Every Picture Tells a Story 5/14/15

The bypass viaduct at Western/Belmont/Clybourn, to be demolished sometime early next year.

On the Way Home Last Night 5/6/15

The sky and office/condo buildings are now visible through the beams that used to hold the southbound platform of the Madison/Wabash station in the loop. CTA is taking it's time bringing the old station down--it closed nearly two months ago, but all they've done is remove signage and, within the last couple of weeks, take the roofing and platform planks away. The overwhelming majority of the station? Still untouched.

Every Picture Tells a Story 4/24/15

Every Picture Tells a Story 4/10/15

Nearly 15 years ago, when I started lugging my Canon AE1 with me everywhere I went and taking photos of whatever caught my eye, I started looking at building I'd seen all my life as if for the first time--and noticing details I never knew existed.

Example: I'd gone to the tiny library on Chicago Avenue in Ukrainian Village for as long as I could walk, but until I started snapping shots here, there and everywhere, I never noticed the terra cotta child's face framed with bat wings--yes, that's what they are--along the top edge of the building.

On Easter Sunday, I passed the site where the library had been--and found it empty.

No library. No child with bat's wings. Nothing but crushed rubble.

Every Picture Tells a Story 3/16/15

Two pigeons warm themselves in the sun on the southbound platform at the CTA's Madison/Wabash station, which closed for good early this morning.

Vanishing Chicago: The Madison/Wabash Station

Will Eisner’s graphic novel The Building begins with the author musing about how cityscapes change over time.

“As I grew older and accumulated memories,” he wrote, “I came to feel more keenly about the disappearances of people and landmarks. Especially troubling to me was the callous removal of buildings. I felt that, somehow, they had a kind of soul.

“I know now that these structures, barnacled with laughter and stained with tears, are more than lifeless edifices. It cannot be that having been part of life, they did not somehow absorb the radiation of human interaction.

“And I wonder what is left behind when a building is torn down.”

I was reminded of Eisner’s words last week when I read a tweet last week from RedEye’s transportation reporter, Tracy Swartz, which mentioned that the Chicago Transit Authority’s Madison/Wabash elevated train station would close for good on March 16, 2015.

This wasn’t exactly a surprise to me. I’d heard some time ago that the station, which first opened on November 8, 1896, would be permanently shuttered along with its neighbor to the north, Randolph/Wabash, and CTA would build a new, modern station (to be called Washington/Wabash) between the two.

CTA has done this before. You only need to look across the Loop to the Washington/Wells station, which replaced both the Madison/Wells and Randolph/Wells station 20 years ago.

First, Madison/Wells was closed and demolished. Then, the new station was built. Finally, the night before Washington/Wells was to open, Randolph/Wells was locked up. (The station house was torn down, but the platforms remain, apparently for track maintenance purposes—the southbound platform has a long, stainless steel shed, while the other has timbers and toolboxes and such.)

Washington/Wells is a functional improvement over its predecessors. Brighter lights. Better shelter from the elements. Elevators that allow physically challenged customers to ride. Bike racks.

It does not, however, have any discernable personality of its own. It’s a big concrete-and-steel shoebox through which people trundle on their ways to somewhere or something or someone, and that’s all.

The plans to do the same thing on the eastern leg of the Loop go back more than three decades, according to the excellent and thorough Chicago L website. More recently, CTA had finalized plans and acquired federal funding. It was only a matter of time.

I just didn’t know the time would be now.

For the better part of the last decade, I’ve worked in The Loop and have usually taken the Brown Line to and from. The Madison/Wabash station was the one closest to my job, so it’s the one I walked to, usually after a long, frustrating day when I wanted to do nothing more ambitious than go home and fall over.

Unlike other CTA train stops in the Loop, Madison/Wabash hadn’t been substantially updated. The eastern face was updated some time ago with Plexiglas windows to shield riders from the cold while still allowing them to look down onto Madison Street or out into Millennium Park, but the western face, where the original station house stands, looks the same as it always has, who knows how many coats of paint over its century-plus of existence notwithstanding.

