Bright Lights Dim Beauty of Chicago

Out With The Old, In With The New

2010-11-24T17:59:00.003-06:00

I have been doing a lot of new and different things lately and because of it I have started a new blog. I haven't completely abandoned this blog but let's be honest, I have not exactly been working on it. The new blog will combine a lot of musings on vintage things and will also be about my budding love for cooking. I'll still be here too just not nearly as much as before.

The Cottages of Galena

2010-10-16T01:14:00.000-05:00

It's trolley ride time in Galena, Illinois. Why are we still in Galena you ask? The answer is simple, because I am Rand Friggin' McNally. A thanks goes out to Tri State Tours for offering us a wonderful and exciting tour at a reasonable price. I had a lot of pictures from just this tour alone so you will get to see most of the pretty sights sans heads.

One of the many houses of worship in Galena, overlooking the beautiful town.

Some decently sized homes of Galena.

And some not so decently sized homes of Galena. These were the miner's cottages. We were told that miners preferred them very small as all they needed was a place to eat and sleep.

Above we have a very Chicago inspired home.

Hey, what can I say? I am a sucker for gazebos and in a town like Galena they are all the more charming.

This was one of Galena's many bed and breakfasts in town.

Another typical Galena cottage.

A lovely home with a church in the background.

When I was a little girl I always admired homes with shutters, of course that was when I always admired traditional colonial style homes. I had no clue how much wonders Mid Century Modern would do for me in the distant future. Goodbye to wanting a home with shutters.

Some more great living old homes.

An awesome view from the top of I don't recall what.

Now I have seen homes like this in hilly portions of Staten Island, New York. I love how, in the front, the house appears perfectly normal and you look in back, it's like it just drops off.

Behold the longest stairs in Galena. President Grant walked up these stairs once upon a blue moon.

It's a sleepy town street sloping downward.

A more leveled street.

Many buildings in Galena are made out of limestone, this church is just one example.

A home with Italianate details. Love those columns. I saw many buildings like this in Dubuque, Iowa which I will also most certainly be sharing.

This is the First United Methodist Church of Galena. As I said, Galena loves their churches and we love to look at them.

Feel like climbing the ultimate StairMaster?

It's back on the home front time.

The Galena History Museum certainly is a beaut of a building, ain't she?

Why look! It's yet another fabulous Galena church.

More Galena homes that are on the quaint and historical side.

There go those gosh darn stairs again!

A few more elegant buildings and homes for everyone's viewing pleasure.

I think we are about to turn a corner here.

What a precious view of the Galena River!

Overlooking the other side of town.

A couple of more B&Bs in Galena.

One of my friends actually stayed here at the Snoop Sisters B&B once and judging by their website, it seems to be a nice place. I especially like the background information on the family. I wonder if Doreen was really growing tobacco plants on her head.

A couple of more Galena homes, including some 50s/60s style ranches. The first we have seen of these so far.

One of Galena's interesting cemeteries.

Some more of Galena's very tiny, very teeny cottages.

Ye old Galena General Store.

Here we have the Ulysses S. Grant's Galena home with an interesting story to tell itself.

A statue of Mrs. Grant. According to our tour bus driver, Mrs. Grant reportedly disliked Galena immensely. Ah, there goes Galena, there to repay her "generous" hospitality.

Another one of those drat miner's cottages, so small you can probably put it in your pocket.

Here's something you don't see everyday. No it isn't a Galena ghost of the past, it's not a bird or a plane. It's........

.....The ever elusive, every disappearing mailbox!

A series of really gorgeous homes and B&Bs.

As well as a competing tour trolley.

More homes as well an apartment resembling something you might find in our neck of the woods.

The Galena Town Hall in a not so stellar photo.

Another great town building reminscient of something you might see in Chicago.

More views of the Galena River.

Once the center of town, this was once Galena's main train hub. Presidents came off this stop and stayed for a visit.

Thus, we end out tour here. Next stop is Dubuque, Iowa. Until then, enjoy the ride.

Step Back In Time At Kmart!

2010-10-02T13:46:00.000-05:00

Just where has the time gone? Since August, dear readers, I have settled into my new life and new home and have not had one Saturday night to myself in six weeks with non stop family and friend parties, pool playing bars, estate sales and some salsa dancing in between. New beginnings was certainly a great way to cap off the end of a great summer. Here we are, it's already October and my favorite season of the year is upon us. Leaves are colorfully falling down ever so gracefully and the cold comes back, but, oh well, quiet nights will follow with some multiple DVD viewings of Forever Knight.

Thanks to a tip from a member of Remembering Retail, I was able snap these photos of a Kmart in Franklin Park that looks as though it is a step back in time. Not exactly sure when this Kmart first opened but the ads do date it as far back as the early 1980s. Besides the exterior still sporting a Big K sign (when most of the other Kmarts I have been to in the Chi area have gone back to lettering the entire name and remodeling the stores to squeeze in the Sears merchandise), the interior did a remarkable job of continuing to sport the 1983 look: The ancient peg shelves, the brings back memories of Gold Circle lighting, the letters in the MAGAZINES spelled out for those who actually still buy those paper bounded things and the space age exhaust fans, again provoking even more memories of Gold Circle for me. This location was certainly worth a drive to Franklin Park. I am so bummed that I either missed the electronics department or scanned by it without seeing much on the walls.

Special thanks goes to RR pal, Jeff Morris for telling me that the ancient lighting in this facility was not only "bad" but also "really bad, inadequate, awful, lousy" and my personal favorite "just plain terrible." Yet it photographs so well!

Enter The Zone...

2010-08-07T10:35:00.004-05:00

Wishing I could get back on the tours of Galena, Illinois, I am facing some new and exciting transitions in life, including a new place to call home. Hopefully, I will get back to tours of Galena as well as Dubuque, Iowa soon, but for now we have to settle for a new episode of The Twilight Zone.

During our trip to Galena in late June, we took a drive out to Elizabeth, Illinois in hopes for some antiquing. We found a wonderful old home full of antiques with the chattiest lady and not much else. On our way back to our digs in Galena, my guy sees a highway sign leading to a few ski lodges. For some odd and inane reason he decides he wants to see what a ski lodge looks like. Why he would even attempt to do this in the middle of June is anyone's guess but as we drove and drove down the road that led to the lodges, our patience was being tested as nothing but trees and grass came within plain view. Suddenly, I saw a Sears sign. Wait a minute, Sears? In the middle of an invisible ski lodge in a small town with greenery and not much else? How could that possibly be?

Of course, we stopped the car, placed our eyeballs back into our collective sockets and marveled at some mysterious stranger's "collection" of signs as seen above. Had I walked into some strange sign or retail geek's home museum? I still don't know. We did not see a soul in sight to inquire. This weird shrine of sorts looked kind of abandoned. Now if only this could have been a real episode of The Twilight Zone. If it had been, we would have been transported back to 1957 because the soul says that is where we belong. Unfortunately, the rusty Kohler's Trading Post sign taunted me with the fact that I was still here in 2010. Ah, I still feel as bad as that sign looks.

It's hard to tell what era it is or where that Sears sign came from. The font and tone look very similar to this photo of a 1957 Sears at Cermak Plaza in Berwyn, Illinois courtesy of Dave's wonderfully and ever increasingly more informative and hilarious (a fantastic duo!) blog Pleasant Family Shopping. Aside from that picture to go on, I got nothing else. An intriguing mystery indeed.

The Pedestrian Way

2010-07-17T09:17:00.000-05:00

Welcome aboard Bright Lights Dim Beauty's pedestrian tour of Galena, Illinois. I checked out a great book from my own library called The Building of Galena, An Architectural Legacy. Copyright date is 1977. Unfortunately, we will not be using that here today until the next set of photos and some eventual scanning come through. I won't discuss history so much as I will my own observations as these set of photos were taken before I took the actual trolley tour and discovered Galena's historical district had some amazing stories to tell.

The first full day in Galena we actually walked into the downtown area from the house where we stayed in which was located at Gear and Dodge street. Not exactly that far, but kind of a hike on what would turn out to be an incredibly hot day outside. The home, flushed with some great antique pieces and awesome decorating, was blessed with televisions with DVD players but no antennas for any kind of live TV watching. But films with John Wayne, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart were plentiful. Not exactly helpful when you're wondering what the weather might be like outside.

A walk down Main Street brings you some kind of sparse beginnings, but lots of trees and churches.

Here's where all the quaint storefronts make their presence known. I couldn't wait to hit these "streets" for some great antiquing and small town charm which does not come without the small town prices as this isn't your local Walmart. Of course, that is no where near a bad thing, just a bit of a bummer for those of us on a budget.

And here's one of the antique prizes I wish I had gotten to take home with me. Well, maybe not THAT antique, but definitely a vintage goodie. This one was outside the quaint little antique store where I ended up buying some vintage postcards on the cheap.

Down below, Gustafson & Grey Ltd. is missing a few letters. This was one of the stores we didn't get to go inside though. Don't recall if we just bypassed it or if the hours of operation were closed when we walked past.

More buildings, more storefronts. Local lore has it that Galena's downtown was once made out of frame buildings because of a large fire that wiped them all out, the next set decided to be permanent.

What a nice set of architectural wonders they are! It really does feel like Small Town Charm, USA.

The Atomic Toy Shop is, I believe, a vintage toy shop. This one remained unvisited for us as well. I don't know why. I guess vintage toys don't appeal to me as much as vintage everything else.

The sun sure is gleaming on this humid day outside the Galena Cafe of which culinary assets I did not get to experience. Perhaps, we were saved some pain and agony as the reviews on Yelp are not too kind.

More shops galore. I cannot recall what was in The Galena Main Street Bazaar, but probably nothing too interesting.

Ooooh, look! It's Christina Ricci's cousin from last year's excursion to Hot Springs, Arkansas!

Doesn't this look like a fun street to fancifully stroll through?

A doorstep with tile of the original business name on it. A nice Chicago touch indeed.

Now we have something called Pollyhops. Don't ask me what it is because I don't recall if we did go in here or not, though I am sure we did. The description reads, "For all those things you don't need, but absolutely have to have, come to Pollyhops, the shop everyone loves." Apparently, it was not enough for us to love or pack into our suitcases.

Right next door to the Kandy Kitchen is an old fashioned ice cream shop. The ice cream shop was a nice little treat with some flavorful varieties and a decor on the inside that resembled an old early 1900s grocery store complete with shelving. The inside was a bit crowded the day we went and I didn't get to snap any photos of the old timey parlor. Rats!

More views, more shops aka shoppes.

To the left we have One Eleven Main, the last place we ended up eating on the very last day of our stay. May I say that this restaurant had the creamiest, the holiest thou ever cream of sweet potato soup? That soup was, quite literally, the god of all "cream of...." soups. I can only aspire to cook as tasty and delicious of a soup as that. Ok, so that'll happen at exactly a quarter to never. But a girl can dream, right?

If I stand correct, I think Honest John's Emporium was the store with all the leather goods which remained unseen for me.

The store with the red awning actually had some cute, but alas, unaffordable maxi dresses. I am the queen of maxi dresses, but I think the dozen or so that I actually own could add up the peons I have paid to pay for one dress at that store.

Yes, it just gets more exciting from here.

Alas, a vintage neon sign! The Log Cabin Steakhouse was another one of those restaurants we did not get to experience but, of course, that doesn't stop me for admiring the cozy sign or reading the reviews on Yelp.

More exciting awnings, errr....storefront shoppes on Main Street.

Here we have the Victory Cafe. We actually did eat here for breakfast on our first full day in Galena. Too bad for me it wasn't quite so memorable. While the biscuits and gravy were simply divine, my cheese omelet could have used some make out time with the grill a little longer than it did. Hey, but free wireless Internet! Look! They are also opening up a location in Dubuque, Iowa soon. Get your crappy, undercooked omelets Iowans!

We have officially arrived at the split. Our first walk around town, we climbed up the little side street to the left, passed the old Dowling House, up to the corner to go into what would become my favorite retail shoppe in all of Galena, Savvy Scavengers. Started by a mother and daughter team, the store blossomed from the web to two locations, Galena and Dubuque. I managed to clean up the place buying a few tops and numerous pieces of jewelry. Like the Yelp reviewer, I felt as if I was in heaven.

It's patriotism and a place called Gobbie's. I don't even remember what that was. I remember it more seeing the little photo here on Yelp. Another place we walked past, but didn't actually try. Now that I think about it, it may sound as if we didn't walk into many of these places but I swear we did walk into a lot of them. Seeing those that we did not get the chance to experience pronounced all the more too prominently that there are a ton of places to visit in Galena.

This not being the best photograph ever, but the last store at the very end of this foursome, was two floors of antique heaven. We were told that the proprietor was once heavily into some intoxicating forays of one's mind that he would give out expensive antiques for practically nothing. Fortunately for him, (unfortunately for us) they've since sobered up and wised up.

Galena's Little Tokyo is indeed your go to spot for Asian cuisine. Since Asian inspired meals are a dime a dozen in the Chicago area, this was another restarurant left unvisited. However, reviews on Trip Adviser and Yelp seem very positive.

Is that City Hall there looking far abnormally too tiny? Only in small towns!

I think this place was a B&B, though I forgot which one. The stain glass on the doors are what is so lovely here.

More storefronts......

Next up we have Fritz and Frites, a cozy little bistro situated slightly away from the hustle and bustle. Yet another place we did not experience. However, if you are the least bit curious about French bistros, check out reviews on both Trip Advisor and Yelp.

Hey, look! I think that place in the middle is the place with the cool doors.

A lovely specimen to look at, it's like walking into any Chicago neighborhood.

You can tell that I sure loved the details.

Can't recall the name of this establishment but I do recall that around the corner from it is where we had the best meal in Galena, hands down. We were told that Procento's Pizzeria had some of the best pizza in the area. Not feeling like pizza so much as pasta, we decided to hop over to this place for dinner the third night we were here. Best eatery decision on our trip! The place was very small but more than accomodating seeing as there were only two of us. Could not be a more cozy or romantic atmosphere especially with the candlelight. Our waitress couldn't have been more friendlier. She made us feel mighty welcome, especially after trying some of that great Amber Bock beer since the local Galena beers were not available yet. Let me just say that after two, maybe three beers and some great garlic bread, my fettucini alfredo pasta was amazing! Oh, how I wish you were closer, Procento's. It's no surprise there aren't any negative reviews on Trip Advisor or Yelp.

Moving right along, we have more exciting shoppes.....

....And a vintage Orange Crush very much the same as to what can be seen on this vintage bottle here. The bottle is believed to be of 1940s/50s vintage and I am thinking the same for this.

And back to the exciting storefronts we go!

Why, what do we have here? It's some gorgeous art glass. Must have taken this photo outside an antique store.

And we have curved back around over to the ye ole Log Cabin Steakhouse.

And we're chugging along in the opposite direction of this Jeap.

Shaded storefronts!

Here's a close-up of the unaffordable maxi dresses seen in the background of these jiggling mannequins.

Those storefronts never go out of style.

Another vintage tiled shoppe with the original name in tow.

In this scene you see a store called Vignettes, which was not nearly as interesting as the window display made it seem.

Guggenheim's makes it our third tiled storefront in Galena.

Neon sign #2 would be the VFW sign to the left. Proper name is VFW Grant's Bivouac, a bar with a dollar drafts. My kind of place, though I didn't get to go in.

A proud close up of our vintage VFW sign.

Must have been close to late afternoon around here.

Some grand doors I don't recall whose these were.

Yep, I am getting as tired as you of all the storefronts too.

It's the sign for Vinny Vanucchi's, our first meal upon arriving to Galena. Though the garlic bread had to be some of the best, I thought my manicotti with alfredo sauce was a tad bland. I thought that was because maybe the alfredo sauce was not right for that type of pasta. Then I read a very helpful Yelp review which shed eye opening light for me. Mark F. writes "2 /2 stars at best! Nice atmosphere, but food flavor was average and the prices were HIGH! Worst alfredo sauce I have ever had was here. It was super watery. Even Ragu was better." That alfredo sauce sure was among the worst I have had though I don't quite think it was nearly as bad as Ragu. Hey, it was our host's treat and a very nice restaurant to boot.

Here we have the DeSoto House. Best place for wireless internet and a great refuge from the street to use the bathroom. Loacted within the Desoto is the Green Street Tavern a place to get an excellant bratwurst.

A vintage Deco inspired poster.

More of the Desoto House.

"Mommy, I am so tired and hot and the antiques smell."

Is this the same view from above minus the vintage car?

If I had a car like that, I'd be singing "Baby, you can drive my car" on a daily basis.

Since the area is very hilly and elevated, so much so, that it requires you to have some very strong legs, here are the longest stairs in all of Galena.

Shoppes, shoppes, shoppes!

Looks as though we are concluding our fascinating tour for today. Join us back on our trolley later in the week.

Oldest Operating

2010-07-14T16:59:00.002-05:00

What do we have here? 'Tis the Smithsonian's Greatest American Post Office! Galena's Post Office is also one of the oldest operating post offices in the United States, having been built in the late 1850s. Hmm, I wonder if the lines here crawl a lot faster than the post office branch in Logan Square.

