Chicago’s Treasure Island; most of the Second City never had a clue about you

We often hear odes to how sad it is to see businesses close – particularly if they’re not a part of some large corporate entity or if they in any way try to cater to their specific neighborhoods.

Hyde Park store among those to soon be defunct

Yet let’s be honest, most of us will talk about loving such businesses and their personal touch, but we don’t really care to do anything to support such entities. We’ll go to wherever we can save a buck or two – which is why those places that sell goods in large volume can do so well.

AND BUSINESSES LIKE Treasure Island can claim to be a significant part of history, while having to concede they have no place in the modern world.

Now I’m sure many of you may think you’re lifelong Chicagoans who know everything there is to know about your home city. But you’re probably wondering, “What’s Treasure Island?” Either that, or you’re thinking it’s some old movie that you’ve never bothered to actually watch because it’s in black-and-white, but you might go see it if they’d do a re-make with modern sensibilities starring a Kardashian or two.

Actually, it was a supermarket. A chain, sort of – even though its peak was to have five stores in very select neighborhoods of Chicago.

Which means most of us would have had to make a special trip in order to shop in one of their stores, and most likely we never bothered to.

THE BEST I can do to describe a Treasure Island is to say it was a store that would stock not-so-common staples that would be needed for people interested in cooking some more exotic dishes for their meals.

It most definitely wasn’t Jewel (and I’m not badmouthing Jewel, I live near one and wind up purchasing many grocery items there because of its convenience).

In fact, when Whole Foods began opening their stores throughout the Chicago area, I remember explaining the concept of them to people as being something similar to Treasure Island.

It was actually a book first

Only Whole Foods has gone on an expansion that has caused them to locate in the Englewood neighborhood. A place you’d never have found a Treasure Island store.

IN MY OWN case, I have been in the Hyde Park neighborhood store on a few occasions, and on occasion in their former location on Clark Street (which the last time I happened to walk by I discovered is now a Potash Brothers grocery store). Their other locations that I never managed to patronize were in the Old Town, Lake View and Lincoln Park neighborhoods.

As you can see, they’re pretty much a North Lakefront type entity – with the exception of that Hyde Park location that tries to cater to the segment of Chicago that is in the city because of the University of Chicago and wants to reassert the notion that they're NOT typical South Side Chicago!

Not exactly a place a Sout’ Sider would easily access – particularly since I’m sure he/she would have his/her own specialty shops to access on those occasions they want to purchase select foodstuffs.

Many of which, I suspect, would be of a specific ethnic persuasion.

WHILE RELYING ON the larger-scale stores for the daily supplies of keeping ourselves fed on a regular basis. And in this 21^st Century world, some of us are turning more and more to those businesses that allow us to go on-line to place our grocery orders – and have someone deliver our supplies right to our front doors.

You want to know why a Treasure Island will no longer exist following a couple of weeks from now, it’s mostly because I suspect that the kind of people who would have made the trip to one of these stores are now thinking it more convenient (if not downright trendy) to place a grocery order without having to actually go shopping.

Will we ever miss 'da Jewels' the way some will yearn for Treasure Island?

As for those specialty items that a Treasure Island might have stocked, I suppose I’ll be inclined to hunt down a Whole Foods store (there’s one not far from where I’m living these days) to make those purchases. Although I’ll be honest – I suspect I can get through life without many of those goods.

Treasure Island was evidence of the kind of people many of us would like to think Chicago is all about; when in reality, we’re more than willing to go do “Da Jewels” – with an occasional stop at a neighborhood Aldi’s to get an even better price.

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Same stuff; different label? Or are we destined to shop at Piggly Wiggly?

I find it amusing the degree to which corporate interests own varieties of a product that might have the public think their competing with themselves. 

Is the high-end image of Whole Foods ...

One such example was when the Chicago White Sox last month announced they were going to have an official import beer to be served at the ballpark – that being Modelo Especial.

THERE ARE THOSE people who think that Mexican brand is some sort of exotic, high-end label. Particularly when they start playing with the lime and salt.

