One stop shopping for road trip advice….
San Francisco, CA, USA Sorrento, Italy Amsterdam, The Netherlands Toronto, Ontario, Canada Key West, FL, USA Big Sur, CA, USA Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Memphis, TN, USA Acapulco, Mexico Havana, Cuba Miami, FL, USA Create your own travel map or travel blog Great vacation rentals at TripAdvisorMe, with natty tie and brother Doug, circa 1967.
Monday, April 5, 2010
The north wing of Edward Hospital in Naperville featues a cul-de-sac a bit smaller than the loop-de-loop I grew up on a couple miles away. On Easter Sunday I visited my Mom in the hospital. Basking in the sun of a promised summer, two families wheeled out new borns in spiffy carriages tied up with congratulatory balloons. A proud father smiled and said ‘Good morning.’ My Mom, 88, was having her blood clots dissolved.Such is the circle of life.My Mom is a strong minded coal miner’s daughter from downstate Taylorville, Illinois. My Dad, which you may have read in previous blogs, came up through the [...]
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The future of newspapering depends on thinking outside the box.One dream I can’t shake is to have Sun-Times news boxes hand painted in a folk art motif by young Chicago students. I first saw this on the sleepy streets of Fairbanks, Alaska during the summer of 2005 when I attended the Midnight Sun Baseball Game (that starts at midnight on June 21; Summer Solstice). The boxes were quirky, colorful and drew attention. The boxes depicted cartoon figures and regional landmarks.
When I returned from that trip I mentioned this to my friends at the Hideout music club who said they would be willing to coordinate students and host an art [...]
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The save is a big part of being a brother.I didn’t understand this on August 21, 1975. My brother Doug and I were in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field. Doug was 13 years old. I had just turned 20.The Cubs were playing the Dodgers and we were keeping score—-just as we sometimes did into our adult lives. Andy Messersmith was the starting pitcher for Los Angeles and Rick “Big Daddy” Reuschel (one of my all time favorite Cubs) took the mound for Chicago. It was a meaningless game. The Cubs were in 5th place with a 58-68 record. Only 8,377 fans were in attendance.
I’m looking at my scorecard now. Rick Monday went 2 for 4 and [...]
Sunday, February 7, 2010
WHITING, Ind.—-Surely there is no place like this place.While the name of the Purple Steer restaurant suggests a 1968 acid trip from Haight-Ashbury, the 24-hour diner is in fact at the working class corner of Indianapolis Boulevard and Calumet Avenue in Whiting. On the west corner the Purple Steer faces the Robertsdale Inn, a ramshackle tropical drink roadhouse. The north side looks out over Oasis Discount Liquors.This is Caribbean escapism for the Calumet Region, one of the grittiest sections of America.On the clearest of days the skies can be gray.The countryside is dotted with “Tank Farms,” a series of mundane white septic [...]
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Chicken Buses of Guatemala are tripped out-pimped up-lowdown moving pieces of folk art.I love them.The buses are retired coach and school buses. Most of the ones I rode out of Antigua were built by the Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Ga. The Blue Bird emblem was still entrenched like a sheriff’s badge near the front door of the Chicken Buses I rode. The school bus company started in 1927 as the Blue Bird Body Company in Richmond, Ind. under Christian principles. An original sign from company founders reading “God is our Refuge & Strength” still hangs the corporate headquarters in Georgia.
Perhaps the Chicken Buses [...]
Friday, January 8, 2010
A bunch of palm trees are not as interesting as one palm tree.A singular palm tree became my respite during a New Year’s Eve vacation to Guatemala. I was with Adriana and her sister. I have never traveled with two women—at least in the physical sense. They are younger than me. At times it seemed I was in a reality show.
I was in La Barrona, (pop. 900), where no one spoke conversational English. I recalled a few phrases from high school before I flunked out of Spanish II. On our first day at La Baronna (sandbar), Adriana and I came upon a large sandbar with the slope of a crescent moon. Adriana was in La Barrona a few years ago when [...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
During the holiday season it is better to swing from the vines than sit in a tree.
This is why I was amped up over a monkey serving tray I found last week in an antique store in Lincoln, Ill. during a detour on a road trip to St. Louis. I thought of two things: how the green and brown motif would make a great accessory for my home tiki bar (see PHOTO gallery). I also thought of my friend Bob and a New Year’s Day we spent at Sunset Junque on the Blue Star Highway near South Haven, Mich. That’s when I scored a four-foot long bamboo monkey with a baby monkey in tow. Bob and his companion Cleo loved it.I may have loved the monkey serving [...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
During the holiday season it is better to swing from the vines than sit in a tree.
This is why I was amped up over a monkey serving tray I found last week in an antique store in Lincoln, Ill. during a detour on a road trip to St. Louis. I thought of two things: how the green and brown motif would make a great accessory for my home tiki bar (see PHOTO gallery). I also thought of my friend Bob and a New Year’s Day we spent at Sunset Junque on the Blue Star Highway near South Haven, Mich. That’s when I scored a four-foot long bamboo monkey with a baby monkey in tow. Bob and his companion Cleo loved it.I may have loved the monkey serving tray [...]
Friday, November 27, 2009
I picked up this picture on Thanksgiving Eve at the Carriagetown Antique Center near downtown Flint, Mich.I don’t have any family in Flint, although I have come to appreciate the gritty city as an Orphan of Americana.
I have looked at this picture every night. I paid $10 and it already is worth $100 of deep thought.Who are these guys? I can tell they are from the Flint Athletic Club 1939-40. The small print on the Flint-Stone explains they were in the Buick “78” League. They’re clearly not 78 years old although I presume they all worked at the Buick factory in Flint.
