Frankie Knuckles in 2007 Photo: Claire Greenway/Getty Images March 1977 You can talk about East Coast–West Coast hip-hop and Studio 54 all you want, but in the realm of Black dance music, Chicagoans can claim one seminal style as theirs and theirs alone. The propulsive synth- and high-hat-juiced remixes of soul and disco records DJ … Read more
Burke just after the raid Photo: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune November 29, 2018 Everyone knew something big was going down when feds swarmed into the offices of Chicago’s longest-serving alderman. Burke was reelected the following February even as prosecutors built an extortion case against him, but the Teflon seemed to be finally wearing off, and suddenly … Read more
Photo: Frank Hanes/Chicago Tribune May 25, 1979 A witness on the ground at O’Hare captured a nightmarish photo of the DC-10 turned sideways in the sky after losing an engine during takeoff. Seconds later, the jet plunged into a field in Des Plaines, killing all 271 people on board and two on the ground. There … Read more
Photo: Ed Wagner Jr./Chicago Tribune July 12, 1979 The Sox were 40–46 going into the twinight double-header with the Tigers at Comiskey Park, and the club’s management had invited Dahl to stage the promotion to attract teenage fans. It backfired. When Dahl — who later insisted the stunt was just a bunch of kids “pissing on a … Read more
Ira Glass in 2007 Photo: Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune November 17, 1995 The voice-in-your-head intimacy, the immersive storytelling, the fascination with the overlooked or the obscure — those calling cards of the modern-day podcast can trace their origins to Glass. In 1996, he changed the name of his program to This American Life and never looked back. … Read more
Sandra Cisneros in 2002 Photo: Milbert O. Brown/Chicago Tribune January 1, 1984 The media barely noticed the arrival of this vivid novel, narrated by a teenage girl coming of age in a Mexican American neighborhood — inspired by Cisneros’s early years in Humboldt Park — but it has since sold six million copies and been translated into 20 languages. … Read more
The pronunciation of our fair city by the lake is a matter of local controversy — and like anywhere else, regional speech is giving way to national speech.
Delving into Chicago’s past, the author picked up the trail of a forgotten literary light whose life uncannily paralleled their own.
The pandemic may have put a stop to big weddings, but plenty of local couples are still getting hitched at City Hall. One morning in September, we captured the big day for 10 of them.