So the view I’ve had walking toward this station over all those years is the same one my parents would have had. Or their parents before them. Or their parents before them.

How many millions of feet walked or ran up those steep staircases? How many commuters shuffled and grumbled on the platform, looking down the tracks hopefully for their train to arrive? (One of the few modern touches added in recent years was a train tracker, which displayed estimated arrival times for each train, color coded by line—Green, Purple, Brown, Orange, etc. While this usually kept riders informed, it also sometimes fueled their frustration: “15 minutes for a Brown Line train? At rush hour? SERIOUSLY?”)

How many had that “Oh shit!” moment when they realized they were standing on the northbound platform when they meant to go south (or vice versa) and had to make a mad dash across the pedestrian bridge to catch the train chugging into the station at that exact moment?

The pedestrian bridge was also a fine vantage point from which to watch the construction—and eventual completion—of Trump International Hotel and Tower on the northern bank of the Chicago River (where the Sun-Times building once stood). Unfortunately, it gave you a great view of the huge, garish sign Donald Trump slapped on the otherwise stunning structure last year.

Can so many people have passed through the same building so often without leaving some part of themselves—the “radiation of human interaction” Eisner speaks of—behind?

Whenever someone asks me how to describe Madison/Wabash, I usually use words lie “elderly,” “ancient,” “rickety”—words that don’t really capture the place properly at all.

“Decrepit” would be far more accurate.

In recent years, when the station’s end appeared more and more certain, maintenance beyond the basic necessities ceased. Paint peeled. Gutters leaked. You could see the sky through holes in the corrugated roof. Railings, dating back to the station’s opening, didn’t look safe enough to lean on (though they were…probably).

For all of that, though, Madison/Wabash held a battered charm, a battle-worn dignity.

I know what will be left behind when Madison/Wabash is gone: a new station that will have amenities that Madison/Wabash never did. The brighter lights. The Elevators. The bike racks. And so on. I also have little doubt that Washington/Wabash will be cleaner, warmer, better maintained.

It won’t, however, have that charm, that dignity, that sense of functional, living history—that personality.

On the way home tonight, I will climb those steps and walk the platform—both sides—one last time. I’ll touch the railings, stand on the pedestrian bridge, look up at the buildings I’ll never see from that exact angle again.

And when the Brown Line train pulls out to take me north toward home, I’ll watch Madison/Wabash recede into the distance, then, once we hit the Lake Street curve, vanish from sight altogether.

Every Picture Tells a Story 9/29/14

This face sits high atop a former movie theater on Cicero Avenue just north of Belmont.

Every Picture Tells a Story 8/14/14

According to the excellent Cinema Treasures website: "This small, early theater opened in 1912 on Cicero Avenue near Dakin Street, in the Six Corners commercial district of the Portage Park neighborhood. The Grayland Theatre was closed in 1928. Today, the building houses a retail business." Said "retail business" is Rasenick's, a men's clothing store that appears to specialize in workwear (the Dickies logo is prominently displayed just above the window).

Every Picture Tells a Story 8/7/14

The Esquire Theater has been closed for years, but the sign remains.

Every Picture Tells a Story 4/30/14

The sign is all that remains of the Golden Angel, a 24-hour family-style restaurant that sat at the intersection of Montrose, Lincoln and Leavitt for ages. Spent a few late nights there after drinking with friends. So did who knows how many others over the years. Now it's just an empty lot...and booze-bleared memories.

Where I Was Last Night

I've long been a fan of silent films in general and the works of Charlie Chaplin in particular, but I must confess that, if I had to choose any of his films to watch, The Kid wouldn't be my top choice. It was a sensation in its time--feature-length comedies were still a relative rarity in the early 1920s, and Chaplin's mix of slapstick and genuine drama was an innovation that revolutionized screen comedy. Today, though, it comes off as slight and manipulative. Chaplin could (and would) do better.