Nothing says Main Street, USA more than a post office. If this is starting to evoke images of Bedford Falls for ya, it should. Supervised by architect Ammi B. Young, the Custom House and Post Office of Galena, Illinois was built directly from Nauvoo Limestone. Nauvoo, like Galena, being another great Illinois town with a rich history.

I hope to give you a tour of Galena's small town charm in the coming days. Until then, enjoy the days of a bygone era. No, not small mining towns of the 1800s, but postage that once cost peons.

It's The Oldest House In Illinois.....Go Team?

2010-07-10T10:31:00.003-05:00

Yes, it did indeed take this long to finally download all my photos from my Galena, Illinois/Dubuque, Iowa trip from a couple of weeks ago. Not having my own camera with me sucks big time. While my own camera is currently enjoying an Eastern European atmosphere with my father and mother overseas, I get stuck with a six year old Kodak with no more than four mega pixel quality and annoying habit of not being a bit more modernized.

Upon the day we were due to arrive in Galena, we managed to run around Rockford, Illinois in a huge circle after getting lost. By the time we drove into Galena the sun was setting and we were painfully exhausted, but we managed to enjoy our time at a lovely Italian restaurant, Vinny Vannucci's. Enjoying the really great winery atmosphere, we proceeded to walk around main street the next day, not yet getting around to snapping any photos. By the time I did want to start taking photos, it was Day Three and we were heading into a visit to Dubuque, Iowa and we realized our camera's memory card was still in the comforts of home back in Chicago. However, even in the middle of nowhere, Wal-mart Supercenters sure do come in handy.

Galena's rich history, which I will expand more on in the next week or so, includes its mining past, famous United States presidents who lived and visited and many old haunts taunted by ghosts. Actually, sitting inside Vannucci's, my beloved's brother and his wife told us the story of one restaurant that was haunted by children playing and every so often a mysterious red ball and appears and disappears inside the old haunt.

Pictured is Galena and Illinois' oldest home, The Dowling House. Ain't she a beauty? Ok, this house is not exactly a work of art but for being built in 1826, it certainly is not looking too shabby.

It's Independence Day, Really?

2010-07-04T13:00:00.003-05:00

Happy Fourth to all! I usually am not big on celebrating this holiday but for the trying year I have had (Let me make it very clear: It has certainly been a bumpy year), this year will be a definite change so that means it is party time for me. I won't be home working on writing or blogging. Instead I will be out enjoying a family party (Thankfully, not my family), a few mocktails (Because certain people unrelated by bloodline to me don't drink), a few bars and, finally, some cocktails. When I figure out how to get every photo I took from my Galena trip out of that ancient digital Kodak, it will be up for all to see.

Have a safe and pleasant holiday!

The Park Forest Adventure

2010-07-01T21:12:00.000-05:00

Back from my trip the Galena, Illinois/Dubuque, Iowa tri-state area and more refreshed and stoked than ever to start writing again and, hopefully, bring in some new and exciting adventures along the way. I may never feel back to my old self again but I can try and work with what I have molded into lately. I managed to take lots of photos on a very old Kodak digital camera (Unfortunately, my much more updated Olympus is enjoying Eastern Europe with my parents) and once I get those loaded I will be sharing them here and talking about the history of Galena. Don't get me started on how disappointed I was with the antiquing, though I did manage to get some great postcards on the cheap.

Last Friday I linked an article by Blair Kamin about the revamping of Park Forest Plaza in Park Forest, Illinois. Today we have the last picture of Goldblatt's from Richard Longstreth's very well done article "Bringing Downtown to the Neighborhoods...." Ahead of its time, Park Forest Plaza was built in 1949 and once boasted an anchor list of Marshall Field's, Sears and, of course, Goldblatt's. Would Park Forest Plaza be overshadowed by bigger and brighter developments once time marched on? Unfortunately, yes. At the time, Goldblatt's was seeking to reach past their core ethnic and mostly inner city audience and stamp themselves into the newly developed post World War Two landscape. It was no longer about bringing downtown to core Chicago neighborhoods such as Belmont-Cragin, Englewood, Uptown, etc so much as it was about changing with the times and jumping on the newest bandwagon, urban/suburban sprawl, better known as creating a landscape for the suburbs.

The Park Forest Goldblatt's location was a much different place to experience your Goldblatt's shopping than the ones within the realm of the city. You didn't have the outdated 1930s look of the Uptown location charm. You had a flat surface with no upper level or basement to peruse through surrounded by a sea of ample parking. It was 62,000 square feet of suburban heaven. Not much of a super feat by today's standards considering how huge most standard Walmart Supercenters are, but the fact that it utilized open shelves used mostly in supermarkets at the time, it was quite a bold venture. This location made its sparkling debut in 1953 and was looked at by others in the retail trade as the go to model.

However, what happens next requires a bit of head scratches. Instead of continuing to open themselves up in major suburban developments or malls, Goldblatt's continued development in the 'burbs and concentrated on lower tiered plazas of small proportions while they were at it. Places that would be obsolete almost as quickly as they were built. Sales were beginning to slope a bit and as time marched on, other discounters began to beat them at their own game, most notably Kmart (Yes, THAT store. Though these days, Kmart's own woes often translate into many head scratches as in asking a recent employee where the lawnmowers were kept which resulted in the dire question of "What's a lawnmower?").

Soon the days of Goldblatt's would be numbered, though like the Saturday night Fox staple of Cops and America's Most Wanted and cockroaches, they refused to die.

A Few Links To Keep Occupied

2010-06-26T10:52:00.002-05:00

Off to Galena, Illinois this weekend for some antiquing and much needed rest and relaxation. As you can see, first post of June, so I do need it. Hoping to have some stuff up and back in action after I get back next week.

For now, enjoy two great articles by Chicago Tribune writer Blair Kamin. The first article is a great piece on how the former and torn down Randhurst Mall in Mount Prospect and its surrounding area as well as the demographic have gone through some "radical" (though I don't think of pseudo Main Street as that innovative or bold, hence radical being in quotations) changes over the years. While the second article focuses on rehabs and redesigns of malls in Park Forest and Schaumburg. Both links include photos of the awesome past and the so-so present.

And for fun, here's a blog on Awful Library Books if you are amused by this sort of thing that us wanna-be librarians are.

Absent Minded

2010-05-22T09:54:00.000-05:00

Where have I been? Where has this Mercury been?

The last month has been a case when life gives you lemons, make sangria and anything else with a high alcohol content. Unexpected experiences crashed straight in my direction and I am still feeling the aftereffects of the total draining of energy and no time to really do much else. Hope to be up and running again soon like this baby I found cruising down Cicero right off of Grand the other day.

Gold Bond Sort of Struck Gold

2010-04-23T15:22:00.000-05:00

Now that school is nearing to an end very soon and I can regain my normal life after some hopeful changes, I can get back into the swing of things and start writing again at my much normal pace. When we left Goldblatt's they were expanding into famous Chicago neighborhoods during the better part of the 1920s. By the 1930s, brother Nathan Goldblatt believed that the variety store model, ala Woolworth's, WT Grant, GC Murphy, Nesiner, McCrory's, JJ Newberry, etc, was the wave of the future. Sort of like the time back in the very early 2000s when I tried to get my friend to upgrade her outdated bulky late 90s model cell phone for one that actually sent and received text messages. I said something along the lines of "Text messaging, Veronica, they're the wave of the future." I imagine that this conversation between Nathan and his brothers played out the same way. Sort of, anyway.

Longstreth's great article, for which this photo appears courtesy of, briefly discusses the Ace Drug Store. Opening in 1935, this was sort of a prototype that ended up being abandoned along with the other ideas for the purchase of Goldblatt's store on State Street. However, by 1941, Nathan came back to the table with the Gold Bond Department Store idea. A sort of early JC Penney-esque prototype of dry goods only. Opening locations as far away as Buffalo, the Chicago based location pictured above was smack dab in the middle of one of Chicago's most well known retail hubs, the Belmont-Central business district. Longstreth describes this famous retail hub as having "...four apparel stores, a hat store, a shoe store, a loan company and an auto supply store. About a third of the property, which extended over the square block, was devoted to parking adjoined by a children;s playground. Rear elevations. facing the lot, supported their own entrances and display windows. The extent of this development, coupled with its motorist amenities, probably made it unique in the region at the time."

The Gold Bond operation sort of radically redefined retail stores at the time. Of course, today we know it as the self service, no one around to ask questions when you need them or push annoying products on you until you get to the checkout counter at the local Wal-mart approach. Back then, it was strictly along the lines of display the products with sales people at the checkout counters and not peddling the merchandise with the customers out front. About 95% of retail operations follow this model today. Was Gold Bond the pioneer? Probably not, but I am not sure whether this sort of prototype was a good idea or a bad idea, judging by today's standards when we either get the pushy sales people who won't leave you alone or the ones who just disappear for their cigarette break many times throughout the course of your visit. But as my good friend Jeffrey Morris would say, "The ideal environment one in which knowledgeable staff are available to help, but will then leave us alone. Or, in the words John (as he was known at the time Cougar) Mellencamp, "Someone who'll thrill me, and then go away." (Thank you in advance, Jeff, for letting me jack one of your quotes off of the fabulous Remembering Retail.)

I am not sure exactly what the address was for this store on Belmont, so if anyone knows, feel free to inform me. The Goldblatt's saga shall continue.....

It's Still Sears, Damn It!

2010-04-16T15:33:00.013-05:00

Where have I gone for the past two weeks? Well, I certainly have not been renovating a Huntridge Cottage in Vintage Las Vegas like Uncle Jack. But let's see, there's the job, the gnat known as graduate school and an unexpected family member popping in from overseas for a visit. That has kept me insanely busy. Not enough energy in the day for me at times.

There we were last Sunday, touring Chicago and my cousin was dying to see the Sears Tower. Oh, yes, he knew about the name change, but alas had forgotten the new name. Good for him! Here are some great views of the city from the top. Soon enough, I will finish up the Goldblatt's saga. Not before I take a final on Monday. Actually, it is called the midterm exam, part two. The semester ends first week of May. Which name depicts a more accurate description?

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller???????

A Scene At Lincoln and Belmont

2010-04-02T15:23:00.000-05:00

Having survived the Depression, Goldblatt's acquired its fourth location over at Lincoln and Belmont, pictured farther back in this photo, from the H.C. Struve. Co. Struve was a dry goods man who had started off as a shoe salesman which later on morphed into his full line department store in the very early part of the 20th Century. Located at 3155 N Lincoln, Goldblatt's bought out Struve in 1929. It eventually acquired surrounding buildings and used their land resources to build a new six story building designed by Alfred S. Alschuler. Like Struve had, Goldblatt's concentrated on the smaller neighborhood venues for those who did not have the time or perhaps the funds to travel to the big guns downtown.

It just so happened that the year before, in 1928, brothers Louis and Joel joined Maurice and Nathan in the family business just as the company went public. During the 30s, faring pretty well, Goldblatt’s gained two more locations, the former Loren Miller Department Store in Uptown and another South Side location at 26th and Turner. Not only did it gain these two city locations but pressed for three others outside Chicago limits: Joliet and Hammond and Gary, Indiana. According to Richard Longstreth's useful article titled "Bringing Downtown to the Neighborhoods: Weiboldt's, Goldblatt's and the Creation of Department Store Chains in Chicago" Goldblatt's survived a failed venture in Englewood. As it looked for other outlets to expand, Goldblatt's almost went as far as my hometown, Cleveland, Ohio looking to purchase a former Higbee's location that had been vacated for new digs. Could the suburbs have been that far behind?

The photo above was actually taken in 1993. the Army Surplus store seen to the left is actually still there having visited myself about a month or so ago. More on the Goldblatt's saga soon.

It Keeps Growing and Growing

2010-03-31T15:19:00.001-05:00

By 1928, the first Goldblatt’s store located on Chicago Avenue west of Ashland had achieved 140,000 square feet of dry goods retail holiness that would make Marshall Field himself blush. A few months ago I actually started reading (though never quite finished) Sam Walton’s autobiography, Made In America. Upon discussing opening up his first Walton five and dime, Walton wrote that he had crammed as much merchandise as he could inside and outside the store, pulling it all from various resources and finding creative ways to sell it all. It seems that Nathan Goldblatt was a subconscious influence on Mr. Walton as he used much the same tactics to generate traffic inside his no frills attached store. According to Richard Longstreth's article "Bringing Downtown to the Neighborhoods: Weiboldt's, Goldblatt's and the Creation of Department Store Chains in Chicago" Other key ideas Goldblatt’s pioneered was distributing their own separate weekly circulars and giving its employees commissions on top of their regular salaries to make them some of the highest paid in the city.

Goldblatt’s was certainly beginning to beat its competition. In the mid 1920s a Woolworth opened up nearby and Nathan’s brother Louis Goldblatt describes the chaos that ensued on the day of the Woolworth grand opening….inside the Goldblatt’s store! “When our doors opened that morning, customers came crashing in and rushed down the stairs into the department [where the specials were being offered] with such a fury that the police came to control them. Customers got into fights over the same item. The only way I could get through the mob was by swinging across from the ceiling pipes…We even had to empty the show windows for fear the plate glass would break. But the Woolworth store was practically empty.” Was that a scene a hybrid of the mall chase sequence in The Blues Brothers and Tarzan swinging from left to right and side to side? Sounds like it definitely competes for all time extreme wackiness.

Soon after the huge expansion of the Chicago Avenue location, another location was constructed at 47th and Ashland in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Next came this location at 91st and Commercial pictured above in all its subtle art deco touches. The folks at Goldblatt's were moving pretty quickly as Longstreth writes "The example of Sears, Roebuck, which had entered the retail arena in 1924 and had erected several dozen large stores coast to coast within a few years' time, in all likelihood helped shape Goldblatt's strategy. So too, no doubt, did the proliferation of chain variety stores and, perhaps, the prophesying of retail gurus Edward Filene and Paul Mazur, who believed such networks to be the inevitable destiny of department store operations. As one of the newest companies in the field, Goldblatt's was also in the front ranks of those to embrace the chain concept." Likewise, Walton, was influenced by other retailers as well as you can read Dave's written posts on Wal-Mart at the excellent Pleasant Family Shopping blog.

Unfortunately, it does not look as if the location pictured is still standing. Please correct me if I am wrong on this. Otherwise this building is a tad bit more exciting to me than the Uptown location I pictured in my last post. More to come, folks. That's all for now.

The Ultimate Emporia For Persons of Modest Means

2010-03-26T15:21:00.004-05:00

It all started here for me at this department store located in Uptown at 4700 N Broadway. In September 2008 I wrote about my one and only experience inside this Goldblatt's store,

" It was a cold and very windy night. Flurries were in the air, or maybe it was snow or maybe after almost twenty years my mind is eluding me. My mittens were on, my hood over my head and cold still chilled me to shivers but my mummy dearest was still determined to get her pots and pans. Maybe she was on pot, who knows. Usually my father never had trouble saying no, but this was a man who relished going to a grand opening of a Kmart in the cold, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to drive to Uptown on the corner of Broadway and Lawrence (Coincidentally, that location had once been a department store called Loren Miller which Goldblatt's bought in 1931) and marvel at a store he'd never been in. Yet it wasn't the grand spectacle they were expecting. Oh, there was a spectacle. Mobs of people touching, grabbing and feeling piles of what my parents would later label eloquently as junk. They were no where near impressed and neither was my eight year old self. Never mind I was trapped in a department store time warp. Change the model of our car and it could have easily been right after the Great Depression which the chain had actually survived. Hell, it was the Great Depression since the store hadn't looked like it had been updated since its Loren Miller days. We couldn't imagine why anyone would want to spend money coming to the most uncool place anyone could ever shop in. After walking around and gasping for air, we decided to leave. I think my mother later found her set of pots at Montgomery Ward or Sears or something with slightly more 'class.'"

For Maurice and Nathan Goldblatt, sons of Polish immigrants, it was all about the neighborhood department store. Everyone knows that downtowns were once the lively blood of cities with all the local names and local department stores to distinguish between high end, mid tier and lower end establishments where some serious money was made, capital thrived, workers exploited, local people chatted up the latest gossip etc, etc. Typical stories come from all walks of life and Goldblatt's had one that was no different than all the others.

Starting off as errand boys, Maurice and Nathan managed to open up their own dry goods establishment in 1914. It was most certainly a location near Chicago's downtown but not close enough to be considered in the loop so to speak as the big guns of Marshall Fields, Carson, Pirie, Scott, Boston Store, etc. Nathan, for good or for worse, seemed to be your regular Sam Walton (There will be other little details about Goldblatt's that sound very Walmart-esque but we'll get to that later) buying up various items he could find and selling them at a high rate of speed that would make your best Nascar driver blush. Who amongst the Chicago public was Goldblatt's biggest, quicker picker uppers? Of course, the immigrant pool my parents were once a part of.

