Rick Kogan – Page 32 –

Coach Gil Thorp is eligible for senior discounts. As the comic turns 65, a new writer hopes to ‘bring the strip into our current age’

June 21, 2023 at 5:55 a.m.

Gil Thorp turns 65 this year on Sept. 8. This may not come as a shock. To many of you, that name means nothing. For thousands, Gil Thorp is but...

Newsman Mike Flannery of WFLD-Channel 32 at the FOX studio newsroom in Chicago on June 19, 2023.

Mike Flannery is bowing out after 50 years of covering the wild and wacky world of politics

June 20, 2023 at 10:01 a.m.

Mike Flannery walked into the newsroom of the Chicago Sun-Times on June 18, 1973, a fresh-faced, hopelessly curious and wildly energetic 22-year-old and now he is calling it quits, leaving...

RAGBRAI is an annual bike ride across Iowa that attracts thousands of bikers and is now the subject of a new film title "Shift."

RAGBRAI is an annual bike ride across Iowa. This documentary shows what it means to those who ride it.

June 7, 2023 at 9:20 a.m.

They ride and ride and then ride some more, tens of thousands of them. All ages, sizes and shapes, they ride across Iowa every year in the summer heat. They...

Justin Robinson, right, from Northport, Alabama, talks about his paintings while enjoying the Old Town Art Fair in 2011.

Art fairs swing back to colorful life, with the Old Town Art Fair this weekend

June 6, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

A splendid and often rewarding way to spend a summer Saturday or Sunday is to wander the sun-splashed streets of a city or suburban neighborhood and look at, in the...

Chris Vallillo's latest album is "Forgottonia," named after a real place, of sorts, in Western Illinois.

Chris Vallillo takes a musical journey to the people and places of the Illinois ‘nation’ of Forgottonia

June 1, 2023 at 10:50 a.m.

Chris Vallillo, an accomplished songwriter and singer, did not start out wanting to be a songwriter and singer but rather was drawn to archaeology and that has given him the...

Peter Bella, a retired CPD officer, is having his first photography exhibition at the Dime Gallery on Western Avenue in Chicago May 25, 2023.

He was a Chicago cop for three decades. Now Peter Bella is capturing the city in photos.

May 30, 2023 at 6:17 a.m.

There are tough jobs and there are very tough jobs and then there is the job of being a Chicago cop. That's what Peter Bella was for nearly 30 years,...

Augie and Tracy Aleksy laugh inside their Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park on May 18, 2023. They've owned the business for more than 30 years.

As Centuries & Sleuths owner prepares to retire after 30 years, a look at the joys of running an independent bookstore

May 23, 2023 at 5:15 a.m.

After more than 30 years of reading books, loving books, selling books, and hosting authors and readers at his pleasant Forest Park bookstore named Centuries & Sleuths, Augie Aleksy is...

Former baiduhai critic and writer Cliff Terry.

Longtime Tribune writer and critic Cliff Terry dies

May 19, 2023 at 10:44 p.m.

The word "gentleman" is not ordinarily attached to newspaper writers but it, along with such other descriptions as "witty," "incisive" and "stylish," peppered conversations in the wake of the death...

Gene Tunney, right, fights Jack Dempsey at Soldier Field in what now is remembered as the "Long Count" match. Tunney retained his championship by a winning decision over Jack Dempsey before a crowd of 145,000 in September 1927.

New play at Theater Wit focuses on unlikely friendship between boxer Gene Tunney and George Bernard Shaw

May 17, 2023 at 5:00 a.m.

Among the many, many endeavors in his lengthy and active life, George Bernard Shaw wrote plays, more than 60 of them, the most famous being "Man and Superman" "Saint Joan"...

Boxing legend Jack Johnson in an undated photo.

New book ‘Last On His Feet’ captures brilliantly boxer Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century

May 18, 2023 at 1:05 p.m.

The first Black boxing champion was a man named Jack Johnson and a few years before he died in 1946, he told a young reporter, "Just remember, whatever you write...

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