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 [...]
John Prine always seemed to be there for me.
But his music was there for you, too.
He wrote of angels that fly in from Montgomery, the mystical power of Wisconsin lakes, hobos, clocks and spoons and old people living alone in “Hello In There.”
He wrote “Hello In There” in 1969 based on a memory of delivering newspapers to a senior citizen home. He was only 23 years old. One of his favorite songs was “Far From Me,” about being raised near a junkyard in west suburban Maywood where “a broken bottle looks just like a diamond ring.”
John Prine saw those things.
He helped us understand those things.
John died Tuesday night from [...]
Mark “Max” Brumbach has a gift for me.
Because of that he has a gift for you, too.
As I walk into Brumbach’s new version of the music room-cafe Township, 2200 N. California Ave., he hands over a copy of the Images of America book “Chicago Entertainment Between the Wars 1919-1939.” The picture book is filled with stuff like an ad for Bert Kelly’s Stables, 431 Rush St.: Free Drinks Every Nite As Many As You Wish–no charge for dancing. Our waiter sings. Our Cook Dances. NOW FREDDIE KEPPARD World’s greatest colored jazz cornetist and his great dance band….”
Brumbach is a fine musician, [...]