This photo comes from Richard Longstreth's wonderful article titled "Bringing Downtown to the Neighborhoods: Weiboldt's, Goldblatt's and the Creation of Department Store Chains in Chicago" which appeared in a 2007 issue of Buildings and Landscapes. Longstreth describes the famous, but little recalled fondly department store as a pioneer of sorts. "At a time when the department store industry still cultivated an ambiance that made customers feel more important and more economically well-off than most actually were, Goldblatt's flaunted cheapness, conspicuously billing its stores as places where immigrants and others with little to spare could find unbeatable bargains-the ultimate emporia for persons of modest means." Sounds like they must have consulted my dad on how best to flaunt cheapness. Seems like he was always an expert at it growing up. Thus, Goldblatt's would continue to grow as much as my dad's beer belly did growing up, at a rapid pace. I'd say that's pretty PFG, don't ya think?

This location, pictured to the right on Broadway, is a little hard to see architecturally and it doesn't look as wondrous and fabulous as some of the other Goldblatt's buildings. Though this picture probably does it no justice and this location actually was not built by the Goldblatt brothers themselves as it was a buy out having once been Loren Miller. More will photos and stories of Goldblatt's will be sure to come in the coming days.

The New and Improved PFG

2010-03-24T21:20:00.003-05:00

I'd like to say that life, while generous at times, has not been kind to me lately. Too much focus on the tangled webs of my emotional state and not enough time in the day for much else. If it isn't school, it's work or home life that prevents me from concentrating on the blog and doing the one thing I love to do most, write great posts. I'm not sure when that will change but hopefully soon, because my updates are sporadic at best and a lot less than my normal pace. I thought I was doing all right at least until a dear friend of mind pointed out that he thought there was nothing spectacular or even worth noting in my post on the PFG Warehouse. He wasn't wowed by the ad and he didn't think it was vintage-y or even interesting enough. He described PFG as standing for "Pathetic Fatuitous Garishness." The good ole dictionary under Microsoft Word defines fatuitous as "a lack of intelligence or thought combined with complacency." I guess he was trying to tell me something using the fanciest language he could think up even if the fancy language is English. It's not that my post was terrible, according to him, it is good enough to land a job writing about advertising in Crain's Chicago Business. Thank you, Craig, for giving me that dose of constructive criticism I needed to wake me up. Pretty fucking great, right?

Wait a minute! So THAT'S what PFG stood for. The addled mystery of an obscure electronic store of 1985 has indeed been solved, so perhaps we can finally move on to real Chicago retail.

Here we have a 1950 photo of the Goldblatt's located at Madison and Pulaski with a massive and awesome looking pylon. This is courtesy of an article titled "Bringing Downtown to the Neighborhoods" by Richard Longstreth which appeared in the journal Buildings and Landscapes back in 2007. I have an awesome collection of photos from this great article and a fantastic set of stories. More to come soon. Now that IS PFG! The second rendition, of course.

PFG Warehouse

2010-03-21T14:09:00.000-05:00

Before Best Buy and Walmart (And let's not forget Apple) filled everyone's electronic needs, there were some of the local places to go get your latest electronic fad. Most were probably no different than PFG Warehouse. You walk in and tell some sonny faced salesman exactly what you were looking for and he'd try to sell you the best, most expensive brand they had before steering you to something more moderate. This early 1980s ad shows that PFG had two locations per your convenience: 420 W Huron Street and 612 E. Golf Road in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Maybe it is just me but the prices seem pretty reasonable for the time. Unfortunately, the face of home video and home entertainment would change the business of actual movie theaters for years to come. Speaking from someone who grew up with the convenience of the modern entertainment viewers of home, I didn't really start patronizing a movie theater until I was in college though I'd always love movie palaces of the past and the wonderful architecture often associated with such film emporiums. One place I have really gotten into recently is the Music Box Theatre. I love classic films and such and what better way to watch a Fritz Lang film noir, than to see it in a 1920s interior theater with matching columns, architectural details, furniture and lamp fixtures. No matter how many three hundred dollar VCRs were bought during its heyday or how many DVD players and complete On Demand downloads are bought today, nothing can compare to that feeling of experiencing how many people of Chicago must have felt during the days of walking to your local neighborhood movie house, sitting in the stiff chairs and simply enjoying the beauty of Joan Bennett, Barbara Stanwyck or Gloria Grahame. Not exactly the same when you are sitting at home on your 19 inch television or your Ipod Touch or your broadband abled laptop.

Mulqueen's Kiddie A Go-Go

2010-03-18T20:26:00.003-05:00

Schlockstar aka John Chilson over at Lost Oregon has sent me a time capsule of Chicago's past. Neatly disguised as "Damn they sound like Pink Floyd" is a very interesting You Tube video of Mulqueen's Kiddie A Go Go featuring a performance by that Pink Floyd-esque band New Colony Six. Doing a bit of light digging, I found out Mulqueen's was a Chicago area children's show that aired on WCIU Channel 26 (Ya know, The U! U'z got it!). This ran from sometime in the 1960s until 1970. The Musuem of Classis Chicago Television also boasts another great video of the show with ads for Henry's Hamburgers.

The crowning jewel has to be some more great video clips shown at Chicagoland Radio and Media. No one describes the Kiddie A Go-Go troop better than this site, "In the late 60's, Chicago television had it's own pint-sized version of "American Bandstand" called "Mulqueen's Kiddie-A-Go-Go." Part-rock dance program, part-children's program, part-acid trip, this show entertained audiences with its musical guests, oddly perky host named Pandora and some ultra-low-tech commercials."

So let the acid trip memories begin from those who visit this blog on a regular basis and can provide some interesting comments and/or tidbits. A special thanks goes out to John once again for sharing the video with me. I never even knew this existed.

MGM and Sony

2010-03-14T14:09:00.000-05:00

Here's some very early 1980s Chicago Tribune ads of MGM and Sony touting the latest releases on their video collections. While I get to work on a short rough draft of a paper for class tomorrow, you guys get to click on the ads and check out the locations that had these great titles.

Showtime Video

2010-03-12T14:08:00.001-06:00

Hard to believe you can get your video rentals inside a Sportmart? Hunh, somehow I don't quite remember it playing out this way. But back in the very, very early 1990s, probably around 1991 or so, some distant, long off fiftieth remove cousin to neighbors of dead people back home in the old country had recently moved to Chicago in an apartment very near Loyola University right off of Broadway and Devon. After helping them settle, I was taken out to rent a film for the evening. Where did we go? I believe it was the local Dominick's located at 6009 N Broadway. What movie did we end up watching that night? I don't remember what the hell it was or what it was called but I do remember the opening scene quite well. This guy was getting married and he was called to action, not war time action, but super hero action on a fighter jet. Needless to say I fell asleep soon afterwards and never saw the rest of it, sadly. Years later I would come across this film again dubbed in Spanish sometime in the early 2000s on the local Telemundo station. By this time it was at least a decade old and looked it. Yet I still didn't catch the name of it nor did I watch it in its entirety. Though watching that opening scene in Spanish was quite amusing.

About the same time we had moved from Lake View to Rogers Park. The Dominick's located on Ridge, Damen and Pratt had recently installed a section near the front entrance with video rentals. What I remembered about this was that it didn't last very long. Less than a year later it was dismantled never to be seen again. Instead, I had to get my low budget movie kicks on Channel Seven every Saturday and Sunday night.

Not sure if Showtime Video was a national brand of some sort or just the local area contractor for videos and any other information regarding the whos, the whys and the whats of it seem pretty impossible to come by. The Chicago Tribune ad dates back to 1981 and disappears shortly afterward. Click on the ad to see which Dominick's, Kmart or Sportmart you may have rented videos from.

I must say, nothing describes the convenience of renting in a grocery, discount or sporting goods store better than this 1982 Tribune article, "Of course. What could be simpler? Buy bacon, rent Bacall. Buy doughnuts, rent Donen. Buy beets, rent Beatty. Buy peanuts, rent Polanski."

The Golden Age of the Video Store

2010-03-07T15:15:00.016-06:00

Moving to East Lakeview in the late 1980s, it seemed that every time my parents and I walked around the neighborhood we would see tons of video stores. This was the golden age for renting those fabulous classic films like Gone With The Wind or risk paying $70 to 100 bucks for the VHS copy. Yes, it was THAT expensive! Hard to believe. Even as an adult I didn't believe it. As a kid you don't pay attention to prices unless that candy is over a dollar and you don't have enough to cover for it at the Woolworth counter. These days the life of the VHS is long past the stage of being taken advantage of, it has damn near disappeared. So it is hard to believe that that rectangular thing with the two dots in the middle could even have been considered costing so much. Hell, I never even realized this until I got much, much older.

About ten years ago I discovered one of my favorite websites and databases: Internet Movie Database or IMDb for short. About the same time, I was watching a fantastically crappy 80s movie on TV called Night of the Comet. Apparently, it's a cult classic of sorts. Caught the movie again a couple of months ago and it's so great to see the bad yellow and red spandex and the teased hair. Anyway, when I discovered IMDb, I would spent half my nights looking up films I had seen over the course of my life. Yes, college classes be damned! (Still got my BA though.) When I looked at reader reviews for Night of the Comet, I saw one mentioning that the film cost nearly a hundred bucks when coming out on VHS in the mid to late 80s. Yowza! Believe me, the movie is fun camp, but even fun eighties camp isn't worth a hundred bucks on VHS!

All this sort of makes sense because it paved the way for video rentals to thrive. Once Blockbuster reigned in their terror, I had mostly forgotten about my childhood in Lakeview. My parents never rented movies though my dad's cousin was a big movie guy who loved to rent films (more on this will be discussed in an upcoming post). Hell, my father didn't even buy a VCR until 1990. Little did he or anyone else know that in the year 2010, a mere twenty-years later, I would try to no avail to convince him to move on from his VHS watching past. Lord knows all the BORING family weddings viewed fifteen million times don't need to be seen ever again especially since half of those couples are no longer together. Oy with the poodles.

The idea that mom and pop video places existed pre the Blockbuster and Hollywood Video monopoly was never brought to my attention again until the year 2005 when Eric Zorn wrote in his Chicago Tribune column about the change from Marshall Fields to Macy's which brought a flood of reader comments online discussing all the dead retail the area has had over the last several decades. Many Chicago and national icons were listed in the mix. But one thing that was discussed by a few people brought back a flood of memories from Lakeview: the mom and pop video stores. I recall on summer nights walking down Broadway and seeing invitingly open doors on some of the video stores. This was years before my appreciation for cinema so unfortunately I was never clamoring for my mom to walk in to one of these stores. Even though I think we may have once. However, had I just been a little older, I could have seen myself fitting into this cineophile video rental culture quite nicely. Browsing the shelves and picking out as many obscure titles as I can find, chatting up the person working there over the love for it all and going home to enjoy them.

Here are some ads from the Chicago Tribune circa the early 80s. Starting with the first three we have Alice In Videoland. Some Google search brought up a website for them in New Zealand and a location in Kingston, NY. Naming coincidence? Or was this somehow a chain I didn't know existed? Next we have Light Wave Video located at 956 and a 1/2 Webster which I am going to guess is long gone. Video Forum. like Light Wave Video has also seemed to have disappeared from the landscape. Center Video once offered Urban Cowboy. Saw this movie years ago as a teen and it isn't worth that trade in touted in the ad. Doc Edison's once had a location in my old Rogers Park neighborhood at 6642 N Clark. Oooh, look! And they also offered Beta tapes. Precision Video also had copies of the famous Caddyshack which I haven't seen in years. I probably should run over and get, if only this were 1981 again. What do ya know? Video Plus had a blank tape riot. What the hell is that? Though the last ad is a bit smudgy. it says that Mr. Video has seven Chicagoland locations. It actually may be the rare survivor of this group as Google tells me that there is indeed a Mr. Video located at 818 N California. But a look on their webpage shows that this is not a video rental store so probably not.

Anyone out there that remembers the good old days of renting from any of these places shown above or your favorite neighborhood video store, do drop in with emails or comments, I'd love to find out more. Until then, I'm going to go watch my friend Craig's VHS copy of Mystic Pizza again.

Dead End VHS

2010-03-05T15:02:00.003-06:00

Getting March started off to a very late start, but I was stuck and busy, busy with life and stuck on what I wanted to focus on next. Blockbuster is on the verge of going out of business and that seems to have me very focused on the dying VHS tape. Here's a great article that appeared in the Chicago Tribune in December of 2008.

Long, winding road hits a dead end at last for VHS
Chicago Tribune (IL) - Sunday, December 28, 2008
Author: Geoff Boucher, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times

Pop culture is hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once ubiquitous home video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past.

After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes.

"It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt," said Kugler, 34, a Southern California businessman. "I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I'm done. Anything left in warehouse we'll just give away or throw away."

It's an ignominious end for a product that redefined film watching in America and spawned an entire sector led by new household names like Blockbuster. Major chains gave up on VHS a few years ago, but not Kugler, who describes himself as "a bottom feeder" with a specialization in "distressed inventory."

Kugler is president and co-owner of Distribution Video Audio Inc., a company that pulls in annual revenue of $20 million with a proud nickel-and-dime approach to fading and faded pop culture.

Whether it's unwanted "Speed Racer" ball caps, unsold Danielle Steel novels or unappreciated David Hasselhoff albums, Kugler's company pays pennies and sells for dimes. If the firm had a motto, it would be "Buy low, sell low."

"It's true, one man's trash is another man's gold," Kugler said. "But we are not the graveyard. I'm like a heart surgeon -- we keep things alive longer. Or maybe we're more like the convalescence home right before the graveyard."

Kugler has sold more than 4 million VHS videotapes over the past two years.

Those tapes went to bargain-basement chains such as Dollar Tree, Dollar General and Family Dollar. If you bought a Clint Eastwood movie at the Flying J Truck Stop in Saginaw, Mich., or a "Care Bears" tape at one of the H-E-B supermarkets in Texas, Kugler's company probably put it there. He also sells to public libraries, military bases and cruise ships, although those clients now all pretty much want DVDs.

Kugler estimates that 2 million tapes are still sitting on shelves of his clients' stores, but they are the last analog soldiers in the lost battle against the digital invasion. "I'm not sure a lot of people are going to miss VHS," he said, "but it's been good to us."

The VHS tape never really had a chance once the DVD arrived in the late 1990s with all its shiny allure -- higher quality image, nimble navigation and all that extra content. After a robust run at the center of pop culture, VHS rentals were eclipsed by DVD in 2003. By the end of 2005, DVD sales were more than $22 billion and VHS was slumping badly but still viable enough to pull in $1.5 billion. Next year, that won't be the case.

Just before Halloween, JVC, the company that introduced the Video Home System format in 1977 in the United States, announced that it no longer would make stand-alone videocassette recorders. The electronics manufacturer still produces hybrid VHS-DVD players, but it's not clear how long that will last.

For a format that made Hollywood so much money, VHS leaves behind a shallow footprint in the movies themselves. There was "The Ring," a 2002 horror movie and its 2005 sequel, about a mysterious VHS tape that brings death to whoever watches it, but that's a sad valentine. This year Jack Black and Mos Def starred in " Be Kind Rewind ," a loopy comedy that finds its center at a VHS rental store that is holding out against the DVD era, but the rebellion didn't go beyond the script -- the movie is available for rent or purchase on DVD and Blu-ray, but it was never released on VHS.

The format was also name-checked in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," the 2005 hit film that stars an unloved salesman at an electronics store; and even he has no room in his heart for the underdog format. "It's a dead technology," he explains to a customer. "It's like buying an eight-track player."

Kugler is one of the rare people who can stir up some nostalgia for the black, boxy tapes. His father bought Distribution Video Audio in 1988 and carved out a niche as an inventory supplier for the video rental stores that were popping up everywhere. He started working at Distribution Video Audio in 1991 and in short order negotiated directly with studios to buy overrun inventory.

The majority of Kugler's business today is with big-box retailers including Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart and Sears, where the company sets up displays of its discounted DVDs, such as "Superman Returns" and "Proof of Life," which are often priced at $10 or less. Plenty of customers see that price as an invitation to build their DVD collections.

But Kugler, with a sly smile, offered a warning to consumers.

"The days of the DVD are numbered," he said. "And that is good news for me."

Adventures In Urban Chicago

2010-02-28T18:52:00.057-06:00

Tonight we’re going to do something a little different and something that has never been done on this two and a half year old blog. It’s a little less historical but definitely Chicago centered. It will definitely resemble Bright Lights but not so much to do with the beauty of anything vintage, unless you count a cheesy twenty five year old film beautiful and dimly so.

I appreciate classic cinema as much as the next person, but give me a crappy 80s film any day and I am sure to swoon over it. Chicago has had a long cinematic history that started with legends such as Charlie Chan and Gloria Swanson and many cool films have been shot here especially back in the 1980s. Two awesome flicks that come to mind are The Blues Brothers and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Then there is the lesser known stuff and I tend to like the underdogs, but I never had a clue that lesser known films were even shot here. Not until I received my copy of Adventures In Babysitting.

