Jim Tuohy was taller than this. (D. Hoekstra pix.)
The fine Chicago writer Jim Tuohy was a curious guy. He cut his chops at the City News Bureau of Chicago, wrote for the Chicago Reader and Chicago Lawyer and co-authored 1989’s “Greylord: Justice, Chicago Style” with Rob Warden.
My encounters with Tuohy were almost always after 2 a.m. at the Old Town Ale House and sometimes earlier in the evening at O’Rourke’s and Riccardo’s. He was always interested in what stories I was working on. He radiated a sincere sense of wonder. He leaned into me like light through a shadow.
Tuohy died of kidney failure in January [...]
Summer, 2025 (D. Hoekstra photo.)
I’ve been going to Feed since Donna Knezek and Liz Sharp opened the southern-inspired diner twenty years ago in a country-industrial gumbo of Humboldt Park.
Feed, 2803 W. Chicago Ave., is a couple of blocks north of the Milwaukee District railroad station. In 2005, the bar next door was the Famous Pizza Lounge (a.k.a. Hiawatha Inn), a former speakeasy with a curious clientele and a loud jukebox. Today, the Continental Lounge features a mural that pays tribute to the Milwaukee Road’s Hiawatha.
Christ Bambulas (1931-2013, a.k.a. Chris) owned the building that housed the [...]
Ernie Medina was a passionate Chicago music fan who joined the Merchant Marines in 1969. When Medina returned to his sister’s home near Glenwood and Ridge in Chicago he taped urban radio and favorite records on his Grundig TK2400 reel-to-reel tape recorder. Like an anchor in his soul, Medina dragged the machine on the USNS Wyandot when he returned to sea.
His son, Mike Medina, is a fine Chicago urban historian and musician who recently repaired the broken-down Grundig. Medina is a former airline mechanic who now repairs lab equipment at the University of Chicago. His father died in 2009 but he has heard a reborn spirit in the Chicago music experience of the [...]
Duke Slater (1898-1966)
Once you learn that a good life comes from a series of small gains you will move on to bigger things. This is the ethos of football legend Duke Slater. Frederick “Duke” Slater was the first Black lineman in the National Football League. He played for the Chicago Cardinals between 1926 and 1931 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.
After his football career, Slater became an attorney on the South Side of Chicago and was the first Black judge to serve on the Cook County Superior Court. He earned his law degree from the University of Iowa in 1928 and practiced law while [...]
