Editor's Note
Ping-pong, “midget wrestling,” and impenetrable vaginas. You’ll find these topics and so many more in Algren’s City Updated, this compilation of stories written by the 10 fellows in the 2007 class of the Academy for Alternative Journalism. From going on tour with a wrestler named Puppet the Psycho Dwarf to taking trapeze and juggling classes our writers have experienced Chicago in all of its spirited, engaging and sometimes bizarre glory.
Algren’s City Updated contains the kind of narratives we’d like to think are the hallmark of the alternative press. They are stories about people -- ordinary people and extraordinary people; people facing obstacles, people experiencing triumphs. People whose lives and voices allow us to traverse unexplored worlds. Each of these stories illuminates something significant about life in Chicago and something significant about life itself.
Reporting these stories for the last two during a beautiful Chicago summer was a lot of hard work, but it’s also been a lot of fun. Welcome and enjoy Algren’s City Updated.
Photography courtesy of Tina Larkin