Never heard of Adventures in Babysitting? Or maybe you have and you are just not willing to admit it. Either way, I wouldn’t blame you, because admitting it does christen you to a certain level of dork-dom. Oh, well, here I go again.

This 1987 cheesy flick stars Elizabeth Shue and according to IMDb was in fact filmed in Chicago. Less than a decade later, Shue would be nominated for an Oscar and seen playing a hooker opposite Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas (a very good, non-cheesy film). But before she decided that playing a babysitter wasn’t really upping her career to stardom as much as a prostitute would, she pranced around in this movie going through major life’s challenges in the course of one crazy babysitting evening.

Directed by Chris Columbus who also did another much more famous film shot in Chicago, Home Alone and co-starring a band of unknown not so child-like anymore actors such as Maia Brewton, Anthony Rapp and Keith Coogan. Coogan is the expert when it comes to filling up a resume with the word “babysitting” in the title as he appears in another one of my all time favorite films of the early 90s, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.

Shue plays Chris Parker. Stood up by her un-dreamy boyfriend, Mike, (played by Bradley Whiteford) on their anniversary, she decides that she is just "too old" to babysit the Anderson kids, Brad and Sara (Coogan and Brewton). Apparently, they all live in nearby suburban Oak Park. Chris decides to do it to get her mind off of Mike. Just as soon as she arrives to really be Sara's babysitter for the evening (Brad is supposedly old enough to take care of himself), her best friend Brenda (played by the lovely Penelope Ann Miller and not looking so lovely here) calls her in distress. Apparently, Brenda wants to run away from home and has gone as far as the bus terminal but she has no money and no way of getting back home after she chickens out so Chris decides to head over with Brad, Sara and Brad's doufus friend, Daryl (Rapp) in her mother's station wagon to pick up the terrified Brenda.

Along the way, they unfortunately have a mishap on what I am assuming is supposed to be the Eisenhower Expressway that results in a flat tire.

You know what they say about getting a flat tire on the expressway in urban Chicago? DON'T!

Hey, but here's a great view of the city while you wait for someone to give you a hand. In Chicago? That's about as likely as Elizabeth coming back for the remake!

Enter creepy two truck guy with a hook for a hand. Chris has seemed to left her "checkbook" (What teenager on this planet in the year 2010 even carries one?) and her wallet, including her driver's license back at the Anderson home. Smart! But the creepy two truck guy agrees to help and pay for the tire. Nice guy he is.

Except for the fact that his wife is cheating on him and he knows so he decides to go to his working class neighborhood to catch her in the act. Yep, these kids aren't used to urban Chicago. For crying out loud, they act like Oak Park is five hours away! Never trust the tow truck man, because while he's busy shooting out the guy boinking his wife, Chris and the kids decide to hide out in a car that is just about to be stolen by Joe Gipp (played by Calvin Levels).

Meanwhile, Brenda's having an interesting experience in the urban side of Chi-town as well.

Back at the bust terminal her glasses get stolen while falling asleep watching those funky little TVs. I am going to take a guess here, but I am thinking Greeyhound bus terminals do not resemble anything like this anymore.

And if you can get past my crappy screen caps here, you'll see a great shot of the neon bus sign and right behind that and not really all that visible is a Magikist sign very familiar to the Chicago area back in the day.

Meanwhile, the parents of Sara and Brad are at some function being held in the Smurfit Stone Building.

And just like any parents in any 80s film, they are completely clueless about what shenanigans their kids and the babysitter are up to. Perhaps Mr. Anderson was blinded by Mrs. Anderson's awful gold lamay dress that I am sure my mother had back in the day.

Meanwhile, Joe Gipp takes the kids and the car he stole over to the local chop shop which just so happens to be run by guys wearing bad suits. The kids are being held in the "office" atop the illegal activities and they decide to make their escape through the rafters in the ceiling. Just before they go, Brad's idiot friend steals a copy of the office's Playboy magazine. That Playboy just so happens to have something written on it that the bad guys want.

So as the bad guys chase after the kids, the kids end up on the stage of a blues club. Because what's more Chicago and bluesy than a blue's club in Chicago? How do they get off the stage? They have to sing the blues!

Once they are free, the gang ponders on what to do next but the bad guys catch up to them.....

I know! Let's run to the el train to get away. Chicago's CTA never looked so old!

Once on the el, they meet a gang of West Side Story bandits and poor Brad gets stabbed in the foot during the melee.

Never fear, University Hospital is here!

And who do they run into inside the emergency room? The creepy tow truck guy! Good news is he left their car at Dawson's garage. Problem is, how do they get there? Even better, they crash a college party, where Chris meets a cute guy named Dan (played by George Newbern) who gives her and the kids a ride, presumably down Lower Wacker Drive.

One thing's for sure: This ain't no Blues Brothers!

Check out Dawson's garage with the old MobilGas logo and all. Dawson is played by a very unrecognizable Vincent D'Onofrio. Luckily, they get back the car because Sara is convinced he's Thor from the Marvel Comics.

So they get the station wagon back and decide to head on home. Except....

Chris sees her boyfriend's Mike's car at the restaurant where he was supposed to have been taking her not some other girl! Stupidly, she stops to confront him while Sara gets distracted by a toy display in a nearby window. Little does Sara know that the bad guys who are after the Playboy which just so happens to be inside her backpack are not too far behind.

So Sara decides to run to where she know she will get help: Her parents!

Unfortunately, she gets off on the floor that is being renovated and the bad guys find her so she has no choice but to dangle herself outside the window. Nice view of the skyline at night.

Meanwhile, Chris gets to her senses, realizes that Sara is missing and the gang knows exactly where they will find her.

Bad guys get thwarted. Sara is found and rescued. Parents still know diddly squat. Off to pick up poor Brenda they go!

Check out that Burger King sign to the right!

Back on the Eisenhower and home to Oak Park it is! I never wanna go to the mean city again!

The gang gets home all safe and sound. Brenda has no choice but to return home and spike her stepmother's Tab with Draino. Chris hooks up with the cute guy she met at the college party.

The end!

More Ornamental Details

2010-02-26T14:21:00.000-06:00

This is going to be the last set of photos from Joseph Siry's book Carson * Pirie * Scott for a bit while I move onto something else for a time. Take a look at these last close ups of ornamental details. More great pictures from this book will be covered sometime in the latter part of March.

The Clay Model

2010-02-24T14:18:00.000-06:00

We adorn this blog with two more fabulous photos from Joseph Siry's fabulous book Carson * Pirie * Scott. It is another look at the facade of the former Schlesinger and Mayer store at State and Madison. The first photo is a basic clay model of what the book describes as a "cast iron cartouche on fascia" located on the Madison side of the building. In the second photo, we have an ornamental wreath that was originally located on the first floor above the State Street show windows.

Now who can tell the difference between the Claymation model versus the actual thing? I sure can't!

Taking A Breather....

2010-02-20T19:31:00.003-06:00

The saga of the Louis Sullivan designed Carson's building at State and Madison is going to have to wait a bit. Unfortunately, dire circumstances for me have hopelessly arisen. I have a stupid midterm on this Monday night and cramming all the wealth of info in such a short amount of time is no easy task. Of course, shopping, re-watching After Hours on DVD and bumming around on Facebook probably does not help. Hope to be back in shape with more goody photos Monday night.

There's No Asphalt Without the Tum

2010-02-17T14:40:00.000-06:00

It is Louis Sullivan at his best. The series on the former Carson, Pirie, Scott store once built for department store Schlesinger and Mayer continues with more photos from Jospeh Siry's awesome book Carson * Pirie * Scott. It is a pity that these early photos had no way of being showed in color but I can just imagine the turn of the century beauty radiating throughout State Street in a vibrating glow.

Siry writes, "Photographs at the entrance at the time of the building's completion show a reflective sheen over the metalwork, perhaps as evidence of its painted finish. The copper bronze plating that Sullivan had originally specified for the ornamental iron of the base was not used. Instead the iron was painted with a base coat of asphaltum, a thick tar-like paint, to protect the metal from moisture and weathering. Over this base coat a system of interblended colors was applied. The surface was covered with a coat of bright vermilion. Over this color was laid a translucent coat of green like the color of olive or sap. In the process of applying the paint, flecks and spots of red were allowed to show through the green overlay. According to Purcell, Sullivan likened this treatment to the fifteenth century Italian method of applying gold leaf. In this process a base coat of Venetian red was applied, of which flecks and edges "show through and between the foil squares to give eye relief and built pointillism against gold glints." The lustrous surface of the metal visible in early photographs shows the decorative effect of the technique for painting ornamental iron."

The golden question here really isn't what the heck asphaltum is, but how can I commission someone to do this to my house?

The Perfect Valentine

2010-02-14T20:38:00.000-06:00

Today is what some people like to refer to as the holiday of the greeting card, confections and floral industry. I don't know what it was, but when I logged onto Facebook this morning, I found a bushel of negative anti-Valentine's Day statuses set aside for those who don't seem to have anyone special in their life. But who says you have to have a special someone to enjoy the day? Speaking from someone who has spent the better part of the past year who has endured some pretty difficult times with her own emotions and special someone mostly of my own doing, it's the people around you who make up a barrage of special someones. And you probably don't need Valentine's Day to tell you this.

For me, looking at vintage storefronts can be a great cover for a special someone. There is no better Valentine then gazing at the gorgeous vintage storefronts of yesteryear. Mannequins dressed in classy threads with a 1940s/1950s backdrop. Both photos, taken of the Carson's store at State and Madison, face the Madison side of the spectrum in the days when shopping downtown was a treat and a delight for the masses. Taken from Joseph Siry's book Carson * Pirie * Scott, these scenes are a lovingly delightful treat for me and my readers. Happy Valentine's Day!

Why? Why? Why?

2010-02-12T20:36:00.000-06:00

There is nothing but sheer madness involved when it comes to stripping a beloved facade. Ever picture these guys in tacky suits (or maybe it's strange white cloths that resemble straitjackets) sitting around in a glassed in conference room discussing what's the best way to make a beloved landmark more generic and boring? I sure have and let me tell you those dreams are pure nightmares or loony hallucinations depending on the way you look at it. By the late 1980s, this is what the Carson's building at State and Madison (Former Schlesinger and Mayer Department Store) looked stripped of all it's beauty: that famous cornice.

Familiar with the comeback? Thankfully, someone sane walked in the room and decided that restoring is the key to survival. This picture is a 1988 photo courtesy of Joseph Siry's wonderful book Carson * Pirie * Scott. More exciting photos is sure to come soon!

B.C. Before Carson's

2010-02-10T20:37:00.002-06:00

Though they would not be there long, the good folks at Schlesinger and Mayer along with the great Louis Sullivan knew exactly what they were doing in creating a department store emporium along an important shopping district between two main streets (State and Madison) that just so happened to divide north and south from east and west.

Sullivan was commissioned to design enormous display windows with mirrors to project a sort of three dimensional world. According to the fabulous book Carson * Pirie * Scott by Joseph Siry, a head trimmer at Schlesinger and Mayer was quoted as saying "Depends entirely upon the draping and arrangement of goods and the harmony of colors, for his effects which are invariably of the highest artistic order."

These photos appear courtesy of Siry's awesome photographic book. The first one was first published in the Inland Architect and News Record in 1903 and the second one was first seen in the Architectural Record in 1904. Click on the picture for a larger look at the interesting crowds and nice threads to say the least.

Thai Food, It's What's For Dinner

2010-02-07T15:15:00.014-06:00

It's a vintage cornucopia of goodies in the most unlikely place. Yesterday plans did not quite work out as we had hoped so we ended up discovering a new Thai restaurant. Now I love Thai and Chinese food as much as the next person, but for me it has to meet a set of some very basic requirements: it must be worth the price, the food must melt in your mouth and I better not have to shelve out eight bucks for half a box of noodles like I did at the atrocious Manee Thai that used to be on Pulaski and Addison. I refer to them in the past tense because lucky for me they burned down. Yep, karma's a....well....you all can guess the end of that sentence.

Enter Cozy Noodles located at 3456 N. Sheffield. It certainly is an unusual kind of Thai place. I have never entered one before and seen a plethora of vintage ads, toys and radios greeted at the entrance by a life size Elvis (Unfortunately, my camera's batteries crapped out at some point). The women's bathroom is covered in the most unlikeliest of knick knacks: pez dispensers! It is certainly a delight to dine in despite the fact that the restaurant and parking lot are rather tiny, it certainly lives up to the name cozy.

And the Thai food is pretty darn good too! I love flat and wide rice noodles so dishes like Pad See Ew and Pad Thai are some of my favorites and Cozy Noodles prepared them quite excellently and the portions are pretty hefty for the very reasonable prices. However, it's evident that it wasn't just the food that spoke to me. It was the cool looking vintage everything as well. All the ads that spell out past time Americana such as the various soft drinks at various nickel and dime prices, the "Beer, It's What's For Dinner" ad and the Mr. Peanut of course. If you enjoy a restaurant that takes pride in decorating itself with things long gone, give this place a try. If you don't fancy Thai food, you'll still love the decor.

1950s Carson's

2010-02-04T17:31:00.000-06:00

Designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan and originally used by the department store Schlesinger and Mayer, this lovely building located at Madison and State Street stands as an iconic example of Chicago's rich department store history. Right after this building was built, Schlesinger and Mayer actually sold out to another dry goods businessmen, Harry G. Selfridge, in 1904. Selfridge, who had worked beside Marshall Fields in turn sold it to Fields' longtime rival Carson, Pirie and Scott who nicely occupied the building until 2007.

Today we have two very cool, very awesome 1950s shot of the Carson's store as it was in all its department store glory courtesy of Wayne Andrews' glorious 1968 book Architecture In Chicago and Mid-America: A Photographic History. Andrews' writes that in the first photo George Elmslie is the designer of the ornaments. While the ornamental detail is intricate, gorgeous and quite fascinating I am more turned on by those neat fifties streetlamps in the second photo rarely seen these days unless you happen to come by an old gas station or two. And those cars are fun too!

The Mystery of the Strange Elf House

2010-02-03T14:19:00.003-06:00

Reader Debra has emailed me and asked for information on an old bungalow home that was located near Irving Park and Mozart that had strange little elf statues all over the surrounding yard. This would have to be 1960s through the 1970s. I was curious myself to see if anyone out there might actually remember something that can help Debra solve this mystery and/or maybe, if we are lucky enough, provide us with some terrific photographic images. If anyone knows please do drop a comment to this post or email me if you want a more private discussion. Thanks in advance if anyone has the key to this mystery.

A Scene From the South Side?

2010-01-31T13:54:00.003-06:00

A combination of busy work and feeling a bit under the weather has left me with less posts than usual. School is in session and reading the pages and pages of graduate school homework is pretty much unbearable. Add that to the fact that I haven't been feeling well since Friday and I did not get to check out a particular book from the library that would have provided me with this weekend's posts. Must be the midwinter blues.

Here's a scan from a picture I found at the library a while ago. Not sure where it is from but it was taken in the early 1980s and was shot someplace on the south side. If anyone can identify where this might have been that would be most helpful. In the meantime, I get to go back to bed and enjoy the silly 80s film marathon I had going on this weekend, watching vampires in The Lost Boys and laughing at wacky hijinks in Mystery Date. Ok, the latter on is actually a very early 90s movie but it's fun to see the kind of films in the pattern of Martin Scorsese's After Hours with perhaps a hint of John Landis' An American Werewolf In London. You know, typical hysterical story of boy meets girl, boy asks girl out, boy gets help from smarmy big brother for the big date and then spends the rest of the night accidentally shooting police officers and running from Chinese mobsters while being sadistically taunted by Fisher Stevens (Born in Chicago and co-star of the filmed in Chicago mid-19990s TV Series Early Edition, see I can tie this to the blog) in the role of the iconic and hilarious Flower Boy. Any movie that also features great character actors BD Wong, Victor Wong and James Hong all in the same film has got to be a good ride. Ooooh, and the boy played by Ethan Hawke gets to drive a cool DeSoto. The only difference is Griffin Dunne is unfortunately no where to be seen in this film. For those who don't know or remember who Griffin Dunne is, he seemed to be the go to guy back in the 1980s for Landis and Scorsese's darker but somewhat humorous films, my favorite of which is Amazon Women On the Moon and in between those he appeared in silly movies like Who's That Girl? opposite Madonna. Dunne was last seen by me on an episode of Law and Order a few years back looking nothing like he did back in the day. Sigh. Do people really have to age without grace?

It's clear I love watching madcap films like the ones I described so if anyone can recommend others, I am all ears. Cheesy, dark, hysterically stupid and amusing, start suggesting! And maybe when I do get around to watching others I will try to integrate them in the posts.

It's The Grand Facade!

2010-01-28T17:17:00.002-06:00

A Chicago Landmark, everyone recognizes the intriguing and unique facade designed by the great Louis Sullivan. It is the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company building located at 1 South State Street. Built in the late 1800s, I must say it is definitely one of Sullivan's most fascinating works simply if not for its shocking beauty.

