Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking on live radio with Nick Digilio in WGN at the Tribune Tower. It was a little eerie being down there at midnight on a Thursday. Everything was pretty dark and quiet, and even the lights inside the lobby were dimmed. Producer Dan took me up to their new studios on the 7th floor. The bottom level has been rented out to a restaurant, which is currently in the works.
This vintage microphone was displayed in the entryway, and of course I love the historic artifacts so I tried my best to get a decent photo of it from behind the glass. As I waited I listened to Nick‘s live voice from around the corner with a strange one-second delay through the speakers. A television screen with an infomercial for the Tummy Tuck Belt further added to the surreal state of being downtown so late. A very elderly man slowly scuffled by. I imagined he may have been at the Tribune for the majority of his long life.
And then I was up. At this point I’ve done radio interviews that have aired on SNS Post, WGN (with Rick Kogan), and National Public Radio (with Rick Steves). So I’m starting to get this radio-interview-thing down so I wasn’t nervous. I had been concerned beforehand about being lively at that hour of the night, since it’s usually past my weekday bedtime, but a spontaneous (and amazing) trip to a Korean spa in the burbs had re-energized me.
In case you haven’t heard Nick Digilio before, he started out in radio reviewing films, especially “bad” ones, and now his radio presence has expanded to include anything from pop culture to politics, especially things of a local note. When his producer first contacted me, he wrote, “Our host Nick Digilio loves Chicago and loves booze so this is right up his alley.”
Here we are chatting about the Historic Chicago Walking Bar Tour, which always studies Trib Tower, the Loop Interior Architectural Tour, wandering Chicago, drinking, and the secret to why newspaper drivers are such reckless drivers.
So enough about the back-story to the interview. If you’d like to have a listen, please head here.
— Amanda Scotese, Executive Director