Still, when the Silent Film Society of Chicago announced they'd be screening The Kid, I was determined to go--partly because I miss the screenings the Society used to have regularly at the nearby Portage Theater (shuttered last year in a dispute between the new owner and the city) and partly out of love for the Patio itself.

Sadly, the Patio itself will be shuttered again soon.

After closing in 2001 for "renovation," the Patio reopened to much fanfare in 2011, but has struggled with various challenges over the past three years. It started out showing mainstream movies on a second-run basis, but found there just wasn't enough of an audience for that--not enough for a 1,000-seat theater, anyway. The owner switched to more of special event format, with screenings of classic and rarely seen films. That seemed to go well until the theater started breaking down--first the air conditioning, then the boiler, then water damage during our brutally cold winter.

Thus, last night's showing took on extra significance--It was likely the last time most of the folks who attended would see the glory of the Patio, at least for a while.

The film was accompanied by the Greensboro (N.C.) Youth Orchestra, and they did a wonderful job with the score that Chaplin wrote for his silent classic many years after the advent of sound. At the end of the showing, the audience stood up and delivered a prolonged, exceedingly loud ovation.

I had the feeling we weren't just cheering the orchestra, though they certainly deserved it, nor just the Silent Film Society, nor the Little Tramp, now 100 years old. We were giving a proper sendoff for the Patio itself.

Who knows? Maybe this will only be temporary. I fervently hope so. In the meantime, though...I'll miss you, Patio. There are so few theaters like you left anywhere anymore.

Come back soon. Please.

Vanishing Chicago: Uncle Fun

If you lived in Chicago and wanted to buy something unusual or unique--whether for a friend as a present or for yourself for kicks--where would you go?

Something like, say, a postcard of Tim Curry as Doctor Frank N. Furter in all his fishnet glory? Or a lunchbox devoted to the love of bacon? Or a book on the history of Halloween costumes? Or a tin windup robot or elephant or tabby cat chasing a ball?

You'd go to Uncle Fun.

What if you wanted a birthday card emblazoned with the splash page of a '60s romance comic? Or kitschy Japanese-made Christmas decorations from the '50s? Or a cardboard dancing witch? Or a tube of fake blood? Or a plastic fried egg?

You'd go to Uncle Fun.

What if you wanted a Count Chocula bobblehead? Or an action figure of Kelly Bundy from Married with Children? Or a deck of tarot cards? Or a colorful cardboard Thanksgiving centerpiece? Or a plastic fly? Or a skull covered in glitter? Or cereal box prizes? Or a refrigerator magnet shaped like the head of Bozo the Clown that also doubles as a kazoo?

You'd go to Uncle Fun.

That's what you would do. But you won't be able to do that much longer--Uncle Fun is closing for good.

The owner, Ted, is retiring and moving to Baltimore. (never thought of the home of the Orioles, Charm City Cakes and John Waters as a retirement destination, but what do I know?) Thus, everything in the store is on sale. The window signs say it's all 50% off, but since many of the items within the store and the adjoining basement (now open to be prowled by bargain hunters) have no price tags on them, discounts are often much steeper than that.

I've been in a couple of times since the announcement was made, despite the consistently lousy weather in what has been one of the roughest winters in recent memory. On such days, already tired and stressed from work, I'd rather go straight home and stay there. Also, I'm claustrophobic--it seems to have gotten worse as I've gotten older--so the thought of walking into a smallish store crammed wall-to-wall with people is not the most comfort one I could have.

But I've been going to Uncle Fun for far too long--as JB asked today, "Am I mistaken in thinking you have been shopping at Uncle Fun since we were in our late 20s?" (note: he was not mistaken)--to let it wink out of existence without a proper farewell.

