With winter off to a frigid start, it’s easy to give in to the beckoning of your warm bed and your roommate’s Netflix account. But there are a few indoor Chicago activities that don’t freeze over in the winter and are worth donning your ski mask and snow pants on the L to get there.
Everyone is familiar with the big-name museums of the city – the Field, the Shedd, the Museum of Science and Industry, to name a few. Perhaps you’ve been there, done that and paid the hefty admission price. But Chicago is city full of museums of all shapes and sizes, and many of the smaller, lesser known museums are just as worthwhile as the larger ones, and cheaper to boot.
Busy Beaver Button Museum
Where: 3279 W. Armitage Ave.
Cost: Free
Hours: Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Best feature: A display of buttons dedicated solely to streaking
Joel and Christen Carter, a self-described “brother/sister button making/collecting duo,” have been collecting buttons since they were kids. Christen still remembers the first button she ever owned – a pin-back featuring Snoopy and Woodstock that she bought when she was 12 years old.
While in college, Christen started a pin-back buttonmaking business after visiting London and noting the popularity of one-inch pin-backs in promoting punk bands. While in London, she learned how to make buttons and took her idea back to the United States to start a button revival.
Today, the Busy Beaver Button Co. is both a buttonmaking factory and a museum. They manufacture buttons for companies and bands and showcase these as well as historical buttons that have been donated or that they’ve purchased.
The museum currently displays approximately 1,500 buttons separated by category, and their total collection includes a staggering 6,000 buttons. They have buttons advertising the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, the Obama victory rally, women’s suffrage, different kinds of beer, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (the first Disney character), “The