’s a particular Chicago irony baked into The Fields Studios, and it’s this: the city that gave the world The Blues Brothers, Ferris Bueller, and a Michael Mann filmography’s worth of skyline shots has spent decades watching its own productions decamp to Atlanta, Albuquerque, and anywhere with a friendlier tax code. The Fields Studios — occupying a chunk of the old Marshall Field’s warehouse complex where Diversey Avenue meets Pulaski Road, straddling the line between Logan Square and Avondale — is the industry’s answer to that problem, and it’s not subtle about it. This is a facility built by people who’ve spent careers on the other side of the call sheet, for the express purpose of making Illinois impossible to ignore. The numbers, because the numbers are the point: nine sound stages spread across two lots, totaling 132,000 square feet, with eight of them NC-30 rated — the acoustic benchmark that keeps a boom mic from picking up HVAC hum during a quiet dramatic beat. Several stages use collapsible interior walls, meaning production can fold two or three spaces into one, topping out at a combined 36,000 square feet — currently the largest purpose-built stage footprint in the Midwest. Grid heights run up to 35 feet. Power capacity climbs to 3,000 amps. This is not a converted warehouse pretending to be a studio. It’s a studio that happens to be inside a warehouse. Walk the halls and the pitch becomes obvious without anyone having to say it out loud: this is what happens when the people who design a facility have actually had to shoot in one. The team’s fingerprints — decades of studio development and physical production experience — show up in the unglamorous details that make or break a shooting day: silent air and heat systems that don’t compete with dialogue, base camp space sized for actual production vehicle fleets, mill and support space instead of an afterthought hallway, and a layout that lets prep, shoot, and wrap happen without a production truck getting stuck in a loading dock built for somebody else’s business. Stage 9 is the tell. It’s the campus’s smaller stage, built at roughly 5,000 square feet and scaled for commercial production,  music videos, and independent projects that don’t need — or can’t afford — a 12,000-square-foot footprint. It’s also where the campus’s academic partnership lives: The Fields Studios has been developing a collaboration with Columbia College Chicago, giving students a genuine production-campus environment instead of a classroom soundstage. The hallway leading to Stage 9 is, in its way, the most honest part of the tour — it’s the space between the flagship stages built to attract a Marvel-scale shoot and the smaller room built to make sure the next generation of Chicago crew has somewhere to learn the job.

  3. Aug 15

    Gordon Charles MacLean on Discipline, Collapse, and the Art of Waking Up

    There’s a certain Chicago rhythm to reinvention. It hums beneath the L tracks, flickers in glass towers along Wabash, and lives in the quiet second acts of people who’ve lost everything and decided that wasn’t the end of the story. Gordon Charles MacLean fits neatly into that lineage—though “neatly” might be too polite a word for a life that’s moved through classified Air Force missions, high-stakes commercial real estate, financial collapse, and something like a personal reckoning. In his new book, The Awake Code: 39 Rules for a Fully Engaged Life, MacLean doesn’t offer the usual glossy prescriptions. There’s no sugar coating here, no motivational confetti. Instead, the book reads like a field manual written in the margins of a life under pressure—part philosophy, part survival guide. Before the boardrooms and brokerage deals, MacLean served with the U.S. Air Force’s 9th Reconnaissance Wing, working on electronic warfare and intelligence systems aboard the U-2 aircraft. It’s the kind of work that requires a near-obsessive relationship with awareness. Miss something, and the consequences aren’t theoretical. That mindset followed him into a three-decade career in commercial real estate, where he completed more than 200 transactions across office, retail, multifamily, and industrial sectors. Chicago became a proving ground—where he earned his CCIM designation and built the relationships that would define his trajectory. And then, like so many stories tethered to the late-2000s economy, it cracked. The 2009 financial crisis didn’t just disrupt MacLean’s business. It dismantled it. What remained, by his own account, was a kind of silence—the unsettling realization that the systems he’d trusted no longer applied. “I didn’t write this book to be an author,” MacLean says. “I wrote it because I was trying to survive my own life.” That line sits at the center of The Awake Code, which organizes itself around 39 principles that feel less like advice and more like recalibrations. Strategic rest. Radical awareness. Personal responsibility. The kind of ideas that sound simple until you try to live them consistently. Each chapter blends personal narrative with reflection prompts and action steps, nudging readers toward something more deliberate than autopilot. It’s aimed at professionals, entrepreneurs, veterans—anyone who suspects they’ve been drifting and wants to interrupt the pattern. Chicago, in many ways, is the book’s quiet co-author. MacLean credits the city as a place of both ascent and return—a landscape where ambition meets consequence, and where reinvention isn’t just possible, it’s expected. On Tuesday, July 7, that relationship comes full circle: EVENT: AWAKE CODE BOOK LAUNCH + LIVE PERFORMANCE Set high above the Chicago River, the Grand Salon at Trump International Hotel & Tower will host MacLean’s official book launch—though calling it a “book event” undersells the production. The evening leans more toward a curated convergence: business leaders, real estate professionals, veterans, and curious Chicagoans gathering for a night that folds together ideas, music, and philanthropy. Expect a full sensory lineup: Open bar and cocktail reception Passed hors d’oeuvresAuthor talk and Q&A B For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.