Originally built for the Schlesinger & Meyer Company, it was sold to Carson's in 1904 and used by the retail giant until 2007. Interesting to note that Schlesinger & Meyer was a dry goods store that could no longer afford to operate by the time this Sullivan masterpiece was built. Carson's scooped it up almost as fast as the Williams sisters hit a tennis ball. Sure, they did not have to spend the money to pay Sullivan himself for this masterpiece.

Does Anyone Remember Henry's Hamburgers?

2010-01-25T10:54:00.001-06:00

Generally, I love to lurk on forums like the ones seen at Roadfood, Groceteria and Forgotten Chicago and look at the threads that contain someone asking a question in the form of "Does anyone remember....?" Of course, most of the places these forum members discuss are ones I have never heard of, but I love the reading and learning aspects of it all and I certainly have learned a lot. I'm sure, Henry's Hamburgers came up in some of these places but it was not really brought to my attention until about a week ago searching for information on Dog-N-Suds.

One of my new favorite links is Captain Ernie's Showboat. Some months back I discovered that Captain Ernie has a great page on a chain that started right here in Illinois, Sandy's, but what I had not noticed is that Captain Ernie has also devoted a page to Henry's. I got curious when it mentioned that Henry's had a headquarters in Chicago. Wait, with a Chicago headquarters, surely there were Chicago locations, right? Sure enough, my Chicago Tribune archives never fails.

Apparently, Henry had many Chicago locations and one that seemed all too familiar to me is the one pictured across the street from where Riverview once stood. I can't recall when, but about a year or two ago, I was visiting that shopping center right next to Lane Tech and saw this interesting little building across the street that had obviously been something other than a used car lot in a former life. I take my camera almost everywhere I go for reasons like this.

Pure luck would lead me to my friend, Craig, once again who saw me looking up the Henry's Hamburgers ads. He made this remark that there was a place in Benton Harbor, Michigan with the same name. Benton Harbor is home to the very last Henry's still standing and just celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Notice the same basic sign design.

Henry's Hamburgers was a national chain started by the Bressler's Ice Cream company in the 1950s. It reached its peak of two hundred locations in many states before it began to disappear in the 1970s as McDonald's and Burger King took over. Some more interesting photos of former Henry's locations can be found at Michigan Drive Ins. But here's the fun part, some great discussions are also scattered across the web. One at Chowhound wonders who bought the chain out while the other at LTHForum discusses the major "scandal" on Henry's non-foray into hot dogs. Click on the individual ads to see the other addresses and locations none of which I can find still standing. The first ad is from 1961 and the second one was a few years later, 1964.

Ranch Manor Development

2010-01-23T16:34:00.000-06:00

On our way coming back north on Pulaski/Crawford after taking those photos of the former Dog-N-Suds, we stopped at a red light and I looked over to see this great font-age of a sign named Ranch Manor Shopping Center. Keep in mind that it was damn near sundown, a cold and dreary day and I was in a car not really willing or having much time to get out.

A dear friend of mine who was riding with us in the backseat proclaimed "Ranch Manor Shopping Center? Not much of a shopping center." Thinking about how she said it was the hysterical part. Ranch Manor is obviously not meant to be some grand shopping center. In fact, Ranch Manor was the name of the development. The middle scan shows an early 1950s ad from the Chicago Tribune advertising affordable homes in the Ranch Manor development. The anemic Ranch Manor Shopping Center was, no doubt, part of that development.

Situated in Oak Lawn along Pulaski/Crawford and 107th, 109th and 110th streets, I did not get to personally see what these homes look like but I have no doubt in my mind that they are similar to the ranches and bi-levels of 1960s/1970s development spent in my childhood best friend's home in Brunswick, Ohio. You know, it was the kind of place where every home on the block looked precisely identical with neat lawns, no sidewalks and a neighborhood park with a playground and a pool. I loved spending my time going over there to marvel at the fake stone on the fireplace and the cool kitchen that overlooked the family room. Spent many a day playing hide and seek and hiding in the various closets with so much success that once it took my friend over an hour to find me even though she looked at least twice in the closet where I was hiding.

The first ad with the neat 1960s patio furniture is for a store called Franshar located in the shopping center circa 1964. Looks as if the store is most likely long gone. It was the only ad I could find indicating what was located at the strip. Anyone from the Oak Lawn area recall what some of the other stores were that used to share space, please do let me know, I would love to find out myself. The last photo is, of course, my crappy car shot of the sign. Damn gas station always has to be in the way!

Alsip's Dogs

2010-01-20T20:03:00.006-06:00

"The glow of its lights made an artificial roof against the deepening dark of the summer night sky.

"Usually, in the 50s and early 60s the drive-in restaurant's patch asphalt was but recently carved out of prairie or woods. There always seemed to be swarms of gnats and moths around the lights, and at least one light would emit a steady hum. But you could hear it only in the intermissions of the rock 'n' roll playing on your car radio or the juke box.

"The menu was up there under the corrugated metal or Fiberglas awning. You'd scan it-unnecessarily, because you'd memorized it for countless previous stops-before the carhop hurled out of the restaurant in answer to the honk of your horn or the flashing of your lights.

"This was a drive-in, remember, not a drive-through. A real girl in a real short skirt came out, took your order and returned with a tray (it clamped to your car window) loaded with your Coke (in real glass mugs) and fries (lots of ketchup) or your cheeseburger, pizza or whatever."

Thus reads a 1979 article from the Chicago Tribune lamenting the years gone by and hitting the ground with a slew of drive thru restaurants tailor made for picking up very quickly and leaving very hastily. Nothing skated passed me the other day when a more official trip to the South Side had us swinging past Alsip and seeing this gem located on Pulaski/Crawford Road.

Imagine my surprise when I realized this was a former Dog-N-Suds location!

At the time I took these photos on a cold Monday afternoon, I did not know what this restaurant and gem of a 50s/60s example of a carhop was in a former life, but I did know it was certainly nice to look at albeit a bit sad considering it is now "For Sale" with nothing to occupy it. Showing these pics to my friend Craig tonight, he lamented on how it looked like a Dog-N-Suds he used to go to as a child growing up in Michigan. He was not even sure Dog-N-Suds was still around. But when I found their Facebook page, I knew what this had been in a former life. All I needed was Agility Nut to confirm my suspicions and she came through quite nicely!

Dug-N-Suds was miraculously started in Champaign, Illinois in the early 1950s and had hundreds of locations in thirty-eight states over the years. Unfortunately, today, they are down to just a handful and the only one left in Illinois is located in Grayslake. While I have never personally been to a Dog-N-Suds, I had read about them and other people's memories of them over the years at Roadfood.com. It's quite a treasure trove of interesting tidbits. Rest assured one of these days I am going to have to make it to Grayslake.

South Shore Home

2010-01-17T13:35:00.001-06:00

From the book Chicago's South Shore we have a gigantic bungalow style home with a great little balcony on the second floor. They certainly don't make homes like this anymore with good and solid construction or even attractive qualities.

Schoenhofen Brewery

2010-01-15T17:32:00.000-06:00

Take in these delightful 1966 views of the Schoenhofen Brewery located at 18th Street and Canalport. Pictures appear courtesy of the gardenesque Bible, The Prairie School Review. Designed by Hugh Garden and built in 1902, the Schoenhofen Brewery was was designated a Chicago landmark in 1960. It certainly isn't hard to see why as it is quite the beauty to look at.

In addition to being extremely hard to pronounce for my gentle tongue, the Schoenhofen Brewery was lauded by architect and critic Russell Sturgis. He is said to have proclaimed that "No school of architecture can teach a man how to design such a building. At least if there be any school of architecture of that stamp, it should really proclaim itself its power of inspiring liberal and practical ideas in the youthful mind should be widely advertised."

However, like our last post on the Grommes and Ullrich warehouse, the Schoenhofen brand seemed to disappear once Prohibition took place as discussed in this fine article on Forgotten Chicago. So, folks, kick up your mugs full of Edelweiss beer and party like it's....1912.

Grommes and Ullrich

2010-01-13T17:06:00.004-06:00

Back into the liquor mode I go. Built in 1901 it is the Grommes and Ullrich warehouse located at 108 West Illinois Street. Grommes and Ullrich were the brewers of those sinful Saturday evening, party at the lodge favorites such as Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Try to say that after drinking a whole entire bottle of it. Looks as if the company existed in the late 1800s and was gone about twenty years after this gardenesque example was built.

Appearing courtesy of the 1966 issue of the Prarie School Review, the journal describes the warehouse as "...A four story brick building with wide windows of a type Giedion labels the "Chicago window," a mullioned with a large unit in the center flanked by two narrow ventilating parts." I'll spare you the rest of what little the journal writes on this structure for fear of making whatever readers I have left of falling asleep. I am not a hundred percent sure if this building is still standing but if anyone knows do leave a comment or email me. The 60s view is just very groovy to look at if you ask me.

Greasy Spoon Lane

2010-01-10T19:21:00.008-06:00

Living in Chicago for twenty-one years now it is pretty fair game to say that I have eaten at dozens of many greasy spoons in the city. I don’t mean “greasy spoon” in a derogatory, this place is nothing but an outdated time warp with a dirty ceiling and bad food kind of way. For the most part, I actually do not like the term greasy spoon, but I guess I can use the term to lovingly and affectionately to refer to all the quaint diners, coffee shops, family style restaurants, snack shops, soda fountains, lunch counters, etc and as the Chicago Tribune’s Ron Grossman writes “On Chicago’s thoroughfares, there used to be a coffee shop every few blocks.” Indeed, Grossman is correct but the key phrase here is “used to be.” Code for “not so much anymore.”

When I was a girl it seemed like every Sunday my dad was geared up to go out to a mall, maybe stop for some groceries and conclude the day with eating at many a Greek owned family restaurant. The malls we often traveled to get to were places like Golf Mill, Harlem and Irving Plaza, The Brickyard Mall, North Riverside, Lincolnwood Town Center and maybe the occasional Old Orchard. There were places we frequented that will always be embedded in my brain and places we only got to once and were long forgotten after time had passed with the occasional pizza joint thrown in for good measure. Living in Cleveland, Ohio for a time I can’t recall my dad ever being a greasy spoon enthusiast. Sure, he was a regular foodie and I always thought those Sunday outings were to get away from my mother’s subpar cooking skills, but diners and coffee shops were never a staple for us in Ohio, though chain restaurants like Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Denny’s, Big Boy’s, Church’s Chicken and my beloved ChiChi’s were. Perhaps, Cleveland just did not have the variety Chicago did. Having arrived here in 1989 and living in the Lakeview neighborhood the easy places to get to were of the variety kind and thus my father’s love for greasy spoons grew from there.

There was the place he often frequented on the corner of Broadway and a non-descript side street not too far from Belmont or my grade school, Nettlehorst Elementary. It’s quite a shame for me that I can’t even recall the name of the restaurant as he took me there to get ice cream and hang out with him many a night when my mother had to go far away to visit my grandfather who was ill and dying at the time. He and a few of his friends often went there, sat at the counter and had many refills of coffee that did not make the old man who owned the establishment a very happy camper.

Near the intersection of Broadway and Belmont you also had the Melrose, which my dad also loved. The Melrose used to have a few locations and usually served a decent meal. While I don’t recall ever going to the Broadway location, I walked past it many a day and gazed at the turning cake stand visible from the sidewalk. You knew it was a good place to eat if the dessert was always so prominently displayed. The Melrose had two other locations that we did end up going to that have closed in recent years, one on Lincoln and another at Touhy and Caldwell. My father says the owner ran into many personal issues that made him lose the restaurants. The one on Lincoln eventually turned into a different restaurant and is now boarded up while the Touhy and Caldwell one remodeled itself into a more upscale bar and grill. The new place is now known as Caldwell Tap or something of that uncreative nature. Thinking nothing of it, a couple of years back my dad suggested giving it a try. We walked into an unfamiliar atmosphere for my folks who don’t go to bars or anything much dark and woodsy on the inside (unless you count Applebees or Ruby Tuesday), sat down and noticed the immediate un-family like atmosphere. Upon looking at our one page menus (You know it isn’t a real diner when the menu is one long printout sheet of heavy carbon paper) and the exorbitant amount of prices on most of the dishes, my dad gave me a sad face and said in his Eastern European accent, “I tell you vhat, we go? Looks to me like they no have nothing.” For us, it was a very somber moment indeed. For me especially since I am pretty sure we ended up beating at McDonald’s that day.

Looking back, though, there were so many of these places we went to with Formica table tops, long and curvy winded counters, pink booths, green walls, wooden dividers on the booths, payphones almost always located near the entrances and ample gobs of rice pudding for dessert. As a kid some of my favorites were the still there Alexander’s on Clark and Granville (My dad still hangs out here), The Sauganash at Peterson near Cicero, Family Palace (First photo) on Harlem and The Blue Angel on Milwaukee. Then there are the ones that are long gone but hold a dear place in my heart as well as my dad’s such as Belden’s at Howard and Western (Torn down for a Blockbuster now becoming extinct themselves), the Gold Mine on Howard and California which was never a real great place but I discovered the wonders of rice pudding there, Rosario’s Noodles on Higgins (Burned down a year or two ago) and Maxwell’s which was torn down for some un-godly, unknown reason the last few years.

Of course, daddy dearest passed on the tradition to me. There were places I discovered as well as rediscovered in college such as Whistler’s on Devon. Whistler’s has a fun story behind it. Years ago my father was a landlord for a woman who waitressed there and died suddenly. Very sad tale but the restaurant was re-discovered with a friend of mine who hated that the bathroom stalls were so small your knees hit the door as soon as you sat on the toilet. And who could forget the Golden Nugget? They kind of suck now but they used to be good, cheap and a guilty pleasure for me, particularly the stuffed French toast. I’ll never forget this one place on Foster between Kedzie and Kimball that went through many name changes over the years but was known as Café Victoria in the end. It was delightfully outdated on the inside but the ice cream sundaes were to die for! Of course there is also Huck Finn on the South Side, perhaps the queen of all outdated but good diners and the LeSabre on Damen and Montrose its king. My father spent a night at the LeSabre though I only started going there recently myself.

While many of these places were still booming and common in the 1990s, like Standee’s, they are closing left and right and quickly becoming an endangered species. I can understand the case during the booming economic times and rampant gentrification of city neighborhoods and owners selling out for fancy condos or overpriced eateries, elaborate boutiques and multiple chain names, but I don’t think I understand the disappearing acts so well now that economic times aren’t so rosy. Standee’s is not the only place suddenly gone. Passing by the Super Cup a couple of weeks back, I noticed a For Lease sign in the window. Soon enough the place will be gutted and the landmark neon sign will probably be gone and places where you can find a bottomless cup of coffee will be taken over by the new kids on the block or just another Starbucks or Jimmy Johns, whatever they may be.

These photos are about four years old and were taken from an ancient Argus I had once upon a time. Pictured we have the Family Palace at 4751 N Harlem which has downgraded itself into the most boring sign ever witnessed. Gone is the word “FOUNTAIN,” replaced by….nothing. Next is the A&T Grill located at 7036 North Clark. Never been here but I love the sign and I somehow get the feeling that A&T is not the original name. Next up are remnants of a snack shop bearing the words “HAMBURGER” and “CHILI.” This one is also located on Clark just north of Devon and peering inside the window the day I took this photo, it is actually a Mexican Taqueria joint. Let me just say, I am no fan of tacos or Mexican food in general so it is no replacement for diner food. Next up we have the simple word “GRILL.” I think this photo was actually taken somewhere down Belmont close to maybe Southport or Damen. Not sure where but it’s a pretty good example of what was once on every other corner. I can’t actually make out the word above “GRILL” in the next photo but this is a remnant of a sign that was still up on the intersection of Milwaukee and Belmont in 2006. It has been taken down and gone through a few businesses, but at the moment it is a tattoo parlor. The space looks pretty small from the outside so I imagine that this was once a small snack shop with perhaps some counter service and a few tables. Lastly, we have P&S Restaurant at 7201 North Western. This place has been here for as long as I can remember but I have only had the pleasure of eating here once. It is definitely got that old timey Formica feel to it and not a bad eatery at all.

If anyone can fill in the gaps to some of these restaurants or provide me with some tales of lore at your favorite local greasy spoon spot, please do share. I love stories of “Where everybody knows your name.”

Standee's: COFFEE SHOP, RESTAURANT, FOUNTAIN

2010-01-08T20:32:00.003-06:00

Diners, old fashioned coffee shops, snack shops and family style restaurants are a past time and certainly a place as large and populous as Chicago had more than their fair share. Some still thrive in its outdated but timeless glory while others take on contemporary forms. I am always saddened to hear about a sudden passing here and there and while I never visited Standee's, Katherine's awesome picture of the neon sign over at her blog City of Destiny and her FlickR page, shows that with FOUNTAIN in the caption, it is certainly my kind of place. The Chicago Tribune recently ran a nice little sentimental article on the closing of Standee's. If you haven't read it already, it is a must read for those who frequent these types of establishments and have sadly noticed the sudden shrinkage of available restaurants. It is a topic that is very dear to my heart that I hope to cover at length this weekend. Until then enjoy the links.

