Dan Sinker's Blog

There's only one way to go from here.

A clipping of the fight advertisement that ran in the Muncie Evening Post, September 2 1931.

My well-worn copy of The Westing Game.

Arsenal's stadium in the rain.

Behind the scenes on the photo shoot for our Season 2 art.

I am embarrassed at the state of these g's but the only way to get better is to try.

It takes just two pages before you're forced to make a choice in the Cave of Time.

The speech referenced below really begins at 28:25, and this should play at that point but you know how technology goes.

The Bevidere Daily Republican might be a small paper but they wrote a hell of a headline.

Ron Magers and Carol Marin on their last broadcast together, May 1, 1997.

The empty lot at 315 Mulberry Street where George Dale's house once stood.

"If you want to get a letter out of a Burmese prison, do not give it to the guards."

Caves and traps and peril.

That's what I'm fucking talking about.

This is about 300 tiny Penne whistle printed in three colorful batches, plus a heart.

Words all the way up.

A peek into the printer that runs for 15 hours a day in my basement.

Hey, maybe you are struggling here at the beginning of the year, a year that has not started easy after a year that never let up.

Yoko Ono's "Painting to Hammer a Nail," on display at the MCA Chicago's "Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind".

Even as he wrote a Christmas song, I can't imagine that Shane MacGowan believed he was writing a Christmas Song, something that you'd hear on one of those radio stations that starts playing holiday music 24/7 in November or in the background of one of a d…

I write most of these posts out, roughly, by hand.

Unraveled Press and LA Taco, the inaugural winners of the Snooping Newsies.

Last week I wrote a gift guide for a bunch of artists, writers, and Chicago people that I'm a fan of.

Look, we live under the crushing boot of capitalism and all that, I get it.

My current whistle supply, bagged and bulk.

I've been thinking a lot about a video I saw recently of the late, great Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick, who died last month.

This was originally written for and performed at the November 4th edition of Tuesday Funk, the long-running reading series in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood.

I've been deep in newspaper archives from Indiana in the 1920s doing research for my book I HATE THOSE MASKED BASTARDS!

Originally from notes written Tuesday, October 21 2025 What I need you to understand is that it was relentless.

In 2016—you remember back then, it was nearly a decade ago if you can believe it—I made a proposition to Maureen Johnson, an author of YA books who I was friendly with online the way you were friendly with people online a decade ago.

In February, I wrote a blog post, "What Felt Impossible Became Possible," about George Dale a newspaper editor and publisher based in Muncie, Indiana in the 1920s who used his paper, his wit, and his inability to stand down from a fight to do battle again…

It was a beautiful, warm day in Chicago today.

One of my favorite stories from Chicago's recent history is the invisible flood that happened in 1992 that forced the shutdown of downtown Chicago for days.

There's a record by garage rock legend Holly Golightly that has been my go-to for decades now: The Good Things.

No matter what happens in the coming weeks, we are Chicago.

Attempting to break out of the the malaise of a difficult summer, my family and I drove out to Brookfield, Illinois to visit the Galloping Ghost Arcade, a sprawling, ramshackle collection of buildings that take up one entire side of a city block and house…

1 Hulk Hogan stands at the lecturn of the Republican National Convention, the summer of 2024.

The Stamp King in all its glory.

Sometimes you need to step out for a second, to take yourself out of the here and now and go somewhere else.

It's easy at first, I play my cards just right.

Punk Planet Year Thirteen, issues 74-80. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

Earlier this week, it was discovered that the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer had both published an externally-produced "special supplement" that contained facts, experts, and book titles entirely made up by an AI chatbot.

Punk Planet Year Twelve, issues 68-73. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

I was only 17 when I moved into an apartment with two friends in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood.

I Most everything I know, I know because I took something apart.

Punk Planet Year Eleven, issues 62-67. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

Focus feels impossible right now.

Punk Planet Year Ten, issues 56-61. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

I've spent many hours since the election reading about the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

The last two weeks have felt surreal.