So there I was, snaking my way through the crowds (much heavier on my first visit than on my second), filling my basket with the most random of shit: Postcards (one of them a genuine turn-of the 20th-Century New Year's card); fridgy magnets; buttons advertising Red Dog beer; a windup tin bird that hops and pecks the ground like the sparrows I feed every morning; a picture of Roger Moore holding a box of kittens (from the movie Ffolkes); a windup Timex watch; a packet of nylons with cool '50s graphics on the envelope; a plastic Bozo head that doubles as a bank (what is it with the Bozo merchandise multitasking?); and much, much more.

Did I need any of what I bought? No, not really. (Notable exception: A plastic form for laundering baseball caps. I've needed one of those for years. Seriously.) Did every single item make me smile on some level? Yes, it did--just like everything I ever bought at Uncle Fun always did.

Of course, I couldn't take everything I wanted to. There were items throughout the store that were out of my price range or that weren't for sale at all (like the many celebrity autographed photos behind the counter).

Then there's the huge, life-size tiger that looms on a tops shelf toward the back of the store. If I had a large apartment (or, even better, a house) and unrestricted funds, I'd buy that tiger. Then again, I'm not the only one who feels that way. "Everybody wants the tiger!" said the super-cute, super-friendly cashier said.

She also told me that the last day of "celebration" (her word, not mine) at Uncle Fun would be Sunday, January 26, or until they ran out of merchandise, whichever came first. (Given how much stuff Ted apparently has in storage, I'd be shocked if they ran out of stuff to sell before the 26th.) I'll try to pop in again before then, if only to pat the tiger on his worn fur head one last time.

I suggest you do the same. The fun--Uncle Fun--ends soon.

Vanishing Chicago: Dominick's

My Dominick's Fresh Values card is old. Battered. Dirty. Recently lost a large chunk due to due to deterioration. I've had it in my wallet for a long, long time. It has, in fact, outlasted several wallets.

And now, it has outlasted Dominick's itself.

According to Wikipedia, Dominick's was founded in 1918 by Dominick DiMatteo, an immigrant from Sicily. Over the years, the one store became two stores, the two stores became more stores, more stores became a chain, etc.

Dominick's wasn't the biggest kid on the block in Chicago--that was (and is) Jewel/Osco--but it was prominent. In the 1980s and 1990s (when Mr. DiMatteo passed away), you could find Dominick's supermarkets all over the Chicagoland area. I had one within walking distance (well, for me, anyway, walking fool that I am) of La Casa del Terror for many years.

In 1998, Dominick's was taken over by Safeway, a national chain. And so began its slow decline to ultimate extinction.

Many blame Safeway for this. Easy to see why. The stores took on more of a generic feel. Prices became less competitive. Product quality wasn't the same. The Wikipedia entry details other customer complaints, particularly about produce and meats. But it all adds up to the same thing: Customers no longer recognized the store they were in--Dominick's was Dominick's in name only--and they chose to buy their groceries somewhere else.

Of course, it wasn't just suspect quality that lured customers away from Dominick's. There were other factors Stores like Target expanded their grocery offerings, and Walmart finally entered the city proper (they'd been in the surrounding suburbs for years); bringing their low prices along with them. Other grocery chains, like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and Mariano's, entered the market, offering greater variety and, in some cases, better values.

the chain slowly contracted. Dominick's stores either became other stores--that one within walking distance of me turned into a Mariano's--or just ceased to be. Finally, it was announced that all Dominick's locations would close by December 28, just in time for Christmas. (Happy Holidays from Safeway!) Some of the locations were scooped up by competitors. Others will sit empty, their eventual fates to be determined.

A city full of "food deserts"--areas without many (if any) grocery options--just got a whole bunch more.

Vanishing Chicago: The Lincoln Restaurant

I was a sickly kid.

I spent much of much of my childhood in and out of hospitals with various ailments: Chronic tonsilitis, eventually leading to a tonsilectomy; a kidney infection that landed me in hospital for nearly three weeks; a viral infection that caused me to have internal bleeding and stuck me in St. Elizabeth's Hospital (the same institution where I was born) on New Year's Eve (grape juice at midnight, yum!); persistent migraines; a broken right wrist and a 2" gash in my left foot, necessitating stitches and walking with crutches for two weeks.

