I regard the impending destruction of the Chicago Sun-Times building with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it's an eyesore. In fact, it's maybe the ugliest building in Chicago, which is saying something in a city that slavishly worships the architectural
atrocities of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. On the other hand,
Royko worked there, up until he quit after
Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun-Times, saying "no self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a
Murdoch paper." As the Chicago of Mike Royko and Slats Grobnik vanishes into dust, I find myself longing for some part of them to hold on to.
As the 5o's atrocity is demolished to make way for a fantastical monument to
one man's ego, I comfort myself with the thought that Royko's real home base, th
Billy Goat Tavern, still skulks in the underground alley just a block away.
Within two years' time the Sun-Times site will be home to Donald Trump's new monument to Donald Trump:
Tasteful, no?
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