Chicagoish are your Chicago Media Bowling League champions!

Photo by Ryan Smith

Chicago is a media town, and we've had a media bowling league for years, and Chicagoist has had a presence in the league from the get-go. Back in the early days, we were frequently at the bottom of the standings since we were a bunch of writers just bowling to have fun.* Over the years the league shifted and changed along with the local media environment, and while many folks rolling still write for media outlets, few of us are still connected full-time (or at all) to outlets our teams were named after. This year Chicagoist was represented by team Chicagoish, and it was the first year in a long time that I didn't roll once all season long, instead checking in and cheering on from the virtual sidelines of emails and social media posts.**

This is a long way of saying that this is all presented to make it perfectly clear that I had zero influence on and no physical contributions to the facts in the next sentence.

Chicagoish are the champions of this year's Chicago Media Bowling League! Woo hoo! Champions champions champions! They're number one! They're number one!

It was a bittersweet victory, since Rob Winn—who took over active captain duties from me this season—couldn't make the playoffs due to a scheduling conflict, and he 100% deserves to share in the glory that is the Chicagoish championship!

So, sorry about that Rob, but congratulations to the team that brought home the trophy / sword last night—Samantha Abernethy, Lukas Ostrander, Jessica Mlinaric, and Anne Demey! Way to go, folks! You are all winner winner chicken dinner in my book!***


*Don't worry, many of the other teams were plenty competitive enough to make up for our feeling less than invested in assuring win after win during those early days.

**We were actually going to be Chicagoish last year, but the name change didn't make its public debut on the bowling rosters until the start of the 2019-2020 season. Why change the name? Despite having a role in the process that eventually saw Chance the Rapper buy up Chicagoist and its archives, it just didn't feel right using the "Chicagoist" name, and repeated attempts to text Chance last year and clear it went unanswered.

***Unless you are a vegetarian, in which case please substitute a tasty plant or non-animal foodstuff in place of chicken.