Steak With Lobster On A Budget

2010-01-06T13:37:00.002-06:00

Here we have two ads for Mr. STEER Steak House which I blogged about my in last post. The first ad is from 1979 while the second is just one year later. As you can see, I missed a location the first time around and neglected to include the one once located at 5000 West 95th Street in Oak Lawn now home to Smith Furriers. The site went from selling affordable steaks to selling furs. Is the fur just leftover detritus from the steaks that were made?

I am not sure how a mini chain that once had five locations could fall so much by the wayside. It's one of those fly by night things that everyone has fond memories of or some sort of passing memory but no one is able to tell the full story of just what the heck happened to it. We often take people, places and things for granted, restaurants particularly. If an eatery has lasted for thirty or forty plus years, we expect the establishment to be there for a long time yet to come, even if we have never set foot inside the place. Mr. STEER, unfortunately, seems to bear that type. Here one day and gone the next without much notice or explanation. Times change, people change and it's unfortunate that not much can remain the same. Who wants to live forever? Perhaps, Mr. STEER wanted to once upon a time.

On the plus side, check out those late 70s, early 80s prices! $2.99 for a sirloin steak. Ribs for under five bucks. Steak AND lobster for a whopping 6.95! Steak AND crab legs for just over five bucks. Click on the ads for a higher resolution and travel back to a time where prime dinners fit anyone's budget!

Mr. STEER Says "I'm Still Here!"

2010-01-03T14:50:00.002-06:00

Here is Mr. STEER all decked out in his orange-yellow 1960s/1970s glory ready to serve you with four locations, including 3141 West 63rd Street, 4752 South Ashland, 3300 N Lincoln Avenue and, of course, this one pictured at 4033 N Milwaukee in the lovely and forever interesting Portage Park neighborhood. Enjoy the juicy steaks that would make a chef at Outback warming up a plate of a hunk of something that closely resembles a sirloin mighty jealous. Bring your Uncle Sal in for some finger licking ribs that slide gently off the bone. He'll appreciate your kind as well as affordable generosity. Also enjoy the lobster and, hopefully, it isn't market price and won't cost forty bucks or taste like pneumonia, errr....ammonia. Best of all, enjoy the atmosphere, let your guard down and have a great time, especially since it looks like a fun source of entertainment. However, take note of one small, pequeno problemo here: Mr. STEER has been closed and out of business for quite some time now so that may put a bit of a dagger in our plans to go out tonight, but I am not going let that bit of news put a damper on my parade.

A few years back, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, we were searching for a place to eat and my partner suggested everything under the sun that I was not in the mood for. I think I was being rather difficult (Probably a bit of an understatement) in compromising and I was probably going to get tossed out of the car on my ass soon if I didn't make a concrete decision. Finally, the one person who has always been as patient with me in life as possible, thought about a place. As we continued to drive down Milwaukee, he started chatting me up about a restaurant called Mr. STEER that his father used to love going to. I had never heard of the restaurant and it had been quite a long time since he himself had been there but he said the ribs were great and I was willing to give it a chance because I did not want to pass up going to an old school type of joint. Unfortunately, for us, it was just too late. By the time we got there, we noticed the emptiness in the windows (Now boarded up) and the lack of anything that resembled a sign of light. I got out of the car to see that it had indeed closed down. Shoot, I don't even remember where we did go eat. I do remember feeling bad that I missed out on the Mr. STEER experience.

Whether that's a loss cause or not, I am still very unsure. In a section on Yelp titled Worse Chicago Restaurant the late Mr. STEER is mentioned by Sharin F who lovingly writes "Mr. Steer had some of the worst food I've ever eaten, but I forgave them for their awesome hadn't been updated since 1966 decor. RIP, Mr. Steer." Sounds like perhaps Mr. Steer was my kind of man.

Not sure when the other locations closed, but I do know they existed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I don't know much else about these restaurants or their locations but anymore info from anyone who knows or at least remembers them would be appreciated.

Happy New Rothschild!

2010-01-01T14:46:00.001-06:00

We ring in the year 2010 with some discounted wine and a post that was supposed to go up yesterday. I spent my night with a guy dressed as Santa drowning down Coronas faster than he could say "Ho, ho, ho." Merry New Year! Soooooooo, of course THAT kept me busy as well as the free and endless supply of rum and cokes.

This is a shot of Rothschild Liquors located at 1615 W 79th Street. I took this photo a couple of winters ago from a friend's car as the snow piled on and on and on. The sign is much cooler than it looks and is best captured here on Thomas Hawk's FlickR page, though the photo on FlickR is actually a sign of a different location over on Chicago Avenue. Same basic sign design though.

Rothschild Liquors goes back to at least the 1940s and seems to be a Foremost type of chain in essence that the booze is heavily discounted. According to this review over at InsiderPages, this location at 79th has been around for quite a long time.

May the new year bring some more merrily happy posts. Until then enjoy the new calender.

Peacock Liquors

2009-12-30T14:42:00.000-06:00

It's a colorful spectacle of a sign. This is Peacock Liquors located at 3056 West Montrose Avenue. There's nothing extraordinary about the sign except that it amazingly still lights up pretty well. The neon would be even better if there had been a peacock thrown in for decoration in there somewhere. It might made the folks over at NBC a tad upset but that's okay, right? Surprisingly, this place has good reviews over at Yelp. No bums standing on the corner waiting for a dollar for an honest beer, perhaps?

The El-Mont

2009-12-28T21:39:00.001-06:00

El-Mont sounds like it should be a hotel, but it's a place to simultaneously pick up your lucky lotto tickets and your bottle of Jim Beam. How does that distinguish it from the other places where you can do just that? Well.....I guess it doesn't, does it?

The one thing that the El-Mont has going for it is the cool ancient sign. In case you need to know whether your liquor is there ahead of time, just call MUL 1666. If you do, you'll either get Three 6 Mafia to come and perform at your next New Year's Eve party or you'll get the guy at the counter not trying to hawk a bottle of Absolut but a couple of ancient videos he's trying to get rid of titled The Omen and 976-EVIL.

Located at 4843 North Kilpatrick Avenue, it's very near Elston but closer to Lawrence than Montrose. I assume that, perhaps, the name came from a combo of Elston and Montrose. I guess El-Lawr just didn't sync well.

A&R Super Food Mart

2009-12-27T14:34:00.001-06:00

Keeping up with the tradition of New Year's Eve 2007 and New Year's Eve 2008, we will be focusing on the tradition that never gets old, as well as retail of a different kind not related to sports or shoes (Though to be fair, you have wear shoes for most of these places to even sell you the liquor. Or so I'm told). Yep, we'll be non stop yapping about booze or at least the places where you can buy some. Most have old, gaudy signs that haven't changed since the beginning of....well, old gaudy signs.

Not to be confused with A&P Super Food Mart, it's A&R Super Food Mart located at 5952 West Grand Avenue. Never been inside the store, but from the looks of it, the building is one of the most unattractive you'll ever find. The only thing neat about this store is the cool, but old and rusted out sign. I have no doubt in my mind that the little star on the right side once lit up or at least sparkled a bit. Wasn't able to find any info on what this place was, if anything, before, but it is pretty obvious that it has been around for quite some time.

Now let me go back to watching that riveting episode of Friends where Joey puts on ALL of Chandler's clothes on.

Springing My Best Foot Forward Into Summer

2009-12-25T14:06:00.000-06:00

If there is one Christmas wish, I have it is vintage shoes from Wolock and Bauer. Or....if that is slightly out of reach, just plain ole vintage shoes. Hell, vintage anything is my Christmas miracle. More often than not I don't get vintage anything for Christmas but it's nice to take a look at this Christmas idea for ladies' as suggested to you by the Chicago Tribune.

Putting my best foot forward into the next thing on my Christmas wishlist: a summer! See below for details on places of purchase.

The Perique 'Gator

2009-12-23T14:17:00.007-06:00

If fabulous out of reach shoes doesn't put a lady in the Christmas spirit, who knows what really will. As I was doing the research for the Mages posts I did last week, I came across this cool 1930 ad by a show store called Wolock and Bauer. That ad is actually the fifth one counting down but a close up of that Deco-ish design is blown up a bit in the very first one located on top. I have to be honest. It was that Deco goodiness that caught my eye.

I didn't find much information on this chain. Looks like it started up in the early 1910s (My guesstimate was an article implying the exact date as 1913) and was gone by the late 1950s as the very last ad appears to be touting a liquidation sale. It seems as if it was a relatively successful and a moderate chain of luxury shoes located in many Chicago addresses including 4636 N Sheridan Road, 3333 W Roosevelt Road and 6757 S Stony Island all of which, if you take a close look at on Google Street View, have disappeared from the retail landscape and have been long replaced by something else or in nothing else but a deserted stretch of land. Other locations included 217 S. State Street, 3 N Michigan Avenue (Now a doctor's office) and 622 N Michigan Avenue (Still a storefront hub). Over time, the chain began closing locations one by one and by the end was left with the one at 3 North Michigan Avenue. And just what happened to all those ab-fab shoes? Probably took a detour over to Shoe Heaven.

The date on the Chicago Tribune ads are in order of year starting with the second one: 1923, 1925, 1929, 1930, 1947 and 1958. I just love the moxie of the 1925 ad which starts yapping about alligator pumps and reads "Not all the alligators in Florida are deep in the swamps. The most fashionable allowed themselves to be captured for shoes now worn along the Lake Trail at Palm Beach. For winter wear up here alligator calf is equally smart, when combined as shown above with patent leather in tongueless oxfords, silken laced, with Parisian spike or Cuban heels." Yep, nothing like 'gator skin and fancy silk lace to say smooth and fashionable and warrant a protest from PETA. I think I will give that look a try New Year's Eve.

And if you happen to be gazing at the 1929 ad, which is the fourth one from the top. You may be wondering, as did I, what the color Perique looks like. Have no fear. Just in time for that special lady or guy in your holiday season life, Didi's here to define it for you. Here goes: it's just you're ordinary golden brown. So, now, you can go out and purchase that special perique color gift to thrust in your partner's face on Christmas morning and say "Here, honey, I got you something perique!" Hopefully, he, she or it won't mistake it for tobacco.

Mages' Moment of Madness

2009-12-21T19:36:00.001-06:00

And the saga of Morrie Mages and his family's sporting goods empire continues. Before being sold to Community Discount some time in the early 1960s, Mages always had an interesting rash of buglaries. To everyone's dismay, the burglars were not off stealing hockey sticks and pigskin footballs but good ole fashioned guns and ammos. I wouldn't normally mention this except for the creative ways some of these robberies took place.

In 1952, the location at 6216 S. Halsted took a particualrly brutal beating when crooks brandished with crowbars and sledgehammers broke in to steal of all things guns. Kind of an oxymoron, maybe? How did they break in? They "....smashed thru a two foot brick wall and ceiling into the 'burglar proof' gun room...." Oxymoron indeed. Then there was the one that the FBI probed in 1961. They wouldn't comment on whether those guns would be resold to Cubans seeking arms. No, I am not making this up. How'd they manage to get in? The store located at 2315 W 95th Street, had it's roof cut open by the burglars. All we got nowadays is people who jimmy the locks. I can't remember ever hearing a robbery story this fun.

The first three ads are of Mages Sports Goods Stores and in order are dated 1948, 1950 and 1956. The last ad is of Morrie's sporting venture after he went broke called Morrie Mages Sports and that Chicago Tribune ad appeared in 1976.

The Former Good Shepherd Community Church

2009-12-20T12:54:00.002-06:00

If you have ever skated past 1700 Ballard Road in Park Ridge, Illinois, you will have no doubt passed up this beauty designed by Lloyd Wright and Eric Lloyd Wright son and grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright. Lloyd Wright was also responsible for designing the great Louis Samuel home in Los Angeles, California, This building is the former Good Shepherd Community Church designed by the younger Wright in the late 1950s. A huge thank you goes out to reader and frequent commentator, BW, for scanning this photo from a brochure of the church. BW also scanned for the us a page showing the inside of the church which looks strikingly gorgeous as well as an artist's rendering of the exterior.

In 1980, Good Shepherd Community Church became Maine Township to which it still belongs to today. Maine Township has a web page with their own interesting history of themselves as well as the building. I have to be really honest here though. The current photos you can see on Maine Township's own web page are not nearly as interesting as the old black and white ones. Other than the passing of time, not much has changed.

Mages: The Stores for Sport

2009-12-18T13:17:00.003-06:00

I have got to say, a few years ago I thought mattress shopping was a dull bore. Apparently, no one has lived the high life unless they go bed shopping. And not just a bed made out of fancy fake woods like cherry and oak, but one made out of metal. And not just any metal bed, but one that's durable. And, no, a forty dollar headboard made out of aluminum at Walmart is not durable. And not just the headboard, but the footboard too. And don't forget to include the frame. And not just any frame, but one based on a platform. Oy with the poodles already, I have never been so bored and frustrated in my life and that includes all the family weddings I have gone to where shooting myself in the head should have been an option along with taking home a piece of cake.

For the life of me, I will never understand why one location of the Bedding Experts or American Mattress can never be consistent with another location. The Bedding Experts people had this especially nasty habit of having two, three, four different locations quoting a wide range of prices for the same friggin' bed! They tout themselves as being family owned and operated yet they seem to love to commit certain acts of thievery for the poor schmuck who probably doled out $600 for the Fulton at one location only for someone to get the same bed for two hundred bucks less at another location of the same chain up the street. And when you weren't dealing with the same selections with a wide range of prices, you had the most loveliest set of uninspiring sales people to deal with, two-thirds of which seemed to have zero interest in pushing or selling the merchandise. When the chain places were too tiring and monosyllabic to deal with, there were the too few independently owned or operated businesses most of which only seemed to be interested in stocking no metal beds and showing you the same exact catalog that can be found at any Bedding Experts or American Mattress. Bored yet?

Enter this place located at 2457 N Harlem and "creatively" titled Furniture Avenue. The guy had zero metal oriented beds in this huge store, but he did show us a catalog full of affordable metal beds that we hadn't actually seen! Yay! Metal bed bought with pretty arches, a platform support at a very affordable $200. Problem solved. Except the next day, call ensues saying that the model that was purchased was out of stock at the warehouse and wouldn't be in until January! Old St. Nick has no interest in being kind to us this year. Ho, ho-HA!

For the five minutes that I was happy over those lost five days spent searching, upon leaving the store, I noticed the logo at the footstep of the door. Mages The Store for Sport. Never heard of it. But then again I am no sporting goods type of girl. Digging into the past, I found that this was a chain started in 1921 by a Russian immigrant. The senior Mages had a few sons who joined him as partners in the business in 1938. One of those sons, Morrie Mages, was a legend during the 1950s for his late night TV commercials that were dubbed "Mages Moment of Madness" by sportscaster Jack Brickhouse. Why were these ads Mages moments of madness? Because they lasted for as long as fifteen minutes. I'd say that's utter madness, but at least ole Morrie was very much interested in selling his merchandise and actually moving it out the door!

Mages grew and grew well into the 1950s and managed to accumulate about twenty locations that served not only sporting goods, but boats, hunting guns (could have used that at many of those boring weddings) and all types of outdoorsy, woodsy products imaginable. The last one to open as a Mages was located at 5901 Madison. Mages also had looked into merging with a few other companies but none of the deals went through until the early 1960s when Community Discount Centers Inc. acquired the stores, added soft goods and turned them into junior department stores. I have no way of knowing for sure, and if others could help out I would really appreciate the input, but I believe that the Community Discount that acquired Mages is the same Community Discount that also bought the long forgotten by most discount chain Shopper's World.

In Morrie Mages' obituary that appeared in the Chicago Sun Times after dying at the age of seventy-two in 1988 (A special shout out goes to my favorite business librarian, Henry, for pointing out that the man has been dead for twenty years and I swear the encounter was a lot funnier than it sounds due to hilarious facial expressions that came about as a result) it states that Mr. Mages gained a fortune after selling the chain to Community Discount. A mere few short years later, he lost most of that fortune to bad investments and started another sporting goods chain under his own name in 1967. That chain grew and was sold to MC Sporting Goods in the 1980s just before Mages passed away.

More to come this weekend. Hopefully. Enjoy my crappy nighttime photos of the former location on Harlem.

Swiss Alps Down Montrose

2009-12-16T10:50:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's house on Montrose was correctly identified by reader BW as being at the corner of Montrose and Lowell. Today's Montrose Corner Home is a bit west of that. Once again, I am not sure where this one came from and the sign for the cross street is not visible in this picture. I do believe this is west of Cicero though.

Two years or so ago I was out and about bike riding and came across this fine home. When I stopped to grab a snapshot, some weirdo (Yes, he was a bit strange, but I guess I am not that much more normal) walking past me aptly said "It's like the Swiss Alps." I kind of agree with that assessment, but I still think a couple of other European countries fit the bill as well.

