Sign in

Private company

Gapers Block

Defunct Chicago-centric web publication

Gapers Block (Gapers Block Media, LLC) was a Chicago-centric web publication focused on covering Chicago culture under the tag line: "Slow down and check out Chicago". The site, gapersblock.com, lists local events, aggregates other Chicago blogs and news of local interest and features many topical blogs: A/C (arts and culture), Drive-Thru (food related), Transmission (local music), Mechanics (state and local politics), Tailgate (sports coverage), and Book Club (book club and literary scene coverage).2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2003Founded1

See how the biggest companies compare on our leaderboards

Gapers Block (Gapers Block Media, LLC) was a Chicago-centric web publication focused on covering Chicago culture under the tag line: "Slow down and check out Chicago". The site, gapersblock.com, lists local events, aggregates other Chicago blogs and news of local interest and features many topical blogs: A/C (arts and culture), Drive-Thru (food related), Transmission (local music), Mechanics (state and local politics), Tailgate (sports coverage), and Book Club (book club and literary scene coverage).2

The story

Conceived in 2003 by Andrew Huff and Naz Hamid, the stuck-in-traffic themed section names, such as Merge (blog, links aggregation), Slowdown (calendar event listings), and Rearview (noteworthy local photos), are inspired by the Chicago-coined term, "gapers' block", a synonym (with "gapers' delay") for rubbernecking. The site was the first city blog in Chicago and one of the earliest examples of the genre; Gothamist and the Metroblogging network were also founded in 2003.

The site was written by volunteers from various backgrounds and professions, with content organized into topical sections, including arts & culture, literature, food, music, politics, and sports.

In 2010, the cookbook The Everything Cast Iron Cookbook was published, based in large part on author Cinnamon Cooper's "One Good Meal" column on Gapers Block.

In December 2015, editor and publisher Andrew Huff announced the site would be going on "indefinite hiatus" on January 1, 2016.

From Wikipedia’s article on Gapers Block, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Timeline

  1. 2003Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3