I remember this odd structure from the early '80s, like a 'test section' of a concrete expressway. You'd gaze up at it and wonder 'is that a highway I can drive on?' but of course not, you can't even climb up there. It was very high, 40 ft up from fullerton. It stood out like a sore thumb in the area and for all it's prominence nobody really knew what it was, least of all me. And never used by
Forum: General Discussion

not that i've anything earthshaking to add but I enjoyed going to the BOTY fair a couple times myself, 1964 would be one, and somebody already mentioned the double-ferris-wheel which dramatically swung out over 47th st as it rotated, that was really great. also I agree it was an excellent place to meet girls don't see those double-ferris-wheels anymore. my daughter loves rides and we still go
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I went once to Shanghai Lil's with some friends in 1973, and yes it was almost directly across Milwaukee from Hastee-Tastee hot dog stand (the last of the SuperDawg competition and I enjoyed all of them). My friend Ed introduced me to a pretty good pizza restaurant a couple blooks north on Milw. from there called LaCantina. All are gone now of course and I've been trying to get a handle on when
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seek out better modern chicago streetmaps and you'll probably notice in the map legend the full explanation of the major exception to the 8-city-blocks-to-a-mile rule of thumb, which is as follows: north-south blocks south from madison ave up to 31st st are all shorter than normal, so from 0S - 1200S (madison to roosevelt) = 12 city blocks but still only one mile from 1200S - 2200S (roose
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only intransigent bureuacracy of the most officious kind would insist on street nomenclature differing on which dan ryan direction you're headed at that point. tourists confused? of course, surely that was their plan all along! sarcasm aside it never occurs to the IDOT signage dept to take a 'plain english' approach to things like that, i.e., decide on which name serves the destination best (na
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i went to olsen falls a lot as a kid. my earliest memories were if my mom continued driving a couple blocks further north on pulaski rd then i'd see the original old madonna high school building (2 or 3 story, brown brick) on the east side of pulaski before belmont a very hackneyed if dated officeplace remark was "well we couldn't afford to give the wife a trip to niagra falls, so we inst
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no, the one i'm thinking of would've had a different name, was on the s-side of lake st in the shadow of the elevated. plus the big hobby shop on madison jusr west of wells I went to in 1967
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you've entirely missed the point, it has nothing at all to do with even/odd or east/west conventions. the ear doesn't recognize the difference between the spoken '2' vs the spoken 'to'. simple (verbal) communication is bankrupt (and many times all you have is verbal). it's so obviously wrong the old comedy team of abbott & costello could've make up a routine in their usual miscommunicated f
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years ago I remember this bridge was kept in a good state of repair, and if the sun-times used it up until about 2000 one obviously knows why. the RR signal lights (usually on red) were lit for example. in the years since it betrays a death knell however and with much reluctance I'd see the point of others considering it an eyesore now. i think the city wants it to continue deteriorating to the
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the city parking garage @ rush & delaware was at the SE corner, 4 or 5 stores, and somewhere there must be a whole discussion topic & thread devoted to it. I remember looking into that garage as a a kid in the early '60s and watching how the car parking mechanisms traveled both laterally & vertically
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i'm glad to read the north water branch wasn't torn down until '62-'63 because in the early '60s I remember seeing it and wondering about it. now I know I wasn't imagining things. of course the marina towers were erected then and my view was it was the construction of those towers that played a role in dismantling the north branch, though the tracks apparently ended @ clark if that is correct (s
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personally I think that whole numbering stinks, and I can't believe a thinking official planned it. So I never use it, talking in terms of Kennedy and Jane Adams and Eisenhower or Eisenhower extension, etc. That's clear enough. What isn't clear and even massively confusing is people saying "take 290 to 90, then 294 to 94". Huh, what did he say? I'd bet money people have driven for m
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I disagree, removing milwaukee avenue overpass (south of blommer chocolate) had reasons that were somebody else's 'logic', certainly not mine. The construction of the Kennedy Xpwy is irrelevant, and so is the RR yard growing disuse. The point is milwaukee ave should begin at lake street and remain continuous. Why not? I remember the old overpass and think it's end came in 1981. It was somewha
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yes, I remember shopping at all those aforenamed 'catalog' stores. they usually published yearly catalogs that described w/ pictures all they sold, but the item discounted price was contained in the bottom line and 'coded', a kind of gimmick so customers could imagine they were paying close to wholesale prices. big Allied Radio @ 100 N. Western was certainly a kind of catalog store, you'd look
