Vintage Chicago Tribune: Six former columnists share their favorite columns for the paper’s 175th anniversary

Happy terquasquicentennial — or is it demisemiseptcentennial — to us, Chicago!!!

The Chicago Tribune celebrates 175 years tomorrow. And though the original edition from June 10, 1847, long ago disappeared, I hope you’re enjoying the continuing “diary of a city” saga that is so beautifully written by my good friend and colleague Rick Kogan.

Like Rick, a variety of personalities have made the Tribune their home through the decades.

In prior weeks we’ve revisited iconic columns written by legendary Tribune columnists Ann Landers, Mike Royko and Gene Siskel.

I thought it might be interesting to get in touch with more recent Tribune scribes to ask them — What are your favorite columns you wrote for the Tribune? Their answers — and links to those columns — follow. Topics include architecture, concerts, diversity, food, gun violence, poverty and sunscreen.

We have a lot of fun features planned for the remainder of June, so follow along with all of our 175th anniversary coverage and sign up to receive a special edition of Daywatch in your inbox this Sunday. And just into the Tribune store — a GREAT tote bag to take with you to the beach this summer!!!

Until next time ...

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Now is a great time to subscribe to the Tribune. It’s just $12 for a 1 year digital subscription.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

— Kori Rumore, visual reporter

Chicago Tribune 175th anniversary coverage | Quiz: Test your Chicago history knowledge | Pulitzer Prizes | Were you a Tribune newspaper carrier? Share your story. | Limited edition mugs, T-shirts, hoodies and a tote bag for Chicago Tribune’s 175th anniversary | New book commemorates the Chicago Tribune’s 175th anniversary with more than 100 historic front pages

Dahleen Glanton

Dahleen Glanton was a Tribune columnist from 1989 to 2021. She was a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist in commentary “for bold, clear columns by a writer who cast aside sacred cows and conventional wisdom to speak powerfully and passionately about politics and race in Chicago and beyond.”

• July 4, 2016: “In the weeks ahead, most of us will go along our merry way as Chicago comes alive with the joys of summer — the Taste of Chicago, concerts on the lawn of Millennium Park and fireworks at Navy Pier. We will try to forget that all around us, babies are getting shot.” Read more >>>

• March 20, 2017: “Yes, racism exists all around us. But we can never use it as an excuse for failure. If anything, it must be the impetus for success.” Read more >>>

• Sept. 4, 2017: “For most of my childhood, I had a weekend job that never paid a dime. But there were far greater benefits to compensate for the lack of money I earned. In the small town where I grew up, my mother was ‘The Avon Lady.’ My brother, Winston, and I were her helpers.” Read more >>>

• June 2, 2020: “Dear African American looters, You have spent several days breaking into stores, stealing sneakers, Louis Vuitton handbags and big screen TVs. But when it is all over, you will have nothing.” Read more >>>

Blair Kamin

Blair Kamin was the Tribune’s architecture critic from 1992 to 2021. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1999 for a body of work including “his lucid coverage of city architecture, including an influential series supporting the development of Chicago’s lakefront area.”

• Oct. 26, 1998: “The lakefront and its parks represent a legacy of incalculable value, a testament to visionaries such as Daniel Burnham, who, more than 100 years ago, recognized that public spaces made better democracies, better citizens and better lives. It is remarkable that what Burnham and others conceived so long ago still serves us in so many ways. Yet, inexplicably, we have done little to build upon that legacy. The lakefront is at once a victim of our poverty of imagination and the crippling consequences of its own success.” Read more >>>

• Oct. 7, 2016: “Over the years, Trump has courted me, comforted me, criticized me and sent me a handful of sometimes-fawning letters and notes. I saved the correspondence. Wouldn’t you? It’s fun to run your fingers over gold, raised-print letters that say ‘TRUMP.’ And the missives are telling. Combined with other things he’s said and written, they show that Candidate Trump isn’t all that different from Developer Trump. He remains a master media manipulator who can be charming, mercurial and vengeful. Only now he wants to be the most powerful man on earth.” Read more >>>

