the overpass speeds traffic on western ave - and speeds it right past the police station (which didn't exist when the overpass was first built). the city doesn't like that. that's why when the central ave overpass was re-built they trimmed its north end so it wouldn't speed traffic past the police station @ grand ave (which also wasn't there when that overpass was first built). you know nowaday
Forum: General Discussion

no deterioration at all in Riverview's final years, they always kept it sharp & spotless and I enjoyed it to the very end. I think about the western ave overpass there very soon to be demolished. Riverview gets the wrecking ball in 1967, and the overpass built for the sake of it (a few years earlier) proves useful for another 49 years before it's appointment with the same wrecking ball, ev
Forum: General Discussion

ford pinto's were the ones with the easily exploded gas tank from rear collision
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

OKONSKI DRUG 2129 N. Leavitt (corner w/ Shakespeare) through the 1960's at least store now a dry-cleaners
Forum: General Discussion

my kids when they were little and I took them downtown called the marina towers 'corncobs' in the '60s I used to go up in the office building that is part of marina city and visit the WCFL radio studios (apparently they didn't mind the uninvited public just walking in then), and watch the DJ's there like Jimmy P. Stagg et al. inside a glass booth. WLS had no such casual policy (that me and my
Forum: General Discussion

I ask if anybody remembers the exact namy of a small record store on Lincoln Ave I shopped at in the late '60s through '70s. As much as I was there I can't be positive about its name, but a very friendly gentleman ran it. If you had an oddball request, LP or 45, all you had to do was mention it and he'd turn around and pull it off of one of his shelves? Stuff that even I'd given up on looking f
Forum: General Discussion

slightly closer (to the city) than IRM in union is FOX RIVER TROLLEY MUSEUM on rte 31 in south elgin. me and the mrs have been there and rode their restored old trains (incl. CTA stuff). just as enjoyable on the trackage they have http://foxtrolley.org
Forum: Forgotten Chicago Sightings

how could I forget - Van Oak's Pet Shop, 6808 w. north ave, a favorite of mine in the '70s - early '80s. that whole corner was wiped for a strip mall by the time the '90s came around
Forum: General Discussion

in the '70s I enjoyed a restaurant @ 6822 w. north ave that I can't remember the name of anymore (no, before Amarinds). and I went to MusiCraft a lot in the 7000 block (the Oak Park side) for fancy stereo equipment back then too
Forum: General Discussion

did someone here say New York Cherry ice cream? my favorite flavor (as was my fathers'). nowadays the go-to place for that is Roesers bakery on north ave which has several home-made ice-creams
Forum: General Discussion

excuse me I just wanted to mention what I saw, it looking so odd (the mis-placed train coach), before I forget it completely
Forum: General Discussion

this has nothing to do with a natural gas structure but I thought I'd mention it here because irving park & kilbourn is very closeby the Milwaukee north metra grayland train station is @ kilbourn & Milwaukee, and in the mid-'80s I saw something odd there. on a switched spur coming off the western tracks (it dead ends, and may or may not still be there but I doubt it) metra had uncouple
Forum: General Discussion

It was never obvious to me, since the CTA offered no particular explanation to the general public, why the 1993 Howard/Dan Ryan re-reroute required so much new subway switching connections at that point. I looked at it from the standpoint that up until that year ('93) the lake street train used new fly-over tracks (built in 1970) to get to the Dan Ryan median, and these flyovers were just south o
Forum: General Discussion

I'd like to get in contact with people who've firsthand knowledge about these 3 movie projector manufacturers, long out-of-business: HOLMES Projector Co., @ 1815 N. Orchard St AMPRO Corporation, @ 2835 N. Western Ave DEVRY Manufacturing Co., @ 1111 W. Armitage Ave the buildings at those addresses remain albeit entirely re-purposed. In general they folded late '50s - early '60s. DEVR
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

those rituals are the ones I treasure
Forum: General Discussion

I'm wondering to myself if that particular address would've been near Aberdeen St there
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

