Rick Kogan

High school students Willie Thornton, Lamar Jackson and Pat Foster stand by the Dr. Martin L. King Drive sign that covers the South Park Way sign the day after Chicago City Council voted to rename the street in 1968.

Chicago was the first of many cities to name a street for MLK. Now a Detroit filmmaker wants to make a movie about them.

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

Judged solely on the way we name our streets, we are a hopelessly dull country. The top-10 list of the most common street names in the land is numerically choked,...

John Devens outside the Givins Irish Castle is at the corner of 103rd Street and Longwood Drive in the Beverly neighborhood on the Far South Side of Chicago.

Want to hear a band in a Chicago castle? New concert series aims to bring music back to Beverly

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

The past ever echoes in the city, especially in winter. And so if you are walking along the stretch of 103rd Street near Longwood Drive don’t be surprised to hear...

Meet the new Chicago band Young Man in a Hurry, with a teacher and a rock ‘n’ roll doctor

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

The doctor-patient relationship is a special, intimate and complex one and though I do not know what you talk to your doctor about, I know that when schoolteacher Matt Baron...

Author Greg Borzo at Lawry's the Prime Rib on Dec. 4, 2018. The space once was the Swedish restaurant Kungsholm.

Why do we miss Chicago restaurants so much when they’re gone? You could write a book

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

You are not, as the worn-out phrase would have it, what you eat. But a good case can be made that you are where you eat. Restaurants come in all...

Jazz artist Sheri Smith of Chicago, and some of her work.

You might see Chicago jazz artist Sheri Smith sketching in the audience at the Green Mill

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

It is night and she sits in the dark in a large room filled with people and with music and, on the best of those nights, a certain kind of...

Detective story author Sara Paretsky of Chicago poses for pictures under train tracks in Hyde Park in 2012.

Courtenay Wright, dead at 95, was the man and muse behind Sara Paretsky’s famous private eye

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

You would see him often at literary events around town, a distinguished figure patiently listening to what was often a parade of writers prattle on about their work. But whenever...

Window designer Yanka Elagoz squeezes into the Russia-themed window spreading "snow" at Marshall Field's in 1999.

Ask Rick: All about our old Chicago tradition of holiday windows on State Street — and an even older pyramid at the Indiana border

July 2, 2019 at 4:53 p.m.

Nobody asked me, but after a year of answering your questions, I had one of my own: “When did the State Street Marshall Field’s (now Macy’s) start decorating its windows...

All Stories

Chicago was the first of many cities to name a street for MLK. Now a Detroit filmmaker wants to make a movie about them.

Want to hear a band in a Chicago castle? New concert series aims to bring music back to Beverly

Meet the new Chicago band Young Man in a Hurry, with a teacher and a rock ‘n’ roll doctor

Why do we miss Chicago restaurants so much when they’re gone? You could write a book

You might see Chicago jazz artist Sheri Smith sketching in the audience at the Green Mill

Courtenay Wright, dead at 95, was the man and muse behind Sara Paretsky’s famous private eye

Ask Rick: All about our old Chicago tradition of holiday windows on State Street — and an even older pyramid at the Indiana border

Donohue’s in New York is one of the last of its kind, with a night of steak and cocktails and plenty of stories

A movie, a novel and a brush with death for Chicago writer Dennis Foley

Seeing the great Route 66, from Chicago to Mater the tow truck, through the pinhole eyes of his camera