As a result of these illnesses and injuries, I spent a lot of time in my family doctor's office, which was in a small professional building at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Irving Park Road.

My family doctor was a real-life version of Marcus Welby--a kindly, silver-haired man went the extra mile for his patients and always visited me in the hospital, even though the doctors there were taking good care of me. (We even shared the same birthday--May 4.) When Mom and I went to visit him, I might have been scared of what might be wrong with me, but I was never scared of him.

Even so, his office was nowhere near where we lived, and sometimes the appointments were late in the day (after I'd finished school and/or Mom had gotten home from her shift at the plastics factory). That meant either waiting until we got home from the doctor's office to eat dinner--which, given that we did not have a car and would have to submit ourselves to the none-too-tender mercies of the CTA, could be eight or nine o'clock--or we could walk around the corner from the doctor's office and go to the Lincoln for dinner.

The Lincoln Restaurant, like so many places and things in our city (streets, neighborhoods, parks, etc.), bears the name and likeness of the 16th President of the United States, and the interior of the restaurant was decked out in an appropriate Civil War theme. The food, though, was standard diner fare. I can't remember how many times Mom and I ate there. It might have been just once; it might have been a hundred times. (Memory has a funny way of either creating reality that was not real or of obliterating reality that was.)

I know we went there at least the one time--I had the meatloaf sandwich, served open-faced with mashed potatoes and gravy. And I know that meatloaf made me feel better, regardless of what was wrong with me that particular day. (Like I said, I was sick a lot, so it could have been any one of a dozen things.)

Flash forward a couple of decades or so. Both the original La Casa del Terror and its nearby successor lie within long walking distance of the Lincoln, so I would occasionally pop by and have dinner there. Did the meatloaf taste the same as what I remember from those sick days long ago? No. Nothing ever tastes that good, really. But was it good nonetheless? Yes, it was, especially since, as a now-all-grown-up person, I could have a Samuel Adams with it if I wanted to.

With the sweet, though, comes the bitter, like meetings and dinners best forgotten more for the circumstances surrounding them than for the venue or its food. I know. That's just how life is. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Just as I didn't like this news: The Lincoln Restaurant is closing.

Details are vague, seemingly because the owner (who is apparently retiring) doesn't want to talk about it. His right, of course, and I'll not intrude any more than to say this:

I'll miss you, Lincoln Restaurant. Thanks for the meatloaf.

Every Picture Tells a Story 7/9/13

The Iowa Pharmacy sign still creaks in the breeze on Western Avenue years after it closed.

Every Picture Tells a Story 6/11/13

The Borders sign still hands over the doorway to the former bookstore (which had been a Goldblatts before that) on Broadway near Lawrence.

Every Picture Tells a Story 9/10/12

Vanishing Chicago: The Norridge

When I was a child--and I assure you that, at some point in the distant past, I was, in fact, a child--I grew up in a neighborhood that did not have a movie theater within short walking distance.

Had I grown up a couple of decades earlier--say, in the 1940s or 1950s--that would not have been the case, as most Chicago neighborhoods had at least one movie house nearby, and many had several scatter through their respective business districts. By the time I was of moviegoing age, though--in the mid-1970s--most neighborhood theaters had either closed, having been starved to death by their larger, shinier suburban cousins, or substantially deteriorated, like nearly all of the downtown venues. The neighborhood movie houses that remained were neither convenient nor desirable unless you happened to be near one anyway--like the Congress or the Logan, both a stone's throw from Grandma's house, but neither in great shape.

So if a group of kids from the neighborhood wanted to go see the latest summer blockbuster (back when summer blockbusters were a brand-new thing), we had a choice: submit ourselves to the decay and vermin in the Loop, or hop a bus in the opposite direction and visit a clean, fresh megaplex in one of the near-in suburbs.

More often than not, we headed away from downtown--riding the Grand Avenue bus to the end of the line and switching to the northbound Harlem Avenue route--and toward the Norridge.