Although it turns out the corporate interest that owns the company that produces Modelo also is the one that several years ago bought out Anheuser-Busch. As in Budweiser.

Which may be why Modelo is one brand of Mexican beer I don’t consume. Actually, I just think the taste is unexceptional. Not even particularly lousy. Just kind of pointless. Much like I’d describe Budweiser beer products.

But the money that gets spent on both winds up in the same corporate wallet. I find that to be funny, particularly if there’s someone out there who thinks that drinking Modelo-brand cerveza somehow makes them a more discriminate consumer than someone who quenches their thirst with Bud Light.

THIS SAME REACTION is what I’m feeling Monday upon reading the reports about Whole Foods quite possibly being for sale, and one potential buyer being Albertson’s.

The Boise, Idaho-based company owns supermarkets all over the country, and they operate them under various brand names meant to create the impression of locally-based companies.

In the Chicago-area, Albertson’s is the corporate entity that gives us Jewel and Osco.

,,, destined to become a part of 'da Jewels?'

As in “We’re goin’ to da Jewel’s,” that would like for us all to think of itself as the quintessential Chicago food shopping experience – particularly now that Dominick’s is ancient history.

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT most of us merely rant and rage about our neighborhood Jewel’s store being dirty or depressing or poorly stocked or whatever complaint we feel like making. I shop there because it’s close by; I literally used to live one block from one of their stores.

To people, it won’t matter what the quality is; we’ll want to believe there has to be something better somewhere else. In fact, I think that’s a large part of why Whole Foods (and Trader Joe’s, as well) achieve some success in the Chicago area.

You go in there and see allegedly high-end foodstuffs – even though many of them are merely more expensive versions of what it is you can buy at “da Jewels.”

Will 'Krogering' become a national concept?

Now, it seems Albertson’s is considering placing a bid to buy out Whole Foods. Whole Foods and Jewel could become sister stores. For all those people who are willing to indulge themselves (and clean out their wallets) by spending more for organic produce and other pseudo-sophisticated products, I can’t help but wonder how they’ll react to having to consider themselves as shopping at a Jewel partnership.

BECAUSE I CERTAINLY doubt that this means Jewel would go “high-end.” Although I have noticed some Jewel stores in select communities have gone out of their way to remodel themselves and create the impression that they’re carrying fancier food products so as to compete with the high-end supermarkets such as Whole Foods.

Personally, I wonder what happens if the day comes when all supermarkets wind up finding themselves under one entity and we get generic grocery stories from which to buy our edible products.

 

Will we all someday experience Piggly Wiggly sensation?

We’ll all wind up eating the same thing – and probably wind up paying more for it. Maybe it would even turn out that we’d take interest in which conglomerate winds up winning out as the dominant supermarket. Are we all destined to “go Krogering” for our food – regardless of where we live?

If that’s the case, I vote for the Piggly-Wiggly to prevail. I think it would serve the culinary snobs right to have to shop in one of their stores.

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What if we’re too lazy to change shopping habits by bringing own bags?

I got my first look this weekend at those new plastic bags that supermarkets like Jewel will be encouraging people to use because they’re more durable than the flimsy plastic bags that have become ever so common in our society.

These bags aren't 'nice' any more in Chicago

My reaction was to think these bags are barely more durable than the ones we’re already using (except for those people who always went out of their way to ask for “paper” instead of “plastic”).

I’M NOT SURE I’m going to go out of my way to save these bags and keep reusing them, just because they won’t tear after one use like the current plastic bags.

I’m wondering how many people are going to rant and rage in coming weeks about being forced to use these new bags. How long until someone tries to create a Constitutional dilemma about whether their rights are being trampled just because someone wants to try to bolster the environment and the amount of trash that winds up spending decades sitting in a landfill somewhere?

In my case, I was in a suburban-based Jewel supermarket when I saw the new bags. Which means that, unlike Chicago, nobody was forcing anybody to use them. Jewel officials merely put them out as a suggested alternative.

Unlike city residents who won’t be offered the flimsy bags, even if by chance they’d rather have them.

PERSONALLY, I HAVE a hard time getting worked up about this issue.