• Oct. 14, 2015: “Chicago is now the epicenter of the debate over how to handle troubled postmodern buildings.” Read more >>>

• June 6, 2018: “Deadlines focus the eye as well as the mind. As Chicago Tribune journalists prepare to leave Tribune Tower on Friday, I find my eyes roaming over the tower’s flamboyant neo-Gothic silhouette and its innumerable alluring details, like a sculpture of a wise old owl who clutches a camera and symbolizes the powers of careful observation. These last looks are both pleasurable and painful. I love this building, love it more deeply because we’re about to leave it. Yet the anticipation of being kicked out is like waiting for a Band-Aid to get stripped off. As I’ve heard many of my newsroom colleagues say, ‘Let’s get it over with!’” Read more >>>

Greg Kot

Greg Kot was a music critic at the Tribune for 30 years. His last column was published Feb. 14, 2020. He is a co-host of public-radio show and podcast “Sound Opinions” and head of editorial at The Coda Collection.

• Oct. 6, 1993: “(Iggy) Pop was the bad seed from Ann Arbor, Mich., without whom there would be no Johnny Rotten, no Nirvana, no Guns N’ Roses. Through the early ‘70s his contortions embodied the psychedelic grunge of the Stooges-one of rock’s greatest half-dozen bands to anyone who saw them live. Back then, Pop was a trailer-home runaway at war with everything, including his own body. ‘I’m the world’s forgotten boy, the one who’s searchin’ only to destroy.’” Read more >>>

• July 9, 1995: “No major band in recent rock history has seemed so determined not to play by the rules. Although bands like the Stones and Guns N’ Roses flaunt outlaw reputations, it’s just self-destructive shtick, a k a ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.’ Pearl Jam’s revolt is informed by generosity and almost naive idealism; the band is staking its future on a battle to reform the entertainment ticketing industry that, it is hoped, would make concerts more affordable and accessible. It may sound quaint, and it’s certainly a gesture out of step with these cynical times. But, above all, it’s brave. Other bands have paid lip service to this goal, but none has followed Pearl Jam’s lead.” Read more >>>

• Oct. 14, 2001: “Jeff Tweedy is minutes from going on stage to perform a solo concert, armed only with his acoustic guitar, a harmonica and some of the best songs anyone has written in the last decade. He has a supportive wife, two children who adore him and a modest home on the Northwest Side with two cars in the driveway, and his band Wilco is as respected as any in the land. But at the moment none of that matters, because the 34-year-old singer is having a breakdown backstage.” Read more >>>

• June 14, 2018: “‘Will you take me as I am?’ Joni Mitchell sang on her ground-breaking 1971 album, ‘Blue.’ There’s a vulnerability in that openness, but also a resolve. Mitchell wasn’t coming from a place of weakness. The singer never viewed herself as part of a movement — she was not going to be anyone’s figurehead or spokeswoman. But ‘Blue’ still sounds like a map for the road being traveled by countless women in the #MeToo era.” Read more >>>

• Feb. 14, 2020: “As a Tribune music critic for the last 30 years, I’ve attended more than 2,000 concerts where pretty much anything could happen, and often has. While scrawling in my notepad, I’ve been hit by a sod missile thrown by a Guns ‘N Roses fan, punched in the eye by a guy jostling for a better view of Alice in Chains, hit by a gin bottle when the Offspring incited fans to throw garbage at the stage, been caught in no-man’s land when rival gangs started taunting each other at a hip-hop concert, and had three vertebrae damaged by a 250-pound drunk ramming into a crowd at an outdoor festival.” Read more >>>

Mary Schmich

Mary Schmich was a Tribune columnist from 1992 to 2021. She won the Pulitzer Prize in commentary in 2012 for “her wide range of down-to-earth columns that reflect that character and capture the culture of her famed city.”

