While you vote for an alderman, remember two political giants
I was not young and I was not naïve when, on a cold day late in 2005, I decided that it would be a good idea to spend the upcoming...
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Ken Nordine, Chicago creator of ‘word jazz’ who had a voice that ‘could give you the chills,’ dies at 98
Before you read the words written below about the life and times and accomplishments of a man named Ken Nordine, who died Saturday at his North Side home at the...
The Chicago River runs through the city and, boy, it defines our lives
The river is lovely, even in winter, choked as it has been by ice in dazzling shapes. Some Tribune photographers, and those of more modest talents, have peered from the...
‘Tony Accardo is Joe Batters’: Our fascination with Chicago mob bosses continues with a new tell-all book
Old mobsters never die. They won’t even fade away. Instead, they wind up in movies and in books, tucked firmly in our consciousness. This is especially, perhaps even uniquely, true...
100 episodes later, the ‘Booth One’ podcast still tells defining stories of Chicago’s cultural community from an Evanston apartment
In an apartment near the “L” in the leafy suburb of Evanston, a makeshift studio comes to life for a few hours every couple of weeks to create a podcast...
HBO’s ‘Breslin and Hamill’ is about a couple of columnists who mattered from the glory days of newspapers
For old time’s sake, I sat on a subway Tuesday and read a newspaper. I was alone with that paper. Of the other 23 people in the car all but...
Was the tiny Gold Star Sardine Bar Chicago’s greatest nightclub ever?
I don’t need F. Scott Fitzgerald to tell me, as he wrote at the end of “The Great Gatsby,” “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly...
Trinity Irish Dance is coming to the Auditorium — part of a dance journey that’s been different from those ‘Riverdance’ folks
It was almost 20 years ago that the greatest Irish dancer I have ever known told me, over drinks I have to assume because that is what we did together...
Are there any secrets left for us to discover about Chicago? Find out in ‘Secret Chicago’
We live in a world, a city, where secrets are increasingly hard to come by and almost impossible to keep. Thanks a lot, Google. And so when, after it had...
Ask Rick: Was the Waveland golf course a copy, and what became of ChicagoFest?
Slammed by winter’s recent and, to my mind, long overdue wrath, I was able to take refuge in summers long past, thanks to Jerry Ziemann, who wrote to ask, “Is...