Rick Kogan, Chicago's sweetheart

Rick Kogan’s voice warms you up like the liquor he assuredly likes to drink--he once told the Reader’s Mike Miner that Roger Ebert “God love him” failed to make him stop. And it’s smokey, like his cigarettes.

Of course his voice is gravelly too, the word most often applied to it. With that voice, Rick can call literally anybody “honey” and “sweetheart,” and for a variety of reasons. Coming from Rick, the meanings of those words aren’t in any dictionary, but entirely in the voice.

He was born for radio, then, as surely as he was born into newspapers. These days, Rick’s show is “After Hours” on WGN, 5-7 PM Sundays, and I’m thrilled he’s asked me to chat with him Sunday, February 6, about this crazy Substack project.

Rick was the first person I mined for expertise and information a few years back when I started this project and realized how integral newspapers, Chicago history and Mike Royko would be to telling Steve’s story. Rick’s the best source on all three topics.

Rick’s father, Herman Kogan, was a legendary Chicago newspaperman who started and edited the Daily News’ arts section, Panorama. Herman later edited the Sun-Times literary section, and of course held forth on the radio on WFMT. Like Rick, he wrote books about the city we all here love.

The Kogans also wrote together. I’ll never forget how tickled I was to pick up a hardcover copy (with intact dust jacket) of their “Yesterday’s Chicago” at Powell’s one day, and find I already had it autographed by father and son.   

Rick was born into Chicago newspapers and books. Named for the old press haunt Riccardo’s, he grew up in an Old Town apartment frequented by family friends Studs Terkel, Nelson Algren, Mike Royko, and so many more.

History? As a teenager, Rick watched the 1968 Democratic convention police riot right in front of his face, from the front doors of the Conrad Hilton on Michigan Avenue. He was helping out as a summer job in the press room in the hotel basement. As he put it:

“I was fuckin’ 16, getting coffee for these jokers. Yeah, that was an experience. I was wearing my father’s Marine Corps jacket, that was my outfit. My hair was about as long as it is now, and I remember standing behind the cordon of police that were blocking the entrance to the Hilton. And out there, there were people who looked like me, just a few years older, getting the shit beaten out of them. I was interested in girls and playing football. I mean I was not politically motivated at the time. Had no idea what was going on out there. I would say I was politicized at that time.”

What Rick hasn’t seen, he’s researched and written about in literally thousands of articles for first the Chicago Daily News, then the Sun-Times, and finally the Tribune. If Chicago Today hadn’t folded in 1974, he probably would have stopped there too. There are precious few Chicago topics I’ve looked into for this project where I didn’t search newspaper archives and find Rick’s byline.

Rick’s long-time “Sidewalks” column in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine with Charles Osgood is just one example. One of my favorites, which I read originally and again when it popped up in my research, is “Take me to the river - A heartfelt tribute to the Michigan Avenue Bridge.” In Chapter Two, I concentrated on the bridge—since renamed the DuSable Bridge—as a central point around which the rest of the city revolves. But of course, Rick had written about that already, in 2007:

“This is where Chicago comes together for me, in a symphony of buildings and water and sky…you can see the future from the bridge, but it is also where the past whispers, telling of the Algonquins who found skunk cabbage and wild onion on the banks of the river and affixed to this site the Indian name for those earth products, Checagou; of Jean Baptiste du Sable, the black man who became the first non-native settler here when he built a cabin on the river’s northern bank in the 1770s; of the Ft. Dearborn massacre of 1812, and of the engineering geniuses who reversed the river’s flow in 1900 to keep the lake clean…

Maybe you have a special place, a spot in the city that gives you peace and perspective. If not, feel free to share my bridge, my favorite place in my favorite city in the world.”

That’s Rick and Osgood, from their Sidewalks Book Company website (where you can buy the book compilations, “Sidewalks” and “Sidewalks II”).

I’ll be quoting Rick in the Notes about to drop on Chicago newspapers circa 1972, but in advance here’s a terrific story he told me about the Chicago Daily News—what it meant to people, just as it got snuffed out in 1978—all signified by a Polish immigrant cab driver:

“I’ll never forget the day the Daily News folded, I was taking a cab down to play I don’t know, fuckin’ racquet ball, with some friend from the paper. I’m in the cab, and the guy is a very deferential cab driver. I obviously said the Daily News building, and he’s driving down, and he goes, ‘I understand there won’t BE a Daily News tomorrow.’ And I said that’s true, as of tomorrow, Saturday’s the last edition. And he doesn’t say another word.

“He goes pulling into the delivery dock. I’m fumbling around for my money and he gets out and comes around and opens the door, and he’s crying. An older guy. He says, ‘Sir, I hope you work for the Sun-Times.’ I said no, I work for the Daily News. That’s OK, I’m fuckin’ 26 years old. And he goes, ‘I learned to speak English from reading that newspaper.’

Oh my God. And he was refusing to take my money.”

So probably Rick should be the one to do all the talking, but in any case, we will chat on Sunday about “Roseland, Chicago: 1972,” Chicago papers, and all things Chicago 1972.

Thanks, sweetheart.