• Dec. 5, 2000: “Gwendolyn Brooks had a voice. When she was young, if recordings are a fair accounting, her voice could sound eerily like the feathery, genteel voice of Jackie O. And yet in later years, though she could still speak shyly and primly, her voice was clear and commanding. Maybe that physical strength of voice correlated to her transformation in the late 1960s, when she rejected mainstream publishing houses in favor of small black presses, stopped straightening her hair and began writing specifically to her fellow African-Americans, believing her mission was to help them define themselves.” Read more >>>

• Jan. 24, 2003: “Yes, friends in all those balmy climes // We do not need your pity! // Our winter’s big as winter comes // While yours is itty bitty.” Read more >>>

• Nov. 20, 2005: “‘Adversity’ is too small a measure of all that has been ripped from U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow since the February evening when she came home from work, walked down to her basement and saw the blood on the floor. Her husband. Her mother. Her sense of safety. Her sense of self. Her home. All gone, along with her privacy, her autonomy, her vision of her future, certain dreams for her daughters, reliable sleep.” Read more >>>

• Feb. 24, 2008: “One challenge to all of us with elderly parents is to accept that fact: They’re old. ... This story isn’t novel. Millions of adult children and millions of our parents know this uniquely lonely but widely shared grief and fear. The loss is inevitable. The most we can hope for is to give our parents a little courage in the process and to find some for ourselves.” Read more >>>

• June 6, 2008: “Thank you, Hillary Clinton. Thank you for not quitting before it was time.” Read more >>>

• Dec. 1, 2010: “The last residents of the last Cabrini-Green high-rise trickled away on Tuesday, except the ones who wouldn’t go. It felt like an undercover operation, even in the cold gray light of day.” Read more >>>

• Aug. 7, 2011: “When your greatest fear comes to pass and you survive, you discover who you really are.” Read more >>>

• Nov. 20, 2011: “‘We don’t have money. But we are not poor. Poverty is a state of mind.’” Read more >>>

• June 17, 2016: “When your father dies. Let the phrase settle for a moment. What words do you hear next? For anyone whose father has died, finishing the sentence is apt to be easier than reciting the alphabet.” Read more >>>

• Dec. 21, 2016: “There are many reasons the parents of a child who has been shot might prefer not to talk in public about what happened. But Mellanie Washington was different. Washington, who is 39, was hesitant at first, but she and Tavon came to believe that telling their story might matter. Let people see the damage. Let them know how the shooting of a child changes everything, and what it takes to recover.” Read more >>>

• Sept. 21, 2018: “ ... a woman who has been sexually assaulted may carry the memory around for years like a stone in her heart. The boy who raped her at a party. The relative who repeatedly molested her when she was 9. The neighbor who exposed himself to her when she was just a girl. The stranger who broke into her house and raped her at knifepoint. The boss at her college job, a man twice her weight and age, who pinned her on the floor and groped her for a long time while she struggled. All those situations I just listed? They’ve happened to women I know, all except the last one, which happened to me.” Read more >>>

Dawn Turner

Dawn Turner was a Tribune reporter then columnist from 1995 to 2015. She was a Nieman Journalism fellow at Harvard University during the 2014-2015 school year. Turner is the author of several books including “Three Girls From Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Story of Race, Fate and Sisterhood,” which was given the inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award.

• Nov. 11, 2007 (Part I): “Inside the prison’s visitor’s center, she waits for me. Though I’m about 30 feet away and haven’t yet crossed the sally port, I can see her through the window sitting at a table in a small room with her hands folded, looking nervous. An armed guard stands nearby. The inmate is Debra Trice. We became best friends 34 years ago while attending elementary school on the South Side.” Read more >>>

• Nov. 12, 2007 (Part II): “During moments of reflection, many of us comb through our lives with questions of “what if?” But few of us have the type of “what ifs” that my childhood friend Debra Trice has. Hers go something like this: What if on the night of July 20, 1998, she hadn’t driven to the north side of Indianapolis to find Raymond Jones, with whom she’d been smoking crack earlier that day? What if she hadn’t used a 12-gauge shotgun to try to retrieve jewelry she suspected he’d stolen from her mother’s house? What if she hadn’t been drinking just before she confronted him? What if she’d never pulled the trigger?” Read more >>>

• March 4, 2013: “Until recently, Brenda Myers-Powell had no idea the impact she had on Tilisha Harrison’s life more than 20 years ago. In fact, for a year, the two women crossed paths in the hallway at work and never knew they shared a past.” Read more >>>