  4. Aug 8

    How Bloodshot Records Founder Rob Miller Built an Indie Music Empire in Chicago

    Most entrepreneurs don’t fail because they lack great ideas—they fail because they move too fast. Rob Miller built a legacy by doing the opposite. As the founder of Bloodshot Records, the iconic Chicago-based indie label that helped redefine alternative country and roots music, Miller has spent decades proving that longevity in music—and business—comes down to patience, passion, and community. In this episode, Miller traces his journey from Chicago’s gritty punk scene to launching one of the most influential independent record labels in the country. His approach? Strip away hierarchy, trust your instincts, and build something real with the people around you. It’s a masterclass in grassroots creativity. The kind sparked by flipping through crates in a record store and stumbling onto a forgotten gem—an experience Miller believes still fuels artistic discovery in a world dominated by algorithms and streaming platforms. We dive deep into what made Bloodshot Records thrive: The power of discovery and human connection in musicNavigating the highs and lows of the independent music industryThe harsh realities artists face in the age of streamingWhy analog experiences—like vinyl collecting—still matter more than everMiller also reflects on Chicago’s rich musical DNA, a city where genres collide and evolve, and how that culture continues to shape independent artists pushing boundaries today. This conversation is essential listening for musicians, entrepreneurs, and creatives feeling buried under the weight of modern technology. It’s a reminder that success isn’t built overnight—it’s earned through resilience, curiosity, and a willingness to stay true to your vision. Rob Miller’s story is more than a music industry success—it’s a blueprint for anyone trying to build something meaningful in a fast-moving, disposable world. Because sometimes, the best way forward… is to slow down. For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.

  5. Aug 2

    The Sheet Show: Logan Square’s Paul Gees Five-Foot Pizza Flex Just Got Bigger

    There are big pizzas, and then there’s The Sheet Show. Paulie Gee’s Logan Square, fresh off its 10-year anniversary lap, is going full spectacle mode with what might be the largest pizza currently coming out of an Illinois kitchen. We’re talking a grandma-style slab that clocks in at a towering 62 inches by 30 inches. That’s over five feet of crispy-edged, sauce-draped real estate. A pie so large it stops being dinner and starts becoming an event. This isn’t just a novelty flex, either. The Sheet Show is built to feed roughly 25 people, making it less of a meal and more of a group experience. Think birthdays, team outings, or any excuse to gather a table full of friends who won’t flinch at going all-in on carbs. Compared to the standard Detroit-style squares Paulie Gee’s is known for, this thing feels almost surreal, roughly 23 times the size, stretching across the table like a carb-loaded runway. Reservations to book The Sheet Show open August 3, and they’re expected to go fast. This is dine-in only, and availability is tight, so if you’re even thinking about it, move quickly. The booking link includes updated details on toppings, pricing, and how the whole experience works. And yes, it’s more than just the pizza. The full spread includes salads, apps, and drinks, so you can build out a proper feast around the main attraction. Because when the centerpiece is this oversized, you don’t just order sides, you curate a night. Located at 2451 N Milwaukee Ave, Paulie Gee’s Logan Square has long been a neighborhood anchor, balancing inventive pies with a come-as-you-are energy. The Sheet Show feels like a natural extension of that ethos: bold, a little ridiculous, and entirely rooted in sharing something memorable. If you’re lucky enough to snag a reservation, bring an appetite and a crew. This isn’t a solo slice situation. This is a full-table, lean-in, pass-the-pie kind of night. Reservations: https://sevn.ly/xSTqLsxL For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.