During those years I never saw train cars on them. As I said it's a good thing the CTA hesitated in their usual rush to dismantle (as I see it, they weren't absolutely necessary for equipment move purposes, you could accomplish the same thing via ravenswood tracks)
Forum: General Discussion

so those tracks had no purposeful usage 1963 - 1970, it would seem
Forum: General Discussion

unfortunately you still misunderstand, the accident @ O'Hare had nothing to do with a deadman's handle (or lack of one) and I never said as much - it's the accident @ Harlem that did
Forum: Forgotten Chicago Sightings

I totally agree about the need for another Grand Ave station entrance. "one might question why the elevated was left intact from the south State Street Subway portal to Wabash and Van Buren." - yes, the CTA did something right for a change, didn't they? That elevated portion went unused for years, was it from late-'40s / early-'50s to 1970 when the Dan Ryan tracks first opened? Or m
Forum: General Discussion

you completely misunderstand me - "even a deadman's switch isn't going to stop it from jumping the tracks and riding up the stairs." a run-away train is one that has no operator, for all intents and purposes, and the one that went up the escalator @ O'Hare of course did
Forum: Forgotten Chicago Sightings

No, not Bob Bakus. Jim Backus. And not Jim Backus technically, but Mr. Magoo, voiced by Jim Backus. I liked the old Anna Banana soda.
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

the new greenline MORGAN street 'L' station has a plaque stating it was built by the CDOT Chicago Department Of Transportation Was the original Halsted station eliminated at the time the greenline was shut-down and rebuilt by the federal gov't in the early '90s? I forget. Personally I prefer the Morgan St stop location, having used it myself. Though obviously it's not the spiffiest transfe
Forum: General Discussion

CTA in the '70s closes old Cermak 'L' stop on the greenline, citing 'low useage'. right. almost 40 years later they rebuild that Cermak stop and reopen - now things are different. right. I recall the Grand Ave stop on the blueline subway went through the same metamorphosis in the early '90s. right. If one wants to point out an extreme example the new Oakton stop on the yellow line had
Forum: General Discussion

it's just been said "yeah, don't reply to these clowns' "don't click on their links" "don't reply to them" that's all cautions well and good--I certainly would agree--and even deserve to be reminded but unfortunately reality trips you up. I'm looking at so many websites and clicking on so many things, day after day, that the accidental click and opening of one
Forum: General Discussion

that the old Humboldt park branch line may possibly have been extended, eventually, had it even been kept (past 1953) is interesting speculation. certainly it would take years for the CTA to realize the need for it (but today anyway I'd say the need is obvious, but we can't extend a line we don't have anymore). Furthermore the CTA can't extend existing lines--they formulate grandiose plans about
Forum: General Discussion

(I swear as I'm typing this I'm doing my perfect Mr. Magoo voice...) "Storekeeper!......Canfields for everyone" (it occurs to me this maybe the closest I'll ever come to saying drinks on the house)
Forum: Questions and Answers (Q&A)

excuse me but (unless I'm misunderstanding your satellite search) its NOT the track portion from Loomis/Mansfield junction north to the old Met bridge that's at issue because, after all, that essentially is today's pinkline. although it got rebuilt it's right of way there is where its always had been. but north of the creaky old 'Met' trestle over the UP-Metra/BN-SF tracks is where I can get tri
Forum: General Discussion

in the '60s while in high school I took a Saturday & sunday job, low pay but I loved it my hobby's been keeping aquariums of tropical fish, and this hobby has grown mostly, retrenched sometimes, over the years. the '60s was a time of growth for it, with new stores springing up over Chicago. so it was natural when I got my social security card for this kid to inquire about employment at th
Forum: General Discussion

how well I recall the image of that old building in the late-'50s & early-'60s with the great turtle figure on its top, and how startled I was when my Mom drove down Ashland Ave there and it was completely gone! nowadays I look at that triangular plot and can't believe such a large building once stood right there, but things've changed over the years and Madison & ogden aves have been w
Forum: General Discussion