Chicago was tugging at Mark Giangreco’s sleeve long before he called it home. When he was 8, he’d lie in bed at night — when the signal reached his home outside of Buffalo, New York, the clearest — and listen to the city’s radio stations on his transistor. He was obsessed with the music stations. He’d rock to WCFL and WLS and dream of becoming a disc jockey like Dr. Brock, John Records Landecker and Larry Lujack.

Even though he was more than 500 miles away, Giangreco felt connected to Chicago, which to him was a much larger Buffalo. The cities have the same Great Lakes accent, the same blue-collar mentality and relatively the same weather. They share an ethnic mix of mostly Irish, Italian and Polish, which he identified with, having grandparents in an Italian neighborhood where no one spoke English.