Charley Rosen, Touch of Grey
In a strange way, sitting down and talking to basketball coach-writer-music fan Charley Rosen led to my experimental experience of covering the 1990-91 Bulls for the Chicago Sun-Times.
I’ve always been appreciative of the shadows in minor league sports. Real life lives there. When the Rockford Lighting debuted in the 1986-87 season of the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) I was at the MetroCentre in downtown Rockford.
The late Bulls great Norm Van Lier was the team’s head coach. Future Chicago radio guy Dan Bernstein was working the market. Chicago prep star Cazzie Russell [...]
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 [...]
Thank you, White Sox, thanks Bill! (Provided photo.)
Baseball Hall of Famer Bill Veeck loved incongruity, so he would have enjoyed Saturday’s “Bill Veeck Night” at Rate Field. The White Sox did a fine job with Veeckish stunts such as a pre-game petting zoo featuring Stella the Sloth, a 60-second marriage in center field officiated by former White Sox great Ron Kittle, a puffy Andrew the Clown, and a cool Veeck bobblehead.
But incongruity rounded the bases at the end of the game.
Jesse Cole, the effervescent founder of the Savannah Bananas barnstorming baseball team, appeared with a video message [...]
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 [...]
