Geoffrey Baer's Chicago (WTTW)

06/08/2024

Filming this new Chicago Lakefront special has me doing all kinds of things I’ve never done before.

02/08/2024

We filmed Monty and Rose's grandchick last week at Montrose Beach. Thanks to Tamima Itani of Chicago Piping Plovers!

26/07/2024

There's a shipwreck just a few hundred feet offshore at 48th St! The Silver Spray ran aground in 1914 on a 400 million year old coral reef called Morgan Shoal. The old boiler is so close to the surface you can sit on it with your head above water!

08/07/2024

Finally stopped raining and press pass gets me track side It’s loud!!! 

05/07/2024

Interviewed NASCAR driver Daniel Suarez today. We are making a new show about the Chicago lakefront and for better or worse, NASCAR is part of it now. (I gotta admit, it was pretty cool!)

01/07/2024

Where am I???

23/06/2024

Contrary to what I’ve said on other occasions, this really is my first rodeo. The Broken Arrow Riding Club of Chicago’s speed and action horse show at the South Shore Cultural Center.

30/05/2024

Ever wonder where that yogurt cup goes after you throw it in the recycling bin? This mind-blowing system we filmed at LRS separates it from other plastic, glass, metal, paper, and stuff you shouldn’t throw in the recycling, using infrared scanners, robotics, and workers. And squashes it into bales they sell to mills where it is turned back into raw material.

29/05/2024

Filmed the folks keeping alive the nearly-lost art of gold leaf sign painting for our upcoming WTTW - Chicago PBS special “Chicago Works”. And look what they made! Thanks Heart & Bone Signs and .

23/05/2024

Check this one off the bucket list! Thanks to Metra.

21/05/2024

Hanging out with the sharks Shedd Aquarium!

08/05/2024

Yes. I am inside the scoreboard at Wrigley Field. Unbelievable!

04/05/2024

Getting an honorary PhD and giving the commencement address today at Saint Xavier University in Mount Greenwood. 

02/05/2024

With Judy Woodruff!

16/04/2024

Debut tonight!!!
Preview here:

Geoffrey Baer and a team of super sleuths attempt to solve Chicago’s baffling mysteries.

12/04/2024

10/04/2024

Jamming on WFMT with my colleague Candice Agree on our Flutophones from grammar school. Mine is probably 60 years old!

08/04/2024

We did the colander thing. Pinholes in aluminum foil worked even better. Smaller aperture.

06/04/2024

Filmed the changeover from basketball to hockey last night at the United Center! Fifty workers did the job in just over two hours. The ice is under there the whole time! Oh, and they let me shoot some hoops, skate around and hitch a Zamboni ride. What a thrill!

31/03/2024

GLASS FLOWERS at the Harvard Museum of Natural History! Yes these were all made by father and son Czech glass artists between 1886 and 1936.

30/03/2024

I spotted two buildings by Chicago architect Jeanne Gang in two cities in two weeks. Hotel Populus under construction in Denver, and the Richard Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Wow!

19/03/2024

Filming today behind the scenes on the “burn stage” of the NBC series Chicago Fire at CineSpace studios on the west side. They gave us our own trailer! Consultant to the series and retired Chicago firefighter Steve “Chik” Chikerotis suited me up. He said, “Now imagine running up 20 flights of stairs in all this heavy gear, and with a hose over your shoulder.”

16/03/2024

Denver’s Brown Palace hotel from 1892. So much for the idea that the first “atrium hotels” were by John Portman in the 1960s!

15/03/2024

Props department Lyric Opera of Chicago!

14/03/2024

The wig shop at they make wigs one hair at a time! Takes 2 to 4 weeks to make one wig.