Chicago

Twelve shops, and they cluster. Lincoln Square holds two of them on the same avenue — a general store at 4710 North Lincoln and the cookware shop at 4747, near enough to do in one stop. Logan Square holds both furniture benches, on Belden and on Armitage. West Town carries the plant shop on Damen and the salvage warehouse on Hubbard, and Ravenswood the shop-and-gallery room on Ravenswood Avenue. The rest sit alone in their own corners: Andersonville up on Clark, Humboldt Park’s garden centre on Chicago Avenue, a nursery out on Elston, a vintage suite up a Pilsen loft building, and the market on North Clark in Lincoln Park.

It’s grouped below by what you’re after. None of it paid to be here, and we haven’t been through these doors ourselves — every page says so plainly, and every one is free for its owner to take and correct. Four of the twelve publish hours we’d repeat; the rest keep studio weeks or seasonal ones, so write ahead rather than trusting a map.