Victorian Montrose

2009-12-15T10:41:00.002-06:00

Apologies for once again falling behind but now that I have gotten Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet out of my system, I can concentrate on anything vintage and relating to Chicago. With that said this lovely Victorian era home is located on Monstrose west of Pulaski. I don't really remember the cross street as it has been a couple of years since I took this photo. Enjoy the color, enjoy the sounds of cars whizzing past and, I promise, by the end of the week things should be back to normal on my blog.

Out of This Galaxie

2009-12-08T10:50:00.003-06:00

Still desperately trying to catch up. I have a PowerPoint presentation this evening in which I have to discuss human rights abuses in Chile during the 1970s. Not exactly a fun topic but what is fun for this blog is more vintage looks of classic cars. I was driving down Elston yesterday when my partner and I spotted this baby. It looks like a 1950s-esque Ford Galaxie. If anyone can pinpoint the exact year that would be most helpful. Until then enjoy the rest of the snow filled week and talk of Tiger Woods' indiscretions.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Square Shadows

2009-12-06T12:14:00.001-06:00

The last couple of days of my life have been unexpectedly hectic and I never imagined it would put me a couple of days behind on the ole blog. Today, with a side dish of a good old fashioned apology, I offer another Philadelphia area art deco gem from the great book Modern American Design. This interesting home is designed by the great Beaux-Arts architect, George Howe. Known as Square Shadows this grand looking structure was designed for William Stix Wasserman (Good to know it was not the Wasserman I knew as my junior high homeroom teacher) during the period of 1932-1934.

Located in Whitemarsh, Pennslavania it isn't hard to see where Square Shadows gets its name from. I don't believe this is a photograph. To me it looks more like a planned sketch or drawing. Whatever the case it certainly captures the essence of what it's supposed to be and reminds me of the many Chicago Mid-Century Modern structures that are very similar to this. Not sure if this home is still standing but I Googled a few interesting photos of the actual home. Both are in black and white and one presents a lovely exterior shot that is very much like the drawing above, while the other is an interior shot of an awesome and funky looking staircase. Based on these photos, it appears that Mr. Howe had quite the interesting career completely ahead of his time.

Now how do I move that staircase to Chicago, Illinois?

Oak Lawn Country Day School

2009-12-02T14:13:00.002-06:00

Today we travel to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And, no, unlike the subject heading this has nothing to do with Oak Lawn, Illinois but the coinky-dink of a name is the only connecting factor I can provide since none of Frank Lloyd Wright's sons had anything do with this design. Now this scanned photo from the early 1930s book Modern American Design does nothing to capture early 1930s Philadelphia or even give us much of a clue as to where the heck we are. There's no Liberty Bell. No goody cream cheese on a bagel. No detectives from the Cold Case squad solving mysteries. No sign of the Fresh Prince in his early youth. When dad phones, there's no guys in the back yelling "Get your Phili cheesesteaks here!" We just have to trust that this indeed is our beloved city of The Phil.

With that said the Oak Lawn Country Day School is a little bit hard to find any info on. Googling it doesn't seem to bring me much which leads me to believe that the school has either changed its name in the last seventy-five years or it no longer exists. Any Phili area transplants out there willing to lend a Chicagoan a hand? It certainly is an interesting little Deco-ed up building. Looks more like someone's home than an actual school. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Louis Samuel Residence Los Angeles

2009-11-30T17:12:00.000-06:00

How does a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son ending up being owned by famous actresses Diane Keaton and Christina Ricci? You got me. I scanned this photo from the wonderful book, Modern American Design that I received as a birthday gift from my friend Craig. While some of these are not Chicago related I am going to get around to scanning everything possible that is remotely interesting just before I hawk the book to make a nice chunk of change.

Upon looking at this fancy home, known in this rare 1930s book as the Louis Samuel Residence, located in Los Angeles, California I almost thought this was a church. In actuality Wright's oldest son, Lloyd Wright, who was born in Oak Park (Maybe I can connect this back to Chicago after all), designed the home in the late 1920s for Louis Samuel, manager of silent screen star Ramon Novarro. An interesting tale ensues between Samuel and Navarro according to this great blog, Big Orange Landmarks, in which Samuel was found to be stealing Novarro's money. Eventually, Novarro took over the home and it is now known as the Samuel-Novarro home. Big Orange Landmarks, which includes some incredible recent photos, describes the home as an "...Art Deco/Mayanesque masterpiece, one that McGrew and Julian write “may be the most beautifully sited home in Los Angeles.” The four-level home was built into the side of a hill with concrete and oxidized copper throughout (even the floors are concrete). Nearly everything was incorporated in the first floor: dining room; living room; kitchen; the home’s sole bedroom; and the lounge which lead to the outdoor swimming pool..." Eventually in the early 1990s actress Diane Keaton wound up owning it as did Christina Ricci afterwards. Hmmm, that vast concrete of space matches her forehead! Alas, she ended up putting the home on the market. Nice to know that it is indeed still standing.

Pretty In Powder Pink

2009-11-28T20:20:00.003-06:00

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably won't be surprised that I love classic vintage cars. Well, I love vintage everything else so it only makes complete sense. Oftentimes when I am driving I spot many vintage vehicles skating by but it is a complete rarity that I will get to take a photo of one. Not quick enough when it comes to whipping out my camera and paying attention to possibly not hitting the next pedestrian darting out in front of me.

Today I struck gold but I was only able to capture fifty percent of those nuggets. Running around for some extraordinary Saturday errands, I managed to spot a fifties era powder blue Buick coasting down Irving Park. Unfortunately, I was coasting by in my slow ass Ford Escort with the check engine light and the bald tires so my camera wasn't exactly ready to start chasing some guy's vintage behemoth. Eventually, much later on in the day I did my usual Saturday afternoon field trip of standing in line for ten minutes at the local Dollar Tree to shelve out a whole buck for the Sunday Chicago Tribune (Yes, I am that cheap). The Dollar Tree is located over at Addison Mall and right towards the back of the strip there is a parking garage with access to the Dollar Tree. This has been my habit for a few years now and it's where I always park when going there so imagine my surprise when I pulled in and there was this beauty all powder pink and oh so gorgeous!

Instantly I knew this was a Ford Thunderbird. I am big on vintage Thunderbirds, I love them to death. One of my favorite TV shows of all time involves an immortal guy surviving by chopping off the heads of his enemies. If you can overlook the 1986 film of the same name and watch the TV show version of Highlander, then you will see how Duncan MacLeod drives an awesome looking 1964 Ford Thunderbird similar to this one. It's my favorite of the Thunderbirds. Of course that probably has more to do with the yummy man on TV that gets to drive the vehicle and not the vehicle itself. Doing some Googling and some comparisons, we see that our little powder pink hero we have photographed today is a much earlier one. Looks like it could be a 1957 Thunderbird as seen here in all it's red glory. I would love to be corrected if I am wrong or off by a year or two just in case I didn't guess right.

Real Man's Man Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T16:23:00.003-06:00

Thanksgiving is upon us once again. I am not much on celebrating holidays and Thanksgiving turkey just ain't what it used to be for me. It's also a fact that other than throwing some pasta in a pot and making a killer spicy alfredo sauce laced with red pepper flakes, I am not one to slave over a hot stove for six hours to make people happy. I would rather have someone else do the slaving while I enjoy the stuff going into my tummy. That makes ME happy. Yes, I know, I am a perfect example of the stereotypical ME generation

With that said, nothing says "Happy Thanksgiving!" best more than a good steak. Like I said, turkey's been boring me to death for a while now and I enjoy a good, medium rare steak. Ironically enough, the name of this restaurant from the 1969 Chicago Tribune archives is called, none other than, Medium Rare Steak House. What an odd duck of a name. Ah, duck, I think I'm seeing the future here. More on that in a sec. Nothing spells out stereotypical and latent, but laughably sexist like a late 1960s/early 1970s era slogan such as "The Steak Man's Steak House." In case you haven't noticed, dear readers, I am a woman and I would take that steak any day over that girly turkey. Of course, lately I have been considered manly in step with my attitude on certain subjects which we won't even get to, but, suffice it to say, a steak is for an every-person out there whether it is Thanksgiving or not.

Once located at 10301 Southwest Highway in Chicago Ridge, Medium Rare looks like it began life in or about 1968 or so and ads show up well into the 70s but suddenly stop at around 1976. One can only assume that perhaps there weren't enough manly men out there discovering the steak man's uber manly steak. Whatever happened, I am sure this was a classy 70s era steak joint with dark wood interiors, dim lighting and solid white table clothes. I can just picture this joint now swimming in a sea of bell bottoms and goofy sideburns. Man, I really missed out on the 70s. Come back! Please?

In 1982, the shell of a restaurant ushered in a new era as Marco Polo Restaurant. Even more hilarious is their own twisted and somewhat goofy slogan, "Where East Meets West." Since this was well before the Berlin Wall came down, at first I thought this was a play on communist era Europe. You know the old binoculars that your grandpa has stashed in the attic that are stamped with "Made in East Germany." (I actually have a cousin, not residing in the US, who has a pair but they actually say "Made In the USSR.") on them? Cold War era makes up for some twisted logic. But looking at the ad, it offers such specialties as Hong Kong Steak, Chow Steak Kow and egg rolls offered along with ribs as appetizers. Just your typical Chinese restaurant served American style. Though Chinese food as we know it was actually developed in the US not in China so the "East meets West" thing just kind of makes my head scratch a bit. Even more confusing is that the restaurant is named after an Italian dude that's been dead for quite a long time. Okay, so he traveled to Asia, but still, kind of mind boggling.

Apparently, the address is still in existence and residing in its place is a restaurant of an entirely different name and nature called Patsby's Restaurant & Lounge that according to Yahoo Local may actually be closed. I see that luck has not struck 10301 Southwest Highway with a long lasting eatery. Perhaps they need to go back to the Real Man's Man gimmick. Bring back the 70s steakhouse to appeal to manly men like wrestler William Regal. In fact, he did it so well in the World Wrestling Federation back in the late 1990s that he could be their spokesman and do ads in which he's "....Doing "manly" things like chopping wood, shaving with a plain razor, and squeezing his own orange juice." Not sure how any of those things (And that includes steak) make anyone a man's man but whatever works.

Happy Manly Thanksgiving!

MaMa Minelli

2009-11-25T17:37:00.002-06:00

I love Italian food especially of the homemade variety and I have seen this place dozens of times over the years though I have never actually gone in. Yet. I thought this MaMa Minelli's tale was rather intresting for something that started off on Taylor Street.

"JOSEPHINE MINELLI: 1910-2009 - 'MaMa' knew best at food shop
Chicago Tribune (IL) - Sunday, November 22, 2009
Author: Joan Giangrasse Kates, Special to the Tribune

When customers browsed the shelves at Minelli Meat and Deli on Milwaukee Avenue in Niles, they knew that if the label said, MaMa Minelli's, it had to be good.

"I'm of Italian descent, so I'm picky when it comes to my food," said longtime customer Louise Delano. "But MaMa Minelli's is just fantastic."

Josephine Minelli was MaMa Minelli, who up until two years ago was still crafting with her own hands tasty Italian beef and pizzas, a memorable marinara sauce and her signature mouth-watering meatballs -- all from Neapolitan recipes brought over from the old country.

"With Ma, it was always a little of this and a little of that," recalled her son, Fred, who works for the family business. "She really knew how to cook. We just stayed out of her way."

Mrs. Minelli, 99, who along with her late husband opened the original Minelli's in 1957 in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood, died Tuesday, Nov. 17, at St. Matthew's Center for Health in Park Ridge of natural causes.

Born in Montefalco, Italy, near Naples, Mrs. Minelli came to the United States with her family in 1926 at age 16. They lived in Michigan for a couple years before moving to Chicago.

In 1931 Mrs. Minelli married her husband of 39 years, Phillip, also an Italian immigrant, with whom she had three sons. He died in 1970.

Mrs. Minelli lived with her family for many years on Taylor Street in the Little Italy neighborhood. She and her husband opened Minelli's at Western Avenue and Lexington Street. It was a small grocery/deli/tap room that specialized in Italian foods and beverages.

"My father handled the business end of things and she took care of the rest," said her son, Fred, who eventually began running the store with his two older brothers.

In 1970 the family closed that store and opened Minelli Brothers Italian Specialty Foods & Liquors at 7780 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Niles. The brothers operated that store until two years ago, when Mrs. Minelli's grandson, Mario, became a third-generation owner of what is now Minelli Meat and Deli at 7900 N. Milwaukee Ave. in Niles.

The new store still carries the MaMa Minelli line of pastas and sauces, Italian beef and, of course, her homemade meatballs, all made from her recipes.

"She was a wonderful cook, but more importantly she was a very sweet lady," said another longtime customer, Jacquie Krubert. "She made me feel welcome and let me brag about my grandchildren."

Other survivors include two sons, Leonard and John; 10 grandchildren; and 17 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 2 to 9 p.m. Sunday in Skaja Terrace Funeral Home, 7812 N. Milwaukee Ave., Niles. Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Monday in St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church, 8149 W. Golf Road, Niles."

Walden Book Shop

2009-11-22T12:43:00.000-06:00

My friend Craig has come through for me yet again. Having had a birthday recently he gave me a few rather interesting old books. Among them is this baby entitled Modern American Design by R. L. Leonard, and C. A. Glassgold. I am always curious about how old a book is, where it came from and if the same authors had similar works. I work in a library so naturally I have easy access to finding this information. Craig said the book had belonged to his deceased father many moons ago, most possibly being used as a text book while his father, an artist and professor, had been a young lad attending university. While the book certainly did not look brand new, it's still glossy pages looked to be no more than forty years old. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the book had been published in the early 1930s. Even more surprising was that the authors, Leonard and Glassgold, also had another similar book under their belt:
1931 Kem Weber Annual of American Design. Even more amazing is that this puppy is a rare book selling for almost eight hundred bucks online. Um, Craig, could you go back to your dad's book stash and dig this one out? Thank you!

I shouldn't complain though because I love my Modern American Design book. The moment I received it, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning, I couldn't wait to look through it at all. Even better is that online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, it's selling for $150 bucks. If I wait a few decades, I might be able to pay off my nursing home services when I am senile and going gaga in a drooling cup. In the meantime, I thought it would wise and generous to share some of the awesome photos with the rest of the world and of course weed through the Chicago related ones first.

Here is a lovely view of Walden's Book Shop. This Walden's most certainly has nothing to do with the familiar Walden's chain which started in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1933. The Walden's gloriously pictured above was a Chicago based mini-chain that lived throughout the 1920s, but was gone and out of business by 1932, assuming that perhaps the Depression played a part in wiping them out. Trying to pinpoint the exact location of this store is the tricky, partly impossible part. A 1926 Chicago Tribune ad shows that Walden's had two locations, one at 307 Plymouth Court and 410 North Michigan Avenue. Michigan Avenue is a much fancier address and this is quite the fancy looking store. Based on the looks of it, I would be sure if it was indeed the Michigan Avenue address except later on around 1930 or so a new Michigan Avenue address emerges at 546 North Michigan. This location also showcased the Walden Gallery of Art. Even more confusing is that by the end of 1930 a third location was added at 910 N Michigan Avenue. It's not surprising that I haven't been able to figure out which location these photos are from and even more disappointing is the fact that by 1932 Walden's was gone with another book shop having moved into the 546 N Michigan Avenue address.

With that said, whether the building is still standing or not it probably looks nothing like this today. Those elegant and gliding stairs and those cool looking, almost futuristic lamps, it's all utterly orgasmic. I wouldn't mind shopping in a book store like this if I could transport myself back in to that time and place. It's all simply amazing! Forget it, this book is soooooo being buried with me.

Top of The Morning To Ya!

2009-11-16T12:41:00.000-06:00

This my homage to the South Side. I am off trekking there today in search of good food and more Italian ice. Here is the Shamrock Motel located at 1212 S Cicero. Yes, I know, it's a tribute to Saint Patty's Day and I can't wait until March 17th rolls around because while the snow hasn't kicked in yet, it will soon. The end is near.

This was taken after a quick drive-by I did back in late September. The building was very Mid Century Modern but too bad there doesn't seem to be any stories of sleaze in the Chicago Tribune archive which spells BORING!

The C & C Deco Factory

2009-11-14T19:19:00.002-06:00

An art deco masterpiece designed by the sons of the legendary Daniel Burnham? Only in Chicago! It is the Carbide and Carbon Building located at 230 N Michigan Avenue. It is a beauty even in this obviously much older photo I managed to scrap up my library a while back.

Designed by brothers and architects Daniel and Hubert Burnham in 1929, this gorgeous gem is located at 230 N Michigan Avenue. According to the Chicago Landmarks' website, ".... the architects of this building chose its dark green and gold colors based on a gold-foiled champagne bottle seen at an office holiday party." Psst! I heard Helmut Jahn is going to base his next building on the color of a Bombay Sapphire gin bottle.

Once an office building, C and C is now home to the Hard Rock Cafe Hotel Chicago. Nice to see it being reused instead of torn down for a Trump creation. Anything is better than that!