When I go grocery shopping, the last thing I want to think about are the bags that I’m going to use to haul my goods away.

Although I’ll admit that when I did think about this issue, I’m inclined to ask for a paper bag. Unless it’s literally just an item or two – in which case I’ll just take the flimsy plastic.

Decades of Chicago trash are buried under this mound at the city's far southern edge

I’m fortunate enough to live one block from a Jewel supermarket, so I can literally walk to the store and save the cost of using gasoline if all I need is a couple of items. Along with the reduction in fumes the automobile emits into the air.

I’M INCLINED TO think that’s my contribution to the better environment – rather than having to keep in mind the need to bring my own bags so I can package my own goods and carry them away.

The supporters of this change – which took effect in Chicago on Saturday – say it’s just a matter of encouraging people to change the way they think about things.

The day will come, they say, when it will seem strange that people didn’t bring their own bags with them whenever they shopped for food.

Which is why some aldermen in Chicago say they’re concerned that the new ordinance they approved is already in need of revision. They think these new plastic bags of slightly more durable plastic are going to be treated the way we’ve become used to treating the flimsy, old plastic bags.

THEY’LL GET DUMPED into the trash can and ultimately wind up in a landfill somewhere. Although because they’re of a thicker layer of plastic, it will take even longer for them to deteriorate.

Who knows; Chicago may well celebrate its Tri-centennial in 2136 with someone thinking they’re being an archeologist by digging into a landfill – and finding an intact plastic bag that someone tossed into the trashcan this weekend.

Will that turn this weekend’s waste into the next century’s historic artifact?

Because I don’t care if someone says these new bags are capable of being used up to 125 times – I can’t think of anyone who would want to use it that many times before moving on to another.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: One of the customs of Cubans living in Havana is that people carry around flimsy plastic bags with them, on the off-chance that they stumble across a store that is carrying some goods they happen to actually desire. Somehow, this is one custom I can’t see catching on in the United States.

EXTRA: Jewel vs. Dominick’s – another great Chicago debate terminates

Only the clocks remain from Field's. What will survive from Dominick's? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Probably the biggest retail competition in Chicago history was that of Marshall Field’s versus Carson, Pirie, Scott.

There used to be people who would seriously argue (sometimes as vociferously as if the subject matter was Sox versus Cubs) as to which store was better – both at their main locations on State Street and at their other assorted stores throughout the Chicago area.

TECHNICALLY, CARSONS WON that war. Field’s was bought out and converted to give Macy’s a presence in Chicago. Although the old flagship store for Carsons isn’t a a Carsons any longer.

But to those of us who grew up in Chicago in recent years and were just looking for something to bicker about, there was another fight we could fix over.

Best supermarket – Jewel’s or Dominick’s? Personally, I always shopped at whichever one was closest to where I lived at the time – although I became a little more loyal to Jewel during the stint I lived in Springfield, Ill., and it was a choice of a Chicago-oriented supermarket or the more St. Louis-leaning Schnuck’s.

In the big picture, it seems that Jewel’s will win the supermarket war, since the Jewel/Osco brand remains (although many people think it has deteriorated to the point where they prefer buying their groceries at a Wal-mart store, just a few aisles over from the underwear section).

Will its memory be mourned?

THINK I’M KIDDING? The Chicago Tribune reported that Jewel these days has 29.1 percent market share in the Chicago area, compared to only 8.7 percent. Dominick’s literally is lagging behind Wal-mart, which is at a 9.4 percent share and growing.

All of which is what motivated Safeway officials to say Thursday that they’re pulling out of the Chicago market. Which was the only place they used the Dominick’s brand-name.

By early next year, there won’t be any more Dominick’s stores. They will be big, empty storefronts – many of which might sit there for years as blots on their respective neighborhoods/suburban communities.

Da winner, but still champeen?

A fortunate few will get a new life. Although I find it funny that the owner of Jewel/Osco (the oft-maligned Albertson’s) has already reached an agreement to buy four Dominick’s sites to convert them to a Jewel.