  6. Jul 25

    Inside America’s Ballparks: The Hidden History of Class, Race, and Power in Major League Baseball

    There’s a long-standing myth stitched into the seams of baseball: that the ballpark is a great American commons, a place where the country exhales together under summer skies. It’s a comforting image, one painted in hot dogs, scorecards, and seventh-inning stretches. But as historian Seth S. Tannenbaum reveals, the reality has always been more selective than sentimental. In this sharply observed exploration, Tannenbaum peels back the ivy to expose a different kind of architecture — one built not just of steel and concrete, but of class lines, racial divides, and economic gatekeeping. Ballparks, he argues, were never just places to watch a game. They were carefully engineered environments, reflecting the evolving power structure of American cities. While marketed as democratic spaces, they quietly catered to a specific archetype: the middle- and upper-class white male fan. Comfort, safety, and access were not universal amenities — they were privileges. From the crowded, chaotic intimacy of early urban venues like the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, baseball began a geographic and cultural migration. As cities changed — and as certain fans grew wary of them — so too did the game’s footprint. The move west brought Dodger Stadium, carved into Chavez Ravine under controversial circumstances that displaced working-class communities. Then came the Houston Astrodome, a futuristic, climate-controlled escape that felt less like a neighborhood gathering place and more like a sealed entertainment capsule. Each evolution carried a message: who the game was for, and just as importantly, who it wasn’t. Tannenbaum traces how decisions around zoning, financing, and location weren’t incidental — they were intentional. Public funding often supported private gain, while stadium placement subtly redrew the map of belonging. Accessibility was touted, but structural barriers remained baked into the experience. Inside the gates, the divisions only grew sharper. The rise of tiered seating and luxury suites turned the ballpark into a vertical map of inequality. The higher you climbed financially, the more exclusive the experience became. Baseball didn’t just mirror society’s hierarchy — it monetized it. Even nostalgia, that powerful current running through the sport, comes under scrutiny. The romantic longing for “simpler” ballparks often glosses over the exclusion embedded in their history. Camden Yards, frequently hailed as a return to baseball’s golden age, offered a curated version of urban life — charming, controlled, and carefully distanced from the complexities just beyond its walls. Throughout it all, Major League Baseball maintained the language of inclusion. Owners and executives leaned on the idea of the ballpark as an open, welcoming space, while rarely confronting the quieter systems that limited who could fully participate. What emerges from Tannenbaum’s work is not a condemnation of the game, but a reframing of it. Baseball’s story is inseparable from America’s — a narrative of aspiration shadowed by exclusion, of unity complicated by division. In the end, the ballpark stands as both symbol and stage. It’s where cheers echo, yes — but also where the contours of the American experience have long been drawn. And as the game continues to evolve, the question lingers like a fastball at the letters: Who gets a seat… and who’s still waiting outside the gates? For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok. StoriesAbout

  7. Jul 18

    Submerged Futures: Alison Ruttan’s “The Paradox of Inaction” Floods Hyde Park Art Center

    At Hyde Park Art Center, the gallery floor becomes a shoreline after the tide has already claimed everything. In The Paradox of Inaction, interdisciplinary artist Alison Ruttan constructs a haunting, slow-motion catastrophe, an immersive installation that invites viewers to wander through the ghost of a suburban neighborhood swallowed by rising waters. On view from April 4 through July 12, 2026, the exhibition occupies 2,300 square feet with more than 160 cast ceramic forms, each one a fragment of a world that feels both distant and uncomfortably familiar. At first glance, the work reads as abstraction, a terrain of glistening, irregular shapes. But as the eye adjusts, recognition sets in. Rooflines. Foundations. The quiet geometry of domestic life. Together, these forms coalesce into the illusion of a flooded community, suspended in a state of eerie stillness. The glazed surfaces shimmer like blackwater, evoking rot, reflection, and the slow violence of environmental collapse. Ruttan’s practice has long engaged with the visual language of trauma, translating large-scale historical and political events into tactile, labor-intensive forms. From the Gombe Chimpanzee War to the Syrian Civil War, her work insists on materializing what often feels distant or abstract. Here, she turns that lens toward the climate crisis, not as a future threat, but as a present condition already unfolding. The exhibition’s title, The Paradox of Inaction, cuts to the core of its urgency. It challenges the seductive illusion that doing nothing is neutral, that inaction carries no consequence. Instead, Ruttan reveals inaction as its own form of decision-making, one that accelerates risk and narrows the horizon of possibility. Complementing the main installation, works from her High Water series (2023–2024) appear on the Art Center’s second floor. These smaller ceramic sculptures of flooded homes echo the larger environment below, creating a layered dialogue between miniature and monumental, intimacy and overwhelm. Ruttan describes immersive installation as a bridge between knowing and understanding. Facts alone, she suggests, rarely move us. But within the space of art, analytical thought and intuitive response begin to overlap. Viewers oscillate between object and meaning, between what is seen and what is felt, arriving somewhere closer to truth. Part of Hyde Park Art Center’s ongoing commitment to commissioning ambitious, large-scale works, the exhibition continues a legacy that includes artists such as Edra Soto, Faheem Majeed, Lan Tuazon, and Yasmin Spiro. A series of public programs will further activate the space, offering visitors opportunities to engage more deeply with the work and its implications. More than an exhibition, The Paradox of Inaction is an atmosphere, a warning, and a question. It does not ask what the future will look like. It asks what it already does, and whether we are willing to see it before the water rises any higher. For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.

