Today would have been Mike Royko's 79th birthday and we thought we'd honor it by looking back at the time he pissed off Frank Sinatra. more ›

So what's the forecast on what would have been Mike Royko's 79th birthday today? more ›

The short film Royko at the Goat, has been around for years. Here it is again with a new forward from filmmaker Scott Jacobs about how the short was made. more ›

38 years ago today one of Mike Royko's signature columns appeared in the Chicago Daily News. more ›

He was a Pulitzer Prize winner, documenter of our city for decades, creator of Slats Grobnik and other slice-of-life characters that helped summarize the Chicago experience, the man who followed "Boss" Daley the First better than anyone else and who provided perspective for a nation. His obituary called him "quite simply the best." We had many years and thousands of columns from Mike Royko. Do we really need his love letters? more ›

We really can't get enough of Windy Citizen's new video section. Besides telling us how awesome Chicago is, we also got an old Sun-Times commercial featuring Roger Ebert. In the spirit of equal time, here's a 1987 commercial for the Tribune featuring the legendary Mike Royko. more ›

We'll admit it - we watch Antiques Roadshow. (You may recall we've discussed a predilection for so-called "senior" television when we talked about loving CBS Sunday Morning.) We're suckers for the moment of the "reveal" when everyone finds out how much the heirloom or garage sale purchase is worth - or isn't. more ›

Chicago loves Mike Royko so much, over a decade after his death, that the equivalent of a student film about the guy merits press mentions everywhere. Perhaps we should self-edit on the fly: Chicago press loves Mike Royko so much...you fill in the rest. And yes, we like Royko as much as the next person (as long as the next person didn't run into him around closing time at a bar) but do we really need to be excited about a half hour film based on three of his columns? more ›

Now that the Cubs are in the playoffs, want to convert? Or maybe you've been a Cubs fan but need to brush up on your trivia skills? Tonight, authors Glenn Stout, of the Best American Sports series, and Richard A. Johnson, the curator of the New England Sports Museum, present their latest collaboration, The Cubs: The Complete Story of Chicago Cubs Baseball, at Harold Washington Library. The Cubs details Cubs history covering such items as... more ›

This whole CWM history deal is something of a learning process. Well, hopefully it is for you, Constant Reader, as well as for us. For example, we were well aware of the incredible and ever-swelling numbers of Chicago history books, with their tremendous photographic accompaniment. Hell, we practically have the Dewey Decimal reference number for the "HIST-CHICAGO" section at Sulzer memorized. (It's F548 something something.) So when we were doing a little research at the... more ›

You may not realize it, but 30 years ago today, Richard J. Daley died, leaving the city without the mayor it had known for nearly a generation, and setting the stage for three terms of political infighting, drama, and chaos in City Hall. The Sun-Times has reprinted the report it published that day in 1976, as well as Mike Royko's column about the man, and the myth. We here at Chicagoist have taken our jabs... more ›

In an effort to remind tourists that Chicago has celebrities too, Grant Park Advisory Council president Bob O’Neill wants to create a Walk of Stars in the South Loop. While the papers are calling this an attempt to bring Hollywood to Chicago, there’s nothing very L.A. about names like Irv Kupcinet, George Halas, Mike Royko and Carl Sandburg. These are all folks that are well-known to most Chicagoans and would only inspire owl noises from... more ›

Chicagoist's foodies are rarely surprised when they hear about restaurant expansion, especially when that restaurant is a popular brand with proven success. more ›