Attention fashion fanatics! Oak Street Design is offering Michigan Avenue Fashion Tours in Chicago, IL. For $35 you can embark on a 2 hour tour that includes shopping and lunch! They start at 10:00 am every Tuesday.

“The Michigan Avenue Fashion Tour steps off this summer as the ultimate fashion experience for Michigan Avenue visitors and shoppers. Experience the glamour and excitement of the avenue with a tour that starts at the Drake Hotel and winds its way down the famous avenue to The Terrace Rooftop, Bar and Restaurant, at the Conrad Chicago Hotel.”

and tickets can be purchased at http://michiganavenuefashiontour.eventbrite.com/

I love to bike on the lakefront. No other city than my hometown Chicago has the very best lakefront for biking. Ask anyone who has been here, homegrown or transplanted, and they will tell you with a resounding “YES!” that Chicago’s lakefront bike path is the absolute best. I always see the Lance-wannabees whiz past me as I casually pump my pedals in leisure. They probably think that I’m just in their way and I’m so uncool. Even if this is true, I bet that they’d find me cool if I were biking one of these. Greencycle 2, designed by Paulus Maringka, is a environmentally sustainable bicycle that uses bamboo as a renewable source. It even has an attachment for the purposes of a wheel barrow which will allow it’s user to employ it’s bike to go grocery shopping before hopping in a fuel-burning car. I honestly don’t know if this will hit the American markets anytime soon, but if anyone sees this in your local bike shop please do me a big favor and let me know!

~MCB

Independent record stores or iTunes? Transformed Maybach or Not-A-Scratch Maybach? $400K for each concert or a pennypinching concert? A store in So-Ho for just one album or no store at all? Decisions, decisions, decisions. Apparently Jay-Z and Kanye have no problem making them swiftly and deftly. They’ve open a gold-wrapped store in New York’s SoHo solely for the purpose of selling their latest album ‘Watch the Throne”. The store sells a special edition of the album, houses the Maybach used in the “Otis” video (directed by Spike Jonze), and plays the video on a loop throughout the entire space.

Genius marketing or just another way to let all of us know how rich and fabulous they are?  You decide.

In honor of their 40th anniversary, The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, presents the first ever Soul Train exhibit! Located at 72 E. Randolph, the exhibit features rare photographs of performers! And it wouldn’t be complete without Friday Grooves which happen every Friday until Sept. 2 from 6-8!

Choreographer Todrick Hall created a flash mob piece to be performed inside of a Target to Beyonce’s End of Time. As a dancer, I’m not sure if I feel the choreography is impressive in terms of ingenuity and degrees of difficulty. Additionally, it feels more like a GLEE performance than a true spontaneous flash mob. How-SUM-ever, I do love the fact that they added the kids into the mix. Gotta love the kids (even if I could have done without the sorority-style stepping) What do you think?