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having seen even more horrendous customer behavior (@ Christmastime) at latter-day mega-toy stores, like Toys-R-Us of course, I can almost believe what you say re. that going on @ Bargain Town. I took guitar lessons @ Melody Music School on Western ave right next to the Oak Theatre (early-mid '60s) every 2 weeks I think (the instructor/owner was a guy namerd Joe Guido, with his wife) so every 2 w
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the mid-'90s the Kennedy expressway was rebuilt and I recall at the time IDOT announced it was to happen, they DID in fact say those ramps--from inbound kennedy to outbound edens, plus inbound edens to outbound kennedy--were to be new add-ons. Hooray! but obviously they failed to make good on that pledge. Booo! plus to add insult to injury they eliminated perfectly good entrance ramps on the in
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if ever I were to own a store, it would have a payphone, no question (just sayin')
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yes, the heart of 'Bucktown', then enjoy a banana split @ Margie's and a double/triple movie feature at the Oak theatre. The old woman who used to own and operate Margie's candies then (I think up to the '90s?) was related to my own Auntie Flo (who lived on Leavitt st). Didn't she keep Margie's open until midnight 7 days a week all by herself? Back to Bargain Town, they were THE place to buy
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a walgreen's now stands just where that white castle once was, which itself replaced the Pet's Petland store i'd mentioned in my previous post. Around 1972 or so the pet shop building was torn down for the WC, and I'm half certain the photographer Edward Fox had a studio store in the same milwaukee ave bldg up till then (he's now by Jefferson Park)
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near the back of an independant drug-store (name forgotten) in the 4100 block of North Ave (just west of the old Tiffin theatre) I remember a whole bank of phone booths. This is '60s & '70s, and somehow whenever I felt like making a call from a payphone then I usually chose to go there and use those. not being a cellphone user myself I still use payphones although now I have the devil of a t
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my buddy Dave worked as a bagger in the grocery dept of Weiboldt's on Milwaukee & paulina, mid-'60s. I shopped frequently at the state st Weiboldt's in the '70s for a couple reasons, one my dear Dad introduced me to, he'd buy the absolute lowest-priced silk neckties down in their bargain basement there
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a much earlier post mentioned Huber Beer, and I was still buying them in returnable bottles here in Chicago as late a 10-12 years ago (no kidding). it's my favorite bock brew (nowadays it's been replaced by Shiner bock). as a young kid I'd return empty soda bottles for deposit to a nearby bottler at the northwest corner of Grand Ave & Hamlin that was there then
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the first year I went to Golf Mill was 1959, i remember the northern store buildings were still under construction then. me and my sister Connie played a lot in the covered (outdoor of course) water mill & pond (w/ the usual large goldfish). what a great diversion for young kids while their parents were shopping
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in the mid-'70s i'd visit and watch movies all night (we were animation fanatics) at the home of a guy named Lyle who was friends w/ my friend Fred. Lyle lived around 59th & Tripp IIRC then, and at midnight he'd order and have pizza delivered there from his favorite s-side place--where else--Giordano's. It was the thick stuffed type and I'd argue with Lyle my favorite on the N-Side was a bet
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I worked at Rock-Ola from '69 - '72 (in 'phonograph engineering dept' on 3rd floor). the big Rock-Ola plant was on the NW corner w/ kedzie (where Popeye's now is), and that puts spaulding west of there of course. I'm sure it still stood at least until 1981, but in the '80s Rock-Ola relocated to the suburb of Addison
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yeah in the '60s I loved sitting on a stool at the counter of a Wimpy's enjoying a burger with my old buddy Dave, the one at the northeast corner of Clark & Madison usually. then we'd look at what the Clark Theatre was playing that day, and see what neat old collectors coins Rarcoa (now Harlan Berk) on clark st had on display there in their gallery windows (actually I still do that). on Ra
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the link you provided above does show the old Bargain Town on the northwest corner of milw. & campbell (where the congress pizza parking lot is now). the BT street number i'd offered maybe off though just a trifle. across campbell on the northeast corner there was a large pet shop called Pete's Petland (which was a great location when you think about it, right by a very popular toy store) an
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Jewel's LET'S GO TO THE RACES was a sham. the TV programs of the races were old films. so Jewel printed up a very limited number of tickets for the winning horse in each race, knowing obviously what they were in advance
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with the start of polio vaccinations in the '50s I remember me with 100's of other screaming little kids getting a needle jabbed into our arms at a clinic the health dept set-up on chicago ave a block or so east of pulaski (probably 1957)
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in the early '90s (not knowing any better) I went to the Prudential with my young sons in tow, telling the guard I wanted to go up the observation deck (as I had done 30 years previous). the guard got mad at me. in the past I was told the observation deck at the top of the old board of trade building was practically as high up as the prudential's
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