Places Crankstrap Wants to Go

This empty Detroit high school was too expensive to maintain or destroy.

Enormous small-business mecca in the Midwest, serving dozens of artists.

A century-old network of freight tunnels underneath the city's historic business district.

Parking lot where a Chicago mayor was inaugurated under very sketchy circumstances.

A chance to follow in the footsteps of the word's most legendary animator.

Odd, decrepit fountain honors Chicago author who had mixed feelings about his hometown.

"No writer ever gave more to a city and got back less.”

One of the few remaining relics of the meatpacking hub that made Chicago the "hog butcher to the world."

Chicago was once a major hub of film production, but being silent film you don’t hear much about it.

Small and slightly hidden, the American Writers Museum is preserving the legacy of America's finest authors.

No one knows how many bodies are in this vault in a Chicago public park.

This memorial plaque remembers a strangely shallow maritime disaster known as "Chicago's Titanic."

This cheerfully-named branch of the Chicago River is the fetid result of years of blood, entrails, and meatpacking waste.

This historic-shipwreck-cum-diving-spot can still be seen poking its boiler out of the Lake Michigan waters that claimed it.

This landmark of the Chicago silent film industry may not be in the picture business anymore but it still stands proudly.

These mansions date back to Chicago's days as a brewer's paradise.

One of the largest pieces of scientific equipment ever carried on a NASA space shuttle sits in a Chicago alley.

The final resting place of up to 6,000 Confederate soldiers, the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere.

A little-known subterranean street runs under some of the best-known buildings in Chicago's River North.

This alley in downtown Chicago held the bodies of over 600 people after the fateful Iroquois Theatre fire.

Chicago's museum dedicated to the history of bondage and fetishism is more textbook than titillation.

The site of the first couple's first kiss is commemorated by the most adorable presidential monument ever.

A forgotten Cold War relic hidden in the outskirts of a Wisconsin city.

A lovely hidden waterfall right off the highway is well worth a stop.