WHICH I’M SURE to those people who remained devoted Dominick’s customers to the end will feel like some sort of betrayal – walking into the Dominick’s on Clybourn Avenue or Canal Street only to discover it a part of, “da Jewels.”

Definitely the days when Jewel and Dominick’s provided about two-thirds of the grocery market share for the Chicago metro area are a thing of the past!

Perhaps it’s just a thing of the past to have a general purpose supermarket, as it seems people either like to split between shopping at a store that offers up high-end or scarce foodstuffs – or one that purports to offer convenience in being able to buy groceries while also shopping for clothes or a new set of tires for the car.

The 21^st Century take on the grocery rivalry seems to be something along the lines of Whole Foods versus Wal-Mart (too bad we can't go Kroger-ing in Chicago like I did when I was in college in Bloomington, Ill.). Which definitely means something has been lost if we can no longer quarrel over Dominick’s versus Jewel.

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Losing the self-checkout not much of loss; it slowed things up too often

Will this Jewel self-checkout device ...

I happen to live within one block of a Jewel-Osco supermarket, although not one of the ones that has had its self-checkout lanes taken away.

Which is a move that can’t come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned.

JEWEL OFFICIALS (THE chain is owned these days by Cerberus Capital Management) let it be known Wednesday that they’re going to gradually remove those self-checkout lines that – in theory – allow people to ring up the cost of their own grocery items.

It could be a time-saving move. I’ll be the first to admit to using the self-checkout lanes when all I have is a couple of items to buy. Which is often, because I tend to use the Jewel as a convenience store of sorts. It’s right by where I live.

If I have significant purchases, I often find myself going to other grocery stores (although I’m not of the sort who thinks it essential to make a trip to the nearby Whole Foods store).

But it’s not always a time-saving move.

BECAUSE THE PROBLEM with the self-checkout is that the devices are so overly sensitive.

I have lost count of the number of occasions on which I scanned an item, put it in the plastic bag, and then had my purchase come to a crashing halt!!! All because the scale thought it detected something “off” about the weight.

Which involves then having a real live human being come over to look at the order, figure out that I wasn’t trying to pull a scam on my neighborhood Jewel supermarket, and punch in a special code to allow things to proceed.

... someday be as obsolete as this store décor?

 

That process usually takes enough time to complete that I could have finished the checkout process if I had just gone to one of the checkout lines staffed by a real-live human being.

THERE’S ALSO THE other potential problem – one where an item refuses to scan, which makes the computerized checkout system think that I’m trying to buy an item that the store doesn’t sell.

Even though I picked the item in question right off the store shelves just moments ago.

That always manages to frustrate the real-live human beings who work at Jewel, because they don’t want to have to think much about the items in stock. It’s just supposed to be about scanning the item and letting the computers do the work of calculating prices.

Then, invariably, there are the times when I get stuck behind a person who has enough of a technological mental block that they can’t comprehend how to scan something properly.

THEY WIND UP clogging up the checkout procedures to the point where everybody gets delayed, AND we have to put up with their rants because of their inability to comprehend what it is they are trying to do!

Soon, we will not have these sights. Although it isn’t clear how long it will take to get self-checkout out of the roughly 180 Jewel-Osco stores that exist in the Midwestern U.S.

In theory, these self-checkout lines will be converted into more express lines – thereby making it possible for more people like me who are only purchasing a few items at a time to get through quickly without getting stuck behind the person with the shopping carts full of items; and coupons calling for discounts on virtually every item.

I don’t begrudge people who clip coupons, although there are times when I think these people take their desire to save money to a ridiculous extreme.

SO AS I write this particular commentary, I think about the fact that I soon will have to make a trip to my neighborhood Jewel to pick up a couple of items. I may have to give that self-checkout line at the store a last look.

Although it won’t be something I’ll miss. At least in a checkout lane staffed with a cashier, I can glare at that person when they get slow on the job.

If I try to glare at the self-checkout machine, I just have a lot of people surrounding me suddenly pull their kids a little closer to themselves – warning them to stay away from that “crazy” man trying to buy a loaf of bread or a container of orange juice!

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