The Norridge, named for the particular suburb in which it was situated, started out as a two-screen theater and later expanded to as many as 11 screens. It's where I saw Young Frankenstein in 1974 with Todd and his mom, where I also caught Jaws, Star Wars and other great, popular movies of the day--and other, not-so-great movies like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Howard the Duck.

I once went there for a midnight showing of Heavy Metal and nearly started a riot. It was bitterly cold that night, with air temperatures well below zero and a stiff breeze slicing through all the kids shivering in the parking lot because the theater had yet to open its doors. "LET US IN, " I shouted, "IT'S FUCKING FREEZING OUT HERE!" Others in the sizable crowd took up the cry, and soon we weren't feeling particularly cold anymore--we had our rising rage to keep us warm. Wisely, the theater staff caught on very quickly and opened the doors

It wasn't just the theater itself that was the attraction, though. It was the trip to the suburbs, which, for a bunch of kids from the West Side, was like traveling to a foreign country without any need for a passport. It was truly a different world--cleaner, brighter, less menacing, more fun. A day out in Norridge was a vacation from what we knew (or what we didn't want to know).

As I got older, I went out to the Norridge less and less, especially after I moved close to Lincoln Square and had the Davis within short walking distance. I still head out to Norridge fairly regularly, though, if only to stop by Harlem Irving Plaza (HIP to you, sir) or the awesome Rolling Stones Records. One one of these trips a couple of years ago, I wandered up Harlem Avenue and took in a flicker at the Norridge (don't ask me which one, for I do not remember).

The Norridge looked more or less like I remembered--for better and worse. The carpeting, posters on the walls from the '80s and '90s and gentle slope of the screening rooms all kicked off warm fuzzies of nostalgia, but they all looked a bit worn and tired. It didn't look like AMC, the chain operating the theater in recent years, cared one way or the other about the place, doing little to keep it up or advertise that it even existed.

When I did see movies out there--from Drag Me to Hell to Green Lantern to Jonah Hex--the "crowds" were usually sparse. When I saw Post-Grad out there (what, I had a crush on Alexis Bledel), I was one of two people in a screening room that seated 400. The last movie I saw out there, Prometheus (misspelled on the marquee above), drew the largest crowd I'd seen there recently, and even that was only a few dozen.

It came as no surprise, then, when I found out this week that last Sunday, July 15, the Norridge closed its doors--apparently for good.

It's always possible that another, more dedicated theater chain could take over the Norridge and make something of it, but it's more likely that what's been rumored for years will finally come to pass--some big-box store will buy the land and knock the Norridge down--and more than a few of my fondest memories with it.

Every Picture Tells a Story: 1/23/12

It had been there as long as I could remember--the rundown-looking pizza place on Irving Park Road just west of Kedzie.

Even before I'd moved into the neighborhood, I'd known Manzo'. One of my best friends from high school loved the place, so we ate there from time to time in the dining room that, in my memory at least, was dark and ancient, the kind of place where wise guys would meet up with aldermen to deliver payoffs and marching orders, hoping to hell that that the booths weren't bugged.

The photo above was taken last summer. At the time, I didn't know it would be the last photo I'd take of Manzo's.

Last week, Manzo's was torn down.

I wasn't overly surprised. Like I said, Manzo's looked worn out, even from the outside, and the supermarket next door had gone out of business at least a decade earlier. After the barricade went up around the adjoined buildings, I looked at the sign on Manzo's front door. It thanked patrons for their 20+ years (Manzo's was much older than that, so this must have been a message from the then-current owners) and announced that they would reopen in a new space with a new concept and new attitude--in other words, another restaurant, but nothing like Manzo's.

A sign attached to the barricade announced that a Chase bank branch would be built on the site. Great. Yet another bank branch swallowing up yet another corner. Yet another corner that looks like yet another corner. No business with a personality--even a well-worn one--of its own.

No Manzo's.