Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago

by Rick Kogan
photographs by Charles Osgood

Northwestern University Press, 2008
Cloth: 978-0-8101-2349-6 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-6345-4 | Paper: 978-0-8101-5193-2
Library of Congress Classification F548.37.K64 2006
Dewey Decimal Classification 977.31100222

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

"A wonderful book that tells you the basic truths of our city." —Studs Terkel

Few people know Chicago as do Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood, and their "Sidewalks" column for the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine is a tour of the city like no other, taking readers to the off-beat and quintessential spots that give Chicago its character—that make its inhabitants feel at home and tell its visitors that they have arrived.

Accompanied by evocative color photographs by Charles Osgood, Kogan's pieces revisit the lost places and people of Chicago, and take readers down the quiet byways and thriving thoroughfares, pointing out the characters and cornerstones, the oddities and institutions that make the city what it is. In this collection you will find an elegy for Maxwell Street, the marketplace that pulsed with city life for more than 100 years; a remembrance of a disturbing advertisement ("Are you a slave to housework?") on the side of a building on Irving Park Road; a cross marking a deadly intersection; a magical miniature golf course; as well as ballad singer Fred Holstein, the denizens of the World Gym and memories of Bensinger's pool hall, the day-camp kids of summer, bike couriers, the creatures of the beach, and much, much more. Here is Chicago, past, present, and—let's hope—future, captured in the unique archive of Sidewalks.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Born and raised in Chicago, Rick Kogan began his newspaper career at sixteen. He has worked for the Chicago Daily News,Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Tribune, where he is a senior writer and columnist for the Sunday magazine. He is the author of ten books, including Yesterday’s Chicago (in collaboration with his father, Herman); Everybody Pays: Two Men, One Murder, and the Price of Truth (in collaboration with Maurice Possley); America’s Mom: The Life, Lessons, and Legacy of Ann Landers; and A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream, the history of the Billy Goat. He is also the creator and host of WGN’s Sunday Papers with Rick Kogan.

Charles Osgood was born in Milwaukee and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He attended Ripon College and received a master of fine arts in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After beginning his career at the City News Bureau, he came to the Chicago Tribune as a reporter, switching to photography, his lifelong passion, in 1970. Since then assignments have taken him along sidewalks around the world.

REVIEWS

"Of course, the sidewalk is the heart side of all great cities. It is here where the anonymous millions--those who make the city work--run, amble, play, jump, hop, and breathe. Of course, it calls upon our most gifted and insightful of journalists, Rick Kogan, with his magic words, and Charlie Osgood, with his gimlet eye, to do the trick. And how they do it! Sidewalks is a wonderful book that tells you the basic truths of our city, Chicago. Six thumbs up, including mine." —Studs Terkel

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"When Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood take a detour to one of Chicago's sidewalks, they're telling us about the city's true main streets, where people work and live and love and dream and express themselves in a uniquely Chicago way. Kogan and Osgood are journalists, but they are also poets. Their stories are the stories of a great city captured at a certain moment in time. This is an instant treasure." —Richard Roeper, film critic and columnist, Chicago Sun-Times

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"What a perfect combination, Rick Kogan and Charles Osgood! Who tells better stories than Rick? And who sees for us better than Charles? Again, what a perfect combination!" —Victor Skrebneski

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
Preface 000
Morning on Maxwell 000
And Now 000
The Flock of Fifty-Third 000
A Good Walk Unspoiled 000
High on Religion 000
Running the Tables 000
Post No Belles 000
Clean Machines 000
Nine Lives to Live 000
Healing and Hope 000
Big Big Man 000
The Man on the Porch 000
Biking in Blizzards 000
A Bloody Good Pub 000
Somewhere 000
Making a Splash 000
Just Plain Folk 000
In the Corn 000
The Kids of Summer 000
Hot Coffee, Cool Cats 000
Barn Again 000
Memories of a Blue Bike 000
And They're Off 000
Decades of Grunts 000
My Lover the Car 000
Giving Back 000
Spicy Surprises 000
Little Big Man 000
Ethan's Little Secret 000
Underground Books 000
Sundays in Saloons 000
Urban Beasts 000
Uptown Guy 000
C'mon InReally 000
Two Stories, No Waiting 000
Skull Session 000
A Life in Three Acts 000
Poetry in Commotion 000
Follow the Bouncing Ball 000
When the Mood Strikes 000
The Collector 000
One Very Big Bat 000
Keeping Pace with Mustangs 000
Boo's Soul Kitchen 000
Taking It to the Streets 000
Writing on the Wall 000
A Taste of Cotton Candy 000
No Place Like Home 000
Set 'Em Up 000
A Cat and Mouse Story 000
Kids Stuff 000
Jazz and Guns 000
Of Bar Stools and Barbershops 000
Hope in Hammond 000
A Life on the Water 000
Keeping the Faith 000
Adventures in the Skin Trade 000
Life at a Buck a Bag 000
Rough Road 000
Innocence of the Cows 000
The Fixers 000
Rocky at Royko's Grave 000
Hot Dog Fever 000
Art of the State 000
A Street-Smart Fellow 000
Winter Wonderlands 000
The Face on the Wall 000
Tito Gets a Haircut 000
The Roadside Gallery 000
A Thriving Five-and-Ten 000
A Refugee's Lasting Legacy 000
A Cold Day in Paradise 000
The Death of Big Kitty 000
The Sands of Time 000
Uneasy Neighbors 000
The Oldest Library 000
Happy Endings 000
Creatures of the Beach 000
He Made a Toothpick Titanic 000
Well Traveled 000
A Patch of Peace 000
In a Day's Work 000
Life and Death on the River 000
Ham and Fromage 000
Any Way the Wind Blows 000
A Novel Garden 000
When in Roma's 000
Still Tough 000
Words to Live By 000
Meet the Doughnut Man 000
Local Literature 000
Saloons in the Sky 000
Written on the Rocks 000
Eating at Joe's 000
Hooked on Ice 000
The Battle of Balbo 000
What's for Frokost? 000
Dubious Honors 000
The Quick Brown Fox 000
A Touch of the Past 000
Loving Bonnie 000
Of Bullets and Bricks 000
A Winning Meal Ticket 000
The Way Things Were 000
An Ode to Bologna 000
Mr. Barber 000
A Deadly Shortcut 000
American Dreamer 000
A Cop Who Loved Music 000
Making Music 000
The Last Beach 000
On the Road to Nowhere 000
New Voices in the Park 000
Acknowledgments 000
Index 000

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