Geoffrey Baer is a man well-known to many Chicagoans: he’s led tours of Chicago communities, both onscreen and in person, on the ground and in the air, revealing new perspectives on Chicago history, culture and people. Raised in Highland Park and Deerfield, Baer is an eight-time Emmy Award-winning public television writer, producer and program host. […]
A great neighborhood is hard to define, and wonderful to find. Neighborhoods aren’t legally described geographic locations, like towns; rather, they are a subjective combination of the geographic and the psychological. By intuition and common consensus, people just agree that an area with shared traits is a neighborhood. Shared Great Traits Experts do agree on […]
It’s 4 a.m. I’m steering a small sailboat through possibly the heaviest rain I’ve ever experienced. The story of Noah comes to mind. Keeping my glasses clear is hopeless, so I’ve taken them off. They wouldn’t help much anyway. Visibility is down to a few hundred feet at best. I grip the wheel tightly, fighting […]
Here’s some North Shore trivia for you: How did Half Day Road get its name? Did you answer: Because it’s a half-day’s ride on horseback to Chicago? Bzzz, wrong. Geoffrey Baer, producer of the documentary “Chicago’s North Shore,” says almost everyone who grows up on the North Shore believes that story. But in fact, […]
Did you know that the entire North Shore was almost in Wisconsin? When Illinois was granted statehood in 1818, the originally proposed border was moved about 60 miles north, so the new state would have a little bit of Lake Michigan shoreline. This is the kind of fun fact that surprises even lifelong North Shore […]
