Nights In White Castle: Rushin' Through The 1980s

If you enjoy Steve Rushin's particular brand of humor and wit in his articles in Sports Illustrated, there is a 100 percent chance you're going to love his new memoir, Nights In White Castle. I, for one, enjoyed it immensely! But in the interest of full disclosure, beyond the fact that I already love Rushin's stuff, this book held particular allure for me because Rushin is a Marquette alum (I am too!), and part of this memoir is devoted to his four years in college in Milwaukee.

But I loved the rest, too. This memoir is about 10 years of Rushin's teenage and young adult years. We start when he's 13 years old (this is a sequel of sorts to another memoir, Sting-Ray Afternoons, but you don't have to have read the first one), growing up in a rowdy house in suburban Minnesota with two older brothers, one younger one, and a younger sister. He's a bit of a nerd, despite starting for his high school's elite basketball team. He and his buddies always wrap up their weekend nights at White Castle, which Rushin loves, both for the terribly great food, but also for the cross-section of people he sees there. He and his buddies start a basketball tournament in Flip Saunders' back yard called the Saunders Hoops Invitational Tournament (SHIT, for short), and writing about this tournament is his first submission to Sports Illustrated, his dream job.

He matriculates to Marquette in the fall of 1984 and participates in such Marquette rituals as living in the hallowed freshman dorm McCormick Hall nicknamed "The Beer Can," watching (but not participating, at least that he would admit) in the Naked Beer Slide at the bar The Avalanche, and eating late-night Real Chili. Obviously, I loved these parts. The Avalanche closed during my first year at Marquette and I never had a chance to set foot inside (no fake ID for me). Side note: The Avalanche was also one of Chris Farley's favorites during his time at Marquette. It was sure fun to read about its golden age!

After college in Milwaukee, Rushin lands a job as a fact-checker at Sports Illustrated, and is quickly indoctrinated into the fast-paced world of New York City, consumer magazines, and sports scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It's quite the whirlwind! 

But so, this is book entertaining as hell, whether or not you're particularly interested in basketball, or Milwaukee, or the suburbs of Minnesota, or the 1980s, or magazine writing. Luckily for me, I'm interested in most of these things. And so I loved it.