That’s how many I wrote under my own name, and there are many others I wrote (including several collaborations) that were posted by someone else.

The first post I wrote for Chicagoist was in 2006 (about, ugh, The Bachelor: Rome) and my last was just a few months ago, a roundup of five original cocktails I created in honor of Twin Peaks: The Return. And now, Chicagoist is no more.

It’s true that over the past few years I had pulled away from Chicagoist because of other projects. Well, I guess I don’t need to worry about accidentally burning my bridges anymore. Seriously though, writing for Chicagoist changed my life in so many positive ways I couldn’t possibly count them all. Not least of which was meeting awesome writers and editors like Anthony Todd and Marcus Gilmer and Jim Kopeny (and everyone else … like Scott Smith … you know who you are). And of course writing for Chicagoist was absolutely the catalyst for once again focusing my brain and energy on the world of film, and that lead me to finishing Pause of the Clock and starting my new project. So, I am so grateful.

Here’s a quick spin through some of the amazing folks I was able to interview because of Chicagoist: Don Klugman, Brad Bischoff, Wyndham Wallace, J.R. Jones, Michael Kaplan, Andrew Bujalski, Stephen Cone, Leonard Maltin, Paul McGee, Gabe Klinger, Tippi Hedren, Greg Allen, Eva Marie Saint, Marty Rubin, Jeffrey Brown, Bob Balaban, Wallace Shawn, Alan Arkin, Ignatius Vishnevetsky, Joe Swanberg, Christian Friedel, Daniel Kraus, Lucas Hilderbrand, Neil Ortenberg, Andrew Davis, Brian Jun … And it was through meeting both Barry Gifford and Jason Adasiewicz for Chicagoist that Roy’s World was born.

It was the relentless pace of writing 2-3 posts every week for several years that honed my word skills and shut down my proclivity towards procrastination. My postmortem of the aborted Chicago Trader Vic’s is a piece I’m still proud of.  I was never in it for the money. Most of all I just loved having the chance to write about stuff I loved, stuff I’d heard or seen or read that excited me. Chicagoist was a unique platform that will never really be equaled.

So RIP Chicagoist, and screw you Mr. Ricketts.