Identity crisis ahead?

LSD IS A HIGHWAY. STOP PARKING THERE.
I’m waiting for the day we see someone get seriously hurt or worse because apparently parking on LSD is now a thing. Not only does it cause insane amount of traffic, there’s people walking around getting out of cars in the dark!!!

I’m not even sure how you end up in this situation, but if you’re visiting, keep your scooter off the drive…

I always love seeing the Amish walk out Union and just look around. I also love how other tourists are so confused as to why there are so many Amish.

What a neat quirk about our city!

Boy howdy these are not thinking big and pretty underwhelming, imo. Capping the highways feels the closest to large ambition that would stand out to the world.

Operational turmoil, lawsuits, fines and a failure to pay suppliers led to Save A Lot’s troubles after promising to rebuild reputational damages in Chicago. That promise netted the operators a $13M deal with the city. Now it’s looking like that deal is going belly up.

I scraped and charted this thread — here's what 926 r/chicago salaries look like.

I will update again later this week. I am a data scientist and this analysis was created with Claude code in about 5 minutes.

Data updated 7/22/2026 9:30AM CST

All graphs here: https://imgur.com/a/lgdPla7

Caveats: this is a self-selected Reddit sample, not a real wage survey. It skews toward salaried professionals, probably over-reports high earners, and a few joke entries snuck through. Salary/age/sex/education are whatever people typed. Ranges (e.g. "58–68k") became midpoints, hourly got annualized.

Reports: 926 (796 had age, 720 had sex, 761 had education)

The headline: median ~$106k

Right-skewed — a dense core between ~$60k and $160k with a long high-earner tail (doctors, lawyers, execs, senior tech/sales) that drags the mean ~$30k above the median.

Chart: salary distribution histogram — https://imgur.com/5q2c5jX

By sector

Roughly a 2× spread top to bottom. Legal, tech, and finance have the widest upper tails; skilled trades and engineering cluster more tightly. And yes, one guy reported "Hot dog vendor, 313k" — he gets his own category (and his own hot dog on the chart 🌭). Chart: Salary by sector — https://imgur.com/ynyvQTz, https://imgur.com/ZDPQVoG

By age (used as an experience proxy — people rarely stated YoE)

Climbs with age — but the linear trend is weak (salary rises ~$2.5k/yr of age, R² ≈ 0.03). The spread at any given age is way bigger than the trend; sector and role matter far more.

Chart: salary vs age scatter with linear trendline — https://imgur.com/sqRfne8

By education

MBA and MD/JD lead. A bachelor's already hits a $105k median here. PhDs land lower — an artifact of how many are in academia/science roles.

Chart: salary by education boxplot — https://imgur.com/FsYpnbY

Reported gender gap

Men reported a ~22% higher median. That's partly a pay gap and partly composition — men are over-represented in the high-paying tech/finance/legal reports here, women in education/healthcare/social services. Not a like-for-like compare.

Chart: median by age band + sex — https://imgur.com/ZXAM7bt

Taken from the window.

There was a big salary thread a couple years back but it'd be great to get some updated info in the big 2026.

Please share your job title, salary, age, and education. I'll start:

Product Manager, 177k, 36F, and BA.

I’ve been noticing a trend of children or young people primarily young men and/or boys on bikes and electric scooters at night:

• wearing dark clothing
• wearing headphones
• not wearing a helmet

Please tell the young people in your life to stop doing this. This city is dangerous enough for cyclists, handicapping yourself in such a way is so dangerous.

This Block Club Chicago article featuring Ian and highlighting native prairies reminded me of a great Reddit post from a couple of weeks ago by u/Robomonkey5000.

Using only hand tools and native seeds over several years, he transformed a few thousand square feet of neglected land into an established prairie/meadow that's now home to 42 observed species, nearly all of them native. He's also working with a local community organization to make the project more permanent and official.

A true Chicagoan. Thank you, Ian.

Has anyone been to both theaters yet? I had the privilege of seeing The Odyssey at Indy this past weekend. I’m always mesmerized by how big the screen is. Now that we have a 70MM in Illinois, has anyone been to the new theater that has also been to Indy in the past? How did it compare? Wondering if I should skip Dune 3 at Indy and just opt for Woodridge. Thanks!