• July 16, 2013: “It seems like battles that had been fought and decided long ago are being waged all over again. It’s also exhausting to have to say over and over that the life of a black child matters. And that’s as true of the kid growing up in the most dismal of environments, whose future seems a foregone conclusion, as it is of the kid who’s loved by both of his parents and has so much promise.” Read more >>>

• June 27, 2014: “’It’s the people who make this place a neighborhood — the people who continue to care, and who fight together. We may have come here for different reasons, but that’s what keeps us here.’” Read more >>>

• June 12, 2020: “I want you to know that this coronavirus pandemic has afforded you a vantage point like none other. This is your opportunity to know what people who live in poor communities face and feel every day, long before COVID-19.” Read more >>>

Phil Vettel

Phil Vettel worked at the Tribune for 41 years and was a restaurant critic from 1989 to 2021.

• Feb. 4, 1994: “I have seen the future of fine dining and its name is Trio. Trio offers luxury dining in which most of the luxuries are on the plate. It has a front-room staff that anticipates customer needs with imagination and a true sense of fun. And Trio’s food, in terms of sheer excitement, ranks among that of such masters of the unexpected as Jean Joho and Charlie Trotter.” Read more >>>

• Jan. 11, 2002: “One does not ordinarily begin a meal with ice cream and sherry, but Trio, in its eight-plus years of existence, has never been an ordinary restaurant. From its high-profile beginnings under founding chefs Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand to its more subtle, harmonious years with Shawn McClain at the helm, Trio has been a restaurant that routinely delivered the unexpected, usually in a spectacular manner. With the installation of its third-ever chef, Trio has definitely re-embraced its wild side. Grant Achatz (pronounced, and it’s worth remembering, “AK-etz”) is the most dynamic, boundary-stretching chef to hit town in a long, long time.” Read more >>>

• May 19, 2005: “Alinea is the most exciting restaurant debut Chicago has seen in — well, maybe ever. No slight to those places that have established and/or maintained Chicago’s lofty culinary reputation, but no Chicago restaurant has opened with the burden of expectations placed on Alinea and its wunderkind chef/owner, Grant Achatz.” Read more >>>

• Nov. 17, 2005: “Stephanie Izard is one sweet chef, blessed with an unerring palate for flavor and a fanaticism for balance that a Wallenda might envy. And her restaurant, nine-month-old Scylla, is pretty sweet as well.” Read more >>>

• Sept. 25, 2008: “Piccolo Sogno, which opened in July in the Fulton Market area, is the ‘little dream’ (which is what piccolo sogno means) of chef Tony Priolo and partner Ciro Longobardo, who runs the front of the house. ‘I named a cocktail for Tony,’ Longobardo says, ‘so he named a pasta after me.’” Read more >>>

• Sept. 8, 2011: “When Trotter’s made its debut in 1987, the Tribune’s dining critic Paul Camp lauded Trotter’s commitment to ‘civilized dining at its best’ that made it a novelty ‘in this see-and-be-seen, big bistro era.’ Some things never change, even though they may evolve.” Read more >>>

• June 6, 2013: “In 1998, mk (the pre-opening press was quite specific about the lower-case letters) was probably the most-anticipated opening of the year. Owner Michael Kornick had made quite a name for himself as chef at (then) white-hot Marche, as well as The Pump Room and, most famously, Gordon. His pastry chef was Mindy Segal, whose reputation was considerable even then. And though mk opened on an out-of-the-way stretch of Franklin Street, people showed up in droves. At the time, I wrote that mk ‘seems destined to become an important part of Chicago’s dining landscape.’ I love it when I’m right.” Read more >>>

• May 8, 2014: “When people ask what makes Chicago’s dining scene so special, Topolobampo is one of the restaurants I point to. No other city has a restaurant quite like it. Sometimes I forget how good this place is; today is not one of those times.” Read more >>>

• July 18, 2018: “In perhaps the most anticlimactic Chicago moment since Geraldo Rivera pried open Al Capone’s vault, I’m showing my face to the world for the first time in nearly 30 years. Funny; I thought I’d be taller.” Read more >>>

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