Berwyn, IL Indoor Activities

On 10 a.m. on the first day of 2013, City Park's Great Lawn will fill with people ready to start the year off not with a resolution, but a commitment—a commitment to a healthy lifestyle. They'll run, walk, or jay-walk through the park and Marconi Drive on the flat, fast course, which it circles back to the Great Lawn where they started. After the race, runners can stick around for a post-race party to celebrate a successful first morning of the New Year.

In more than 30 cities across the nation, other runners will be participating in similar events as part of a movement that aims to stymie the rising rates of obesity and inaction in the United States.

With every heartbeat, the crew at Four Plus One feel soccer pulsing through their veins. This passion becomes tangible on the soccer pitch, where Four Plus One organizes five-a-side league play for players of all ages and skill levels. Playing a five versus five match, as opposed to the standard 11 versus 11, makes the game more accessible and gives players more touches on the ball, allowing them to develop their skills at a faster pace. Games are played on a boarded field shipped in on a hovercraft from England, the results in a faster pace for adrenaline-fueled, energetic, and cardio-intensive competition.

The organization focuses solely on its one true love, soccer, allowing it to perfect its league and the game, instead of spreading thin organizing softball, basketball, and alien-human-hybridization leagues. Certified refs patrol the pitch, meaning players can count on honest, fair play. As a part of Windy City Wanders FA, Four Plus One shares an affiliation with the Chicago Fire, maintaining a solid presence in Chicago's soccer-loving community from rec leagues all the way to the pros.

With its gargantuan ballroom space, the Congress Theater is just as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the ears. The former movie palace, which boasts a curved upper deck lined with red-velvet seats, beckons concertgoers to its lushly vintage confines for country-music shows, bluegrass festivals, and electronic-music performances. Regardless of the act, audience members revel beneath an ornately decorated domed ceiling that's perfect for jetpack escapes when the dance floor gets too crowded. The theater also is branching out into its surrounding neighborhood by filling attached storefronts with restaurants, small grocers, and other community partners.

After putting the final brushstroke on a new painting, an artist member of Chicago Art Leasing uploads photos of the piece to the site's online lending library. Crowded with diverse art styles, the gallery harbors paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media works. Most of the works are also available for purchase, but the artists are happy to part with their creations for short-term leases on the walls of businesses, homes, and bee hives.

A Chicago artist and entrepreneur founded the artwork-lending business to make original art more accessible to the masses. Leases begin around $50 per month, and lease-to-own options foster gradual investment in art. Customers can also swap rentals for new pieces when they redecorate or wallpaper over their old display.

When the DePaul Blue Demons battle their Big East foes at Wish Field, many of their spectators do not stay for the entire game. It’s not, however, because the match lacks excitement; it’s because these spectators are on moving trains that roll in and out of the Fullerton 'L' station nearby. The hearty clangs and thumps of passing trains make Wish Field a unique soccer pitch, on which aspiring strikers, midfielders, and goalies can learn in camps designed and taught by the players and staff who regularly compete on the field.

Men's head coach Craig Blazer and women's head coach Erin Chastain lead their respective youth camps. For the past decade, Blazer, a former goalkeeper, has helmed the Blue Demon squad, a post he commanded after working with the U.S. national team. Chastain began her collegiate coaching career at Northwestern University before spending five seasons at the California powerhouse Santa Clara.

The two head coaches design their training programs with the help of their assistants, Craig Reynolds and Michele O'Brien. Reynolds' resumé includes stints with the Chicago Fire, and O'Brien's CV includes time spent playing on the Irish national team in 2011, when they reached the European championships.:

From the first televised presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon to Neil Armstrong using his smartphone to check-in at the moon, some of society's most formative moments are products of major advances in communication technology. In its collection of nearly 100,000 hours of digitized television and radio broadcasts and more than 1,800 artifacts—including the camera that broadcast the Kennedy-Nixon debate—the Museum of Broadcast Communications immortalizes the progression of media formats and their place in history. Besides historic newsreels and pivotal artifacts, the museum's curators have equally embraced the light-hearted side of communications, with collections of puppets and props from classic children's television shows and a compendium of television commercials dating back 60 years. Those who grew up in the Chicagoland area will recognize artifacts from locally filmed WGN programs such as Bozo's Circus and Garfield Goose and Friends. Several characters from The Ray Ranyer Show spark fond memories, most notably his beloved canine puppet, Cuddly Dudley. Additionally, a compendium of television commercials dating back 60 years.

Elsewhere, a 17-foot tall neon and steel media tower makes for great King Kong reenactments, and features 36 monitors as well as vintage control room equipment. The interactivity continues in the television studio, where visitors can tape their own newscasts. While museum guests are free to explore permanent exhibits in the National Radio Hall of Fame, which houses artifacts from The Jack Benny Program and the original ventriloquist dummies from The Charlie McCarthy Show, they're also encouraged to check out new summer exhibits such as The Life & Times of Gary Coleman.