Tag: Chicago

Jeppson’s Malört: the world’s worst tasting liquor?

Robin

If you’re not into liquors and probably all taste bad for you, there’s a particular liquor that, apparently, everyone agrees tastes horrible. It’s called malört and, over the years, it has been compared to battery acid, pesticide and gasoline. Carl Jeppson Co., a Chicago company, has built a minor social media empire around malort’s “brutal” flavor. Although Jeppson’s Malört is most often associated with the American city of Chicago, its roots are in Sweden, where where “malört” is the word for “wormwood”, a weedy plant that’s also the key ingredient…

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Inez Clarke, the haunted statue of Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery that lives again whenever there is a thunderstorm

Leo S

At Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois, a statue stands out among the tombstones, protected behind glass. But this statue, as ordinary as it may appear, is unlike the others. Some say, for example, it’s afraid of thunderstorms. Who’s afraid of lightning? Although death by electrocution is not among the most frequent phobias, about 1,000 people die every year in the world, and probably not even Inez Clarke was afraid, before her untimely death. Legend has it that the six-year-old girl, was struck by lightning in the late 1800s. A terrible…

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Concrete Traffic: an actual 1957 Cadillac De Ville is encased in 15 cubic yards of concrete~

Leo S

Casual observers could be mistake this object, which is in a parking space in the University of Chicago’s Campus North parking structure, for a representational sculpture of a car. In fact, it’s an actual car: a 1957 Cadillac Sedan De Ville encased in 15 cubic yards of concrete. Named “Concrete Traffic,” the unique and unusual piece was created by German artist Wolf Vostel (1932–1998) in January 1970 as an “instant happening” and an “event sculpture” at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Vostel was associated with the international art movement Fluxus,…

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