John McCarron

''Five, four, three, two, one. Fade sound. Picture up.'' The 16-year-old sophomore from Von Steuben High School couldn`t hear the countdown on the director`s circuit. But she didn`t miss her...

It`s not supposed to happen like this downtown, where the powerful prevail and little-old-ladies-in-tennis-shoes rarely get up a petition to change this or stop that. Maybe that`s why nobody took...

Efforts to build a new hockey and basketball arena on the West Side have been stymied by the city`s refusal to ante up $3.6 million for needed public works, Blackhawks...

The telephones rang all morning Tuesday at the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, 6500 S. Pulaski Rd. ''It`s been like this for two weeks,'' said Stanley Balzekas Jr., nodding at...

State highway officials have identified the first batch of Chicago-area roads to be upgraded into ''strategic arterials''-an honor some suburban officials could do without. One suburb not overjoyed at the...

It was moving day for Ted ''Double Duty'' Radcliffe, and the TV crews from Channels 2 and 9 were crowding into the emptied living room of his public housing apartment...

Extra! Extra! Read all about it: ''Census finds America populated by 250 million unique individuals. . . . No classification possible!'' Count the above headline among those you will definitely...

The Cub Scout pack was plodding down a corridor of the Field Museum, passing without noticing the dimly-lit display cases of fossils and rock strata, when suddenly they spotted the...

Now that the politicians, bureaucrats and preservation buffs have failed to save the Granada Theater, it`s time for Dave Felling, the pro from St. Louis, to pick up the pieces....

When Clare Greenberg retires this spring from her job at City Hall, a slice of Chicago`s civic memory will retire with her. It won`t be a full lobotomy, mind you,...