Mansard Hell

2009-11-11T17:28:00.000-06:00

Is this a house with a delightful mansard roof or a 7-Eleven? I don't think we are ever really supposed to know. In this instance, just venture out to River Forest in case you are overly curious to see something overly unattractive. Instead of beauty today, we find something to take a mock-able pleasure in because we all need a good laugh at least once a day. To say the least it is an interesting little home with a mansard roof a'la this one I posted a few months back that was located in Lincolnwood and generated many wonderful comments that had Dave speculating that it looked like a bank branch.

Hmm, I have to think about that for a second. While the absence of globe lamps is indeed striking, I would have to agree that this home is a hybrid of a cross between a bank branch and a 7-Eleven. Actually, it looks just like the baby home of this neat (I do use that term loosely) shopping center strip located on the northwest corner of Kimball and Bryn Mawr that indeed houses none other than a TCF bank branch and a 7-Eleven! If you go to Google Street View and punch in either the address for TCF which is 5600 N Kimball or the one for 7-Eleven which is 5610 N Kimball, you'll now start to understand why I think this home may just be a long, lost relative. And, yes, I know, the strip center is just as ugly, if not uglier. Ya think it hurts your eyes to see it in a photo? Try seeing it up close and in person nearly every single day for the last ten years.

A special note to all my readers, thanks for putting up with all the homes-gorgeous, ugly, neat and in between-as well as the sometimes (Ok, mostly) super brief posts that were due to my fun-alicious exploits in graduate school which hasn't always involved books, reading, writing or actual studying I'm afraid to admit. I am hoping to get back on track starting this weekend because, well, it's time to move on and get back into what I really and truly love and am passionate about.

The Color of Winter

2009-11-09T15:27:00.001-06:00

Yes, I am continuing with the mud brown theme which should please Steven. It's the most exciting color of the season because the shade of brown reminds of you of when autumn is almost over and winter is setting in. You're wondering how this even comes into play. Well, my dear readers, take a very good, lengthy gaze at the brown-ness of that garage. remembers when leaves die and they turn into wasted detritus, that's what they look like. hence beautiful autumn gives way to ugly, old man winter.

This is another River Forest home that doesn't bear much distinction but still interesting to look at.

The Brown Gets A Compliment

2009-11-07T15:23:00.000-06:00

And the ugly brown color continues. Though I do like the tan-ness of the brick yellow which I think compliments that not so glossy brown. I have a midterm Monday so this, of course, takes priority. Just enjoy this view of another River Forest gem.

It's In The Details Not The Ugly Color

2009-11-05T15:19:00.002-06:00

Dirt brown isn't exactly my favorite color but this house situated just north of Division in River Forest isn't too shabby. The slope of the roof makes it looks interesting and better, nicer, prettier color would have made it much more bearable to gaze at.

However, the one highlight here seems to be the great details on the side next to the garage. I don't know what those funky looking symbols are but I know I would love to have mounted on the side of my house too!

Let's Martinize It

2009-11-03T19:55:00.000-06:00

We have reached the last of our Craig photos and I have a midterm.next Monday so I will be spending a lot of time trying to remember the difference between neo-structuralism and neo-liberalism.

Enjoy this nice view of a dry cleaners on the corner of 67th and Kedzie in the Marquette Park neighborhood. It's a simple little Mid Mod structure and certainly pleasant to look at.

Balcony Details To Die For

2009-11-01T13:54:00.000-06:00

Here's a great building that is located in the Marquette Park neighborhood near 67th and Kedzie. As our last two posts in this area that included a small Mid Century Modern house as well as a grander Prairie influenced one, my friend Craig was once again the photographer.

Here he happens to display how much alike we seem to be without even noticing it. When he first showed me the photo of this apartment building, I marveled at the close up of of the nicely detailed Mid Mod railings. That's exactly what I would have zoomed in on!

A Tale of Neon, Panera and Sunsets

2009-10-30T18:10:00.004-05:00

'Twas the eve before Halloween and after a full day of work with no work (And blissfully avoiding the work I should be doing), my comrade and pal Craig and I managed to head over to Panera on the corner of Lincoln and Kedzie in the Lincoln Village Shopping Center to take advantage of the free Wifi and the asiago cheese bagels (Well, I'm the sole breadwinner who took advantage of the bagel and the cream cheese with my mouth of course. Dirty!) As we were sitting in the back of the restaurant, we realized out of this picture postcard view of Lincoln Avenue going northwest that we were gazing at one amazing sunset. Most of the day seemed like it could have been the perfect setting for a nice Edgar Allan Poe story: dark and dreary, weak and weary, the usual Chi-town blues. Much the way Mr. Poe himself was when he hit the bottle on a regular basis. That Poe, he was a troubled man and while the day was not troubled, the trouble was the wind and the rain and the fact that the un-sunny disposition of Mother Nature in general must have been what drove Poe to the bottle. What the hell was I talking about? Oh, yes, sunsets.

This is why a camera is always handy in my bottomless abyss of a purse. Outside I went to capture a few snapshots and think about the days when Lincoln Avenue was a byway engraved with glossy, colorful neon lights of the various motels and fifties era throwbacks. Most are all but gone now, victims of the tear down obsession/condo conversion craze at insane markups of the past decade. To me this marked the decade of destruction for Lincoln Avenue. I remember, shortly after moving to Rogers Park, many of the quirks of the sea of neon still remained intact and Lincoln Village laid there unscathed in a pre-Panera, pre-Starbucks, pre-Borders over saturation of a world. How far we have come! In just a few short years, few of the so-called seedy motels would stay alive and the ones that didn't bite the dust stayed with the times and updated their look and all but destroyed any vestiges of neon. And, dear readers, if you think I am an oddball for thinking about all this while staring at this gorgeous view, then, yes, I am. The horrors of the lack of preservation for some of those cool neon motel signs of the past should be a Poe story in itself: The Tale of the Death and Destruction of Neon. Somehow, that title does not sound very Poe-esque, but the story idea is good for self awareness if you're into vintage neon and all its glory.

The peachy oranges and the lilac purples sure bring in a nice contrast to the darkness which remind Craig of Chicagoan Roger Brown's artwork. He managed to blend lines together well just as the sky did on this night. As Craig and I were leaving this blissful bread and soup heaven known as Panera, we seemed to have a moment that was straight out of Jim Jarmusch's superb and hilarious 1984 film Stranger Than Paradise. A guy with a thick Indian accent, who had been sitting alone reading for quite sometime, was visited by an irate woman (presumably a friend of his) ranting on as hyperactive as possible in incoherent ramblings over a coat in a thick Eastern European accent reminiscent of Gretchen Wilomena Kraus of the often hilarious early 1980s TV show Benson. I swear she sounded and almost looked if she could be Kraus' double. It was eerie and at the same time utterly hilarious. Laughter was held in on major proportions. Paging Mr. Poe, here's a story idea for you from beyond the grave.

For now, enjoy the view, think about Poe pondering the loss of neon and rent the film Stranger Than Fiction if you've never seen it. Alas, Lincoln Avenue will always be there, but very bare. Nevermore!

Errol Jay Kirsch

2009-10-28T20:44:00.001-05:00

I am proud to say that thanks to regular reader and commentator BWChicago, we now have a face of genius behind the Logan's Run-esque early solar home on Fair Oaks Avenue in Oak Park. The architect, Errol Jay Kirsch designed it as his own place of residence and it was indeed built in 1979. If you visit Kirsch's website, you can catch a glimpse of the interior of this awesome place of residence, which would be even cooler if you added some sliding doors inside each room ala Star Trek.

What I didn't realize, however, is that BW ended up solving not one but two mysteries for me. Clicking on Kirsch's other works, I see that he is also the man behind that strange hodge podge of a home located in River Forest that I blogged about earlier this month. Yes, indeed, the treats for Halloween have come early for me this year and I could not be more than elated! All this candy and I did not have to wear a costume.

Cute House

2009-10-26T19:58:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting little home directly next door and neighbors with our last post at 67th and Kedzie in the Marquette Park neighborhood. While not as grand and as interesting as its dear neighbor, I love the details of that entryway. These shots were also taken by my friend Craig and for that I am grateful.

Twisted Bricks, Another Fall In Love With It Door and A Neat Balcony!

2009-10-24T20:17:00.000-05:00

As I have said many times on this blog, I get to visit the South Side of the city on occasion, though not very often. It helps when several of my good friends, who do live and breathe on that side of town, can occasionally provide me with some awesome material to work with and, this time, one of them came through. Though today's post is probably going to be more down to earth instead of something out of the realm of this Earth like Thursday's lovely look at our local Logan's Run structure in Oak Park, I promise this structure is just as amazing.

When this blog was still quite young, my friend Craig provided us with some great photos of mostly abandoned buildings that were located on South 41. He's lived in the Englewood neighborhood for a couple of years now and is always telling me about some exciting finds. When it isn't Chicago 1933 World's Fair canes that appear in garbage dumpsters in his sister's alley in the Edgewater neighborhood, it's lovely Mid Century Modern homes like this one located near Kedzie and 67th in the Marquette Park neighborhood. It just so happens that early on in the life of my beloved blog, I featured a great bungaloid as well as some nifty bungalow style two flats also located in Marquette Park. This time around though we are going to dabble in the Frank Lloyd Wright influences instead.

Regular reader, BWChicago, recommended a good site for me the other day called PrairieMod. I thought it was quite funny that he would mention this site the same night Craig showed me these photos. I recall telling Craig the second I saw this lovely and wondrous house how it seemed almost Prairie like in nature, but with a definite 1950s Mid Mod twist. Craig seems to think the house may go as far back as the 1940s. While I am not so sure on that date, I still contend it is a classic 1950s Mid Mod structure. Nevertheless, regardless of its history, this home is surely one great beauty and no one could possibly argue with me on that. Looking through PrairieMod's website, I felt as if this home could fit right in.

Poor Craig said it was extremely hard for him to snap some great shots, but I still think he did a fantastic job in capturing the lines, planes and corners of the home. The first two photos show off the cool makeshift balcony that screams "I love Mod!" as well as "Please restore me, I'm sad!" In the fourth photo you get to see the awesomely detailed brickwork and front door. And I know I say this alot, but that door is just too cool. I HAVE to have it! Also in the same photo, you can spot the interesting looking curved brick sculpture on the left hand side. I don't know what it is (Maybe this house IS not of this Earth) and neither did Craig but we both agreed it was pretty neat indeed. And how about those curved front steps? Nice, classy touch. The block details on the side of the home also seem pretty nifty and the back ain't too shabby either. This is definitely a worthy home that makes me want to visit the South Side more often, as I should.

Here's hoping that Craig will find me some more gems. For now, I will settle for thanking him for finding this one.

It's Logan's Run Right In Oak Park!

2009-10-22T18:16:00.011-05:00

Imagine this, you take a wrong turn and need to turn around and find your way back on path because your aunt's pestering you with calls to run errands while you have other things on your mind. Pardon me from sounding too cliched, but your wrong turn never felt so right. "Why is that?" you may ask. What you encounter by chance is not only pleasing and appealing to the eye, but one from a WTF? variety. Those three sweet, little letters together never felt so right. Guess what I was saying when I first saw this home (If I can even call it that) located at 1046 Fair Oaks Avenue in Oak Park? It sure was not "What the heck?"

Though I wasn't the one who stumbled upon this baby on a chance encounter, the person that did was dying to show me this house. Now I can see why. At the time, he said it was a little weird (A LITTLE? Reeeeeeally???) and that it was kind of hard to describe because I would have to see it for myself. A Saturday morning outing on a sunny day proved to be the perfect time to get a good look at this....whatever the hell it is. The poor chap who drove me actually forgot where exactly it was and whether it was on a corner or not. He just told me to be on the lookout for something weird. OK, I was expecting something of the mildly odd variety not of the grossly bizarre one, but as soon as I saw it, I was in complete awe because I can honestly say I have NEVER EVER seen anything like it in person. A few photos on the good ole 'Net maybe, but never right in front of my eyes. Yes, I actually did say the actual words in that lovely acronym, potty mouthed and all.

I was with the same person, who also had a similar chance encounter with the Spider House which I posted last month and of which he could not wait to show me either. I was expecting another 1950s Mid Mod gem, but I sure as hell never bargained for this. I'm not sure if what I expected was really what I wanted to see in this case, but this home sure beats any other futuristic home that I have ever seen and I don't expect to see anything else like it in person anytime soon. Earlier this month, I blogged about this weird, little house in River Forest and I spoke of how I had a "What the hell is this?" moment, I dare say that this Oak Park bundle of strange and unusual certainly surpasses that.

Unfortunately, finding much info on any of these homes can be like looking through a needle in a haystack. Short of knocking on the home owner's door and meddling into their home's affairs, I haven't had much luck on gaining information. In the case of the Spider House, it appeared as if no one was home and the rust growing on the beams was very noticeable. That weird little gem in River Forest looked as if it was in desperate need of tender loving care as the sad and sullen "For Sale" sign was nailed to the front gate. Same goes for this home, it looked as if no one was home yet again. If they had been surely someone would have noticed a couple of strangers gawking at their living quarters. Then again, they are probably used to it.

God bless FlickR, because if it weren't for the photo sharing community and those who love to comment on said photos I don't know what I would do. There is a picture on the site, and underneath the comments section a FlickR person named Deltasly writes "Wow....I can't believe it's still there and doesn't look worse for wear. I remember when it was being built. An early "green" house. Solar I believe was the original intent. I think it was built in 1979 or 1980?" Yes, it's a 1970s home! That totally makes sense to me now. As my Economics professor said in college "Everything that was built in the 70s was weird and..." I think somewhere in there he added the term "useless." Thus, this is the kind of home my classmates were dreaming of in the fifth grade, back in the very early 1990s when saving the planet was on every one's radar. Their drawings and models probably didn't look quite as inventive as this home, but this is probably what they had in mind. (Sorry, Nick, you weren't the first to pioneer a solar home!) If only they had known one had been built a decade before. Alas, those of us born in 1980 don't have time to think about the shaggy haired 70s as disco balls and platform shoes were way before our time.

I must say this poor house looks like it has seen better days and while the roof appears to be having trouble, I sure hope the owners are taking good care of it internally as I am sure those awesome shapes make for some cool looking interiors. It's like a structure straight out of the film Logan's Run. And hubba, hubba, how about that semi-matching garage? Perfect for parking that matching Bradley GT.

Powder Blue Meets Buttercup Yellow Once Again

2009-10-20T17:28:00.000-05:00

This lovely River Forest home is right next door to our last post. Not much to add here except for the fact that I am two chapters behind on my readings for my Human Rights class tonight. Yes, it's been a very busy week not blogging and not catching up with schoolwork. Life should hopefully get back on track by the end of the week.

Good things about this home is the cool color scheme, the awesome pattern on the garage and that cute little pseudo balcony. Seems that the owners of this lovely home actually care.

Hey, wait a second, that color scheme on the garage looks oddly familiar. Reminds me of this post Pleasant Family Shopping's Dave did earlier this year. I can't help but think how much the two 60s mod retro women in their retro coat and suit compliment that garage! Powder blue and buttercup yellow together again!

It's Simply Cute!

2009-10-18T17:19:00.000-05:00

Continuing on with the Mid Century Modern gems of River Forest, we have this simple one story home with nice greenish, blueish trim. It also seems to have a pretty good looking lawn and a driveway large enough for several SUVs to plop down on.

I'm not sure what the appeal of this house is for me. There's no fancy decor, no pylons or anything remotely even distinctive. Its quiet character exudes simplicity and the fresh air of appreciation. I say our world needs to work harder at appreciating the simple little wonders of the world who ask for nothing but give everything in return.

Yep, Still Busy....

2009-10-16T16:50:00.003-05:00

....And recovering from the flu. Here's a nice old Jewel commercial featuring the Voice of Jewel to enjoy thanks to Ageless North Shore.

Jade Green

2009-10-13T18:23:00.007-05:00

When I am out and about photographing someone's home, aside from the fact that most people find me a little strange, I look for some cool things that might draw my attention to the house. It might be a certain you don't see this everyday strangeness. It might be some cool decorative blocks. Or it might be a nice color scheme or two. Two of these three things drew me to this corner house in River Forest. The usual Mid Century Modern blocks MO was certainly the first thing that drew me, but the set of luscious jade green doors is the prize!

It just so happens that green is my favorite color and if I could meet and marry objects that don't seem to speak or move, not only will my life be easier, but I'd have a wonderful, marvelous and splendid time. Those cool door knobs are also seemingly out of this world. House on a nondescript corner in River Forest, will you marry me? Or just give me your doors!

The Mini Me Mod

2009-10-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

It's 10:00 pm, I am tired and I have plans for nothing grand. I just finished a five page paper on a subject that is intensely of interest but got all the interesting aspects sucked out by boring language so the last thing I want to do is write some more. Fear not, my children, I will not leave you without something pretty to look at tonight. This mini flat roofed Mid Century Modern ,while not huge and glorious as our last post, is also located in River Forest. Small and affordable? The small part is correct, the affordable part, probably not.