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 [...]
Camp Mi Casa, Old Route 66, Carthage, MO,. (Jon Sall photograph)
Like a broken needle in a compass, selling my camper van left me lost in the slipstream. The blue converted 2015 Ford Transit van was the subject of 2018’s “The Camper Book (A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream)”with fine photographs from Jon Sall and a great foreword from actor-Detroit Tigers fan Jeff Daniels.
The van became a 10-year chapter of my life.
While looking back at the book and photos we took along the way, I arrived at the “what was I thinking?” moment. The van was likely a whiplash response to the passing of [...]
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 [...]
Mark Ibach, a good guy.
A friend to his dog is a friend to all.
My friend Mark Ibach was all that and more. Since 1981, he rescued five basset hounds. There may even have been more that we don’t know about. Mark’s Christmas cards featured a photo of him with his hounds. He brought them to the annual Chicago White Sox Dog Day. He faithfully took them to the annual mid-September Basset Bash & Waddle parade in Dwight, IL. That’s the biggest gathering of basset hounds anywhere.
Mark was the most passionate music fan I knew. He attended nearly 1,000 concerts in his lifetime and often bought two [...]