  8. Jul 11

    Grant DePorter’s Cancer Battle Fuels A Chicago-Style Comeback Through Gilda’s Club

    In a city that measures resilience the way it measures winters, long and unforgiving, Grant DePorter’s story lands with weight. The CEO of Harry Caray’s Restaurant Group has spent a lifetime building institutions rooted in Chicago tradition. But his most defining chapter didn’t happen in a dining room or ballpark. It unfolded in hospital corridors, in the quiet, uncertain hours of a fight against T-cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive blood cancer that tested everything. Six months of chemotherapy. A stem cell transplant. Blood clots. Kidney failure. The kind of medical gauntlet that strips life down to its bare essentials. And yet, DePorter doesn’t tell it like a tragedy. He tells it like a relay, where survival is only the first leg and giving back is the finish line. That perspective is exactly why Gilda’s Club Chicago will honor DePorter at its 28th Annual Awards Dinner at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel, alongside Chicago native and caregiver icon Bonnie Hunt and her family. The organization, a lifeline for those impacted by cancer, has become central to DePorter’s story, not just as a resource but as a community that carried him through. His connection to Gilda’s Club started in 2014, when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Years later, when his own diagnosis hit, the organization became something deeper. Not just a place for support, but a place where fear gets translated into shared language. “You talk to people who’ve already been through it,” DePorter has said. “That creates a community. And that’s everything when you’re in it.” Gilda’s Club Chicago has quietly built one of the city’s most essential support systems, offering free emotional and social services to cancer patients and their families. It’s not just therapy or resources. It’s connection. It’s the ability to walk into a room and not have to explain the unexplainable. For DePorter, that network extended beyond his own recovery. His openness has created a ripple effect, with others reaching out, looking for guidance, or just a voice that understands. Survival, in his world, isn’t a solo act. It’s communal. But DePorter’s story doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s stitched into the larger fabric of Chicago, a city where legacy and neighborhood pride tend to run deep. Raised in Park Ridge, DePorter shares hometown roots with Bonnie Hunt, who built her own legacy not just as an actress but as a cancer nurse who stepped directly into the lives of patients. Their parallel paths converge at this moment, a reminder that Chicago often operates like a small town hiding inside a big one. His family’s imprint on the city is equally tangible. His father, Donald J. DePorter, founded Chicago Gateway Green in 1986, transforming neglected expressways into green corridors lined with trees and public art. It was a vision of a cleaner, more welcoming Chicago, one that didn’t ignore its rough edges but worked to soften them. That same philosophy echoes in Grant’s approach today. Whether it’s preserving pieces of baseball history, like artifacts tied to the 1919 White Sox, or championing organizations that support vulnerable communities, DePorter operates with a sense that Chicago’s identity is something to be protected and passed forward. And then there’s sports. Always sports. From Harry Caray’s iconic seventh-inning stretch to the city’s long memory of curses, comebacks, and heartbreaks, DePorter understands that Chicago’s teams are more than entertainment. They’re emotional infrastructure. They bind strangers, define eras, and give the city a shared language. It’s no accident that his professional life lives at that intersection of hospitality and fandom. Restaurants, like stadiums, are gathering places. They’re where stories get told, retold, and occasionally exaggerated into legend.

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About

Historically, Chicago is made up of 77 neighborhoods with their own stories to tell. Only separated by blocks, woven in the microcosm that gives Chicago its unique taste, its people are the epitome of true grit. Each neighborhood, held together with blood, sweat, and tears that are now traditions, giving us this amazing collection of stories from each neighborhood. That is true Chicago. Chicago's newest neighborhood is being developed right now. It's called 78. Chicago, as in the 78th Chicago neighborhood. There you have it, this site is dedicated to all the stories in the 78 neighborhoods.

Information

  • Creator
    Tom Barnas
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    106
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Tom Barnas
  • Show Website
    The 78