I’ve had fun imagining their [...]
Friday, November 20, 2009
Making Ukranian Village brighter.
Now that the sun has emerged in Chicago my Obama Chia Pet is finally sprouting some hair.I first saw the Obama Chia several months ago at a downtown CVS. I figured I’d get it at some later date but then there was a big hullabaloo about the meaningless planters being politically incorrect. They were pulled off the shelves along with a George Washington Chia Pet, an innocent bystander.
I was hellbent on getting an Obama Chia Pet.I perused the Internet but it was more fun to try and find one in person. The clerks at north side drug stores were pretty testy. One woman even suggested it was [...]
Friday, October 23, 2009
There’s a symposium on meat in Chicago this weekend.I won’t be able to attend—my rascal nephew Jude is in town for his 7th birthday,But I will be there in spirit.My father worked for Swift & Co. at the Union Stockyards on Chicago’s South Side. He began as a messenger boy in 1937 and moved up to purchasing agent at the Swift offices in the Loop before retiring in 1981.
The symposium at Kendall College covers all kinds of stuff. There’s panelists on cattle production from the cow-calf producer to the feedlot operator and beef processing and marketing as practiced in the past.The sponsoring Greater Midwest [...]
Friday, October 16, 2009
We both like cars (Photo by Danny Clinch)
Lucinda Williams just left Chicago.Hey, that sounds like a Z.Z. Top song.Earlier this week I took in the first two nights of Willliams’ scorching three-night residency at the Park West nightclub—-a former strip joint—in Chicago. The shows stacked up as a 30th anniversary chronological review of the singer-songwriter’s recording career. Williams’ first record consisted of raw blues covers and Hank Williams (no relation) “Jambalya (On the Bayou)” made in 1978 for Smithsonian Folkways, the seminal home of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and others. On Tuesday’s opening night at the Park West she told [...]
Monday, August 31, 2009
The recent death of Jim Dickinson got me to thinking about the late Sputnik Monroe. This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago that kicked around Sports Illustrated for a bit before getting kicked back to me. Jim and Sputnik are kindred spirits spinning around the earth.
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA
Sputnik Monroe was a satellite of a man who saw a planet big enough for all walks of life. The rock n’ roll wrestler was born in 1928 as Roscoe Brumbaugh on the plains of Dodge City, Ks. He came of age in the restless humidity of Memphis, Tn. He died in November, 2006 in the cradle of promise called Florida. He never backed off from the [...]
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
I’ve known Chicago radio and television personality Bob Sirott longer than he knows.I’ll be on the Sunday Night Radio Special, hosted by Sirott and Marianne Murciano, at 10 p.m. Aug. 30 on WGN Radio (720 AM). I’ll be talking about my book “Cougars and Snappers and Loons (Oh My!),” a field guide to Midwest League baseball. But that’s not why I’m here.Deep in the bowels of my home office I found this picture of what must have been a listener give away when Sirott was an on-air personality at the rock n’ roll giant WLS-AM in Chicago.I’m guessing this was taken in 1978 before a Cubs game at Wrigley [...]
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Monday, June 22, 2009
How did this guy make it to 2009?In a 1988 interview the master of the soul music cover told me he listens to nearly 500 songs before making his selections. Besides this ditty here Cocker has re-popularized Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” “You Are So Beautiful,” (co-written by the late Billy Preston) and the Box Top’s “The Letter,” among others.Cocker, now, 65, said there is no [...]
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Everyone says that over time dog owners begin to resemble their pets.
Maybe the same is true with rabbits—-this 20 pounder won top prize at last week’s Iowa State Fair.
Thanks to Nicole Bruskewitz for the photo from the trenches.
The lack of hipster quotient is one of the many things I like about state fairs.I just got back from spending a seven hour day at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. I was wide-eyed at every turn. I saw a 1,900 pumpkin, a 20-pound rabbit and zero Lollapalooza tee shirts.My traveling companion Adriana said I was like an 11-year old. This is a vast improvement from my typical 18-year-old persona. I have been to the Illinois State Fair and the Ohio State Fair but there is nothing like the Iowa State Fair. The 400-acre grounds are more woody and hilly than Springfield, Ill. and Columbus, Ohio. In 1987 the Iowa State Fairgrounds were named to [...]
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Everybody has a spot.
This summer my spot became Lake Park Beach in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. It is a neighborhood beach where African-Americans, Jamaicans, Hispanics, whites, gays and straights all mingle in a coarse sand along Lake Michigan.
A mound of jagged rocks define the north end of the small beach while the city skyline curves like a boomerang on the south end. I’ve been told the young lifeguards don’t like folks climbing those rocks. I like taking risks.
I was tired and needed to retreat. My day began at 5:30 a.m. as I scurried to WGN-AM radio studios in the Tribune Tower to talk about my [...]
Baseball & Bowling in Clinton, Iowa
Jerry Ramig as seen on his press pass.
Grass roots marketing is one of the joys of making independent art, whether it is books, music or paintings. That’s how I found myself across the street from Alliant Energy Field in Clinton, Ia., which hosted last week’s 45th annual Midwest League All-Star Game. I was signing copies of my new book “Cougars and Snappers and Loons (Oh My!)—A Midwest League Field Guide.” It was 97 degrees when the session began at 4 p.m.I sat at a table with my publisher George Rawlinson. He wore a leather biker’s cap and assumed the role of carnival barker in [...]
