Who will step up now that the Red Streak is gone?

Today's the first day of the rest of your life. Unless, of course, if you were a Red Streak columnist, since you're out of a job today and you might as well commit suicide because nobody else in their right mind will ever hire you. Much has been made of the demise of the Sun-Times' version of the Red Eye, which is the Tribune's version of a fresh piece of dog shit on your front lawn that you accidentally step on as you walk to your car, with the smell lingering for the rest of the day wherever you go.

To be quite honest, though, I don't mind the Red papers all that much. I actually like seeing people read, and I don't really care what they're reading. This probably has something to do with my day job, which is Professional Letter Designer. That's right, a group of highly trained English majors and I sit around an office all day and try to create the 27th letter in the English alphabet. It's not easy, and I'm not allowed to give you information on our status, but it is important to us that people keep reading, even if that reading material consists mostly of celebrity anecdotes and cleavage shots.

While the Red Streak will be missed, there's always someone new to step up and capture the imagination and advertising money of the Chicago market. Go to any bar in any hipster neighborhood and you'll see plenty of free newspapers and magazines by the door. It was always my intention to start one of these newspapers, but I've always chickened out, mostly because I can't imagine anyone paying to advertise in a magazine written by me.

To see how it's done, though, I turn to the "inaugural issue!" of the newest contender in the who-can-make-the-biggest-pile-of-trash-at-the-doorway wars: The Real Chicago. I picked up Volume 1, Issue 1 yesterday and read with interest the publisher's comments. "Trust me, it'll be different than the other periodicals out there," he writes. "For starters, it will be a publication that you'll actually want to read for its content instead of just flipping through ..."

I'm curious, so I flip through the magazine that promises to uncover "the pulse of the city that so few of us really know very much about." Page 6 is devoted to the bar of the month. This month's bar? Kincade's, a Kansas frat boy hangout on Armitage with 45 plasma TVs. I learn that the Kincade's experience goes like this: "Never a shortage of waitresses, it seems, and they visit your table often."

I'm impressed, and of course I wonder just who would advertise in a cutting-edge periodical such as this. Well, don't know how I missed this in my initial flip-through, but the full-page ad on page 2 is for none other than Kincade's. Wow, I guess I have a lot to learn about the real Chicago.