Daily Must Reads, September 21, 2015

Presto's highly rated 22-inch electric griddle uses a ceramic coating that's scratch-resistant. You can save on the beloved griddle now during Black Friday sales.

Former Super Bowl-winning Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka and his wife, Diana, on Nov. 12 paid $575,000 for a two-bedroom, 2,143-square-foot condominium on the 30th floor of a Streeterville high-rise. With the purchase, the Ditkas now are once again owners in the same building where they had owned a two-bedroom, 1,904-square-foot condo on the 39th floor from 2000 until late 2023. The Ditkas’ new condo has two bathrooms, a marble entry and hardwood floors throughout the living room and dining room. The unit first had been listed in August for $599,000, and the Ditkas wound up paying the exact same amount — $575,000 — that they got for the sale of their 39th-floor unit a year ago. Emily Sachs Wong, who represented the Ditkas in their new purchase, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This mini waffle maker from Dash is the perfect stocking stuffer and is incredibly affordable during Black Friday.

The Chicago Bears embarked on a new era in February 2023 with the purchase of a site in Arlington Heights where the team hopes to build a new enclosed stadium with a massive entertainment and residential development. In April 2024, the team laid out elaborate plans for a new publicly owned domed stadium on the lakefront but left unanswered how the city would pay for expensive infrastructure improvements. With a dazzling video presentation of a stadium featuring a translucent roof and a glass wall with a view of downtown, team President and CEO Kevin Warren presented his vision for a $3.2 billion focal point for great city gatherings, not just football. The city has an opportunity to build an international attraction that would resonate for generations to come, Warren told a crowd of supporters at the Bears current home, 100-year-old Soldier Field. “It’s time for us to do something special together,” he said. Can the Bears’ lakefront dreams actually come true?

NEW YORK — The holiday shopping season is about to reach full speed with Black Friday, which kicks off the post-Thanksgiving retail rush later this week. The annual sales event no longer creates the midnight mall crowds or doorbuster mayhem of recent decades, in large part due to the ease of online shopping and habits forged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hoping to entice equivocating consumers, retailers already have spent weeks bombarding customers with ads and early offers.

YIWU, China — Visitors who bought fridge magnets at Times Square or other tourist hotspots around New York in recent years most likely were purchasing the work of Du Jing or one of her fellow exporters in a small Chinese city that supplies the U. S. and the world with tons of small commodities. Du and her husband run Yiwu Xianchuang Handicraft Manufacturing in the eastern city of Yiwu, home to the world’s largest wholesale market.