r/chicago 11h ago

Picture A well earned beautiful day here in Chicago

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476 Upvotes

r/chicago 11h ago

Article Rescued belugas have arrived in Chicago. The move is unprecedented — and controversial -- Four belugas arrived here in the wee hours of Tuesday from a closed facility in Canada. Some animal advocates question whether the transfer violates Canadian law.

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417 Upvotes

r/chicago 18h ago

Picture Am I a city bumpkin?

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1.1k Upvotes

Identity crisis ahead?


r/chicago 15h ago

CHI Talks What’s with the group of geniuses who think parking on LSD to see Navy Pier fireworks is a good idea? And why is CPD not doing anything about it?

342 Upvotes

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!!!


r/chicago 8h ago

Picture Does Anyone Know Who Does These Prints?

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80 Upvotes

I would love to get one of these on a shirt or something.


r/chicago 15h ago

Article Reckless Records launches vinyl recycling program in Chicago - Axios Chicago

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axios.com
199 Upvotes

r/chicago 11h ago

Picture The Rosewood Theater in Chicago’s Ravenswood Theater. Built in 1916, it was eventually converted into a retail space before being demolished in 2006. A Culver’s stands in its place.

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44 Upvotes

r/chicago 11h ago

Picture Cortland Bridge Caretaker

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44 Upvotes

Didn't catch his name


r/chicago 19h ago

Picture MURALS (48) WITH A MESSAGE (1) - From Around Town

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171 Upvotes

r/chicago 15h ago

Article MHub Eyes $1B Industrial Expansion in Near West Side

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59 Upvotes

r/chicago 1d ago

Picture Stay safe. Please don’t do this…

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2.6k Upvotes

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


r/chicago 20h ago

Article In 1976, Illinois buried a ton of time capsules. What we’re digging up now is complicated, or sometimes weird.

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155 Upvotes

r/chicago 17h ago

News PsiQuantum Signs $125 Million Agreement with DARPA

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67 Upvotes

r/chicago 5h ago

Video A filmmaker friend of mine recently visited and made this tribute to Chicago architecture

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7 Upvotes

r/chicago 17h ago

Article Chicago land use choices raise tough questions: oped

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68 Upvotes

r/chicago 20h ago

News Inspector General's report on Cook County tax tech contract: 'Nobody's hands are clean'

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77 Upvotes

r/chicago 16h ago

News What's Chicago's next big idea? Check out the 6 finalists

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40 Upvotes

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.


r/chicago 1d ago

Picture The Loop & The Amish

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903 Upvotes

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!


r/chicago 1d ago

Video Can't park there, mate

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

386 Upvotes

r/chicago 1d ago

Article Save A Lot operator was given $13M of taxpayer $$ to keep stores open for 10 years in Chicago. A year later, all 7 stores are set to close

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588 Upvotes

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.


r/chicago 1d ago

Ask CHI Chicago 2026 salary thread summary

524 Upvotes

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

Statistic Value
Reports (n) 926
Minimum $22,000
25th percentile $77,250
Median $106,000
Mean $135,804
75th percentile $150,000
Maximum $900,000

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

Sector n Median Mean
🌭 Hot Dog Vendor 1 $313,000 $313,000
Tech / IT 114 $139,000 $177,342
Sales / Marketing 87 $125,000 $144,764
Engineering (non-software) 43 $120,000 $144,493
Legal 37 $120,000 $176,162
Management / Exec 165 $120,000 $144,478
Insurance / lending 6 $109,300 $120,100
Finance / Accounting 92 $108,500 $143,662
Skilled trades 34 $108,500 $121,206
Government / Public 18 $106,500 $110,058
Arts / Media 33 $102,000 $124,352
Healthcare 63 $100,000 $146,550
HR / people ops 7 $90,000 $102,143
Other / Unclassified 89 $85,000 $119,190
Supply chain / logistics 15 $83,000 $100,733
Education 50 $82,500 $86,680
Science / Research 14 $73,500 $83,214
Social services / Nonprofit 14 $70,500 $77,714
Service / Retail / Admin 44 $63,000 $74,169

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)

Age band n Median Mean
<25 32 $84,500 $86,150
25–29 204 $90,000 $108,322
30–34 237 $110,000 $144,326
35–39 184 $125,000 $155,267
40–44 85 $118,000 $140,547
45–49 33 $135,000 $160,667
50+ 21 $171,000 $173,002

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

Education n Median Mean
MBA 29 $185,000 $183,448
Professional (MD/JD/etc.) 36 $177,000 $230,667
Trade school 7 $115,000 $87,971
Bachelor's 428 $105,000 $128,839
Master's 135 $105,000 $131,654
High school / none 51 $100,000 $116,946
PhD 29 $97,000 $136,259
GED 3 $92,000 $92,000
Associate / Some college 43 $90,000 $109,607

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

Sex n Median Mean
F 285 $94,000 $106,928
M 435 $120,000 $156,572

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



r/chicago 1d ago

Picture In case there was any doubt that a Trader Joe's is coming to Montrose @ Clarendon

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257 Upvotes

Taken from the window.


r/chicago 9h ago

Video South Loop Art Series (ft. Maeby)

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3 Upvotes

My dog loves exploring the city! Chicago has so many amazing murals, we'll definitely have to do another street art tour soon


r/chicago 18h ago

Article Food brings this family together, but one particular recipe reminds them of home -- Brothers and restaurateurs Teddy and Alexis Vejar have loved cochinita pibil since they were kids. Now they serve it at their Chicago restaurant.

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9 Upvotes

r/chicago 1d ago

News Four belugas from Canadian theme park being re-homed to Shedd Aquarium

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486 Upvotes