Our retail habits continuously evolve – will old Carson’s become Amazon.com

It always amuses me whenever I think about retail practices (not that I think about them that often) to realize that one of the grand old spots of shopping in Chicago is now just another Target store.

The old nameplates remain ...

Which has me wondering with the news reports that Target may be purchased sometime this year by that behemoth of Internet shopping. As in Amazon.com.

DOES THAT MEAN the one-time Carson Pirie Scott flagship store on State Street will essentially become a visible sign of just how much Amazon.com has taken over the world of retail?

The idea behind the purchase, according to the Bloomberg Business News service, is that Amazon.com and Target already share a common demographic in terms of people who rely on them to purchase the goods they wish to have in life. Combining could create a sizable retail combine – albeit one not quite as big as Wal-mart.

But then again, the so-called retail experts consider that to be a separate demographic of shoppers. It’s a matter of everybody will claim they control their segment of society, and don’t really care about other groups amongst us.

But to me, the idea that the grand old department store (which had operated at various sites in Chicago since 1854 and at its current State/Madison street location since 1904) continues to stand in its architectural grandeur (designed by famed architect Louis Sullivan) but without its old retail elegance is amusing.

EVERY TIME I find myself inside the old Carson’s these days, I find myself trying to find traces of the old style – only to find that I’m in a Target barely distinguishable from the Target stores one can find anywhere else in Chicago or at various suburban locations.

If this deal does go through, will that one-time Carson’s location wind up taking on the smiling Amazon.com logo? Will it become a place people go to if they happen to be downtown, check out the goods, then return home to place the order?

... even though the classic retail businesses are long gone from State Street

I’ve seen that kind of behavior in many a Barnes & Noble bookstore, and it is one that I personally find strange. You’d think that since they’ve already made the trip to the store, they’d just buy the item right there and then!

But this is a new age now that we’re well into the 21^st Century and we now have people coming of age who weren’t even alive back on that date when the 1900s receded into the past and we moved into this era of the 2000s (is that 2-thousand or 20-hundred?).

REGARDLESS, I STILL find the old Carson’s building, along with the one-time Marshall Field’s just a couple of blocks north on State Street, to be significant landmarks.

They are points that help me personally anchor my location whenever I happen to be walking about. Yes, thinking of something as being “just a couple of blocks” from Carson’s is the way I think – even if there probably are some deluded individuals who will see the Target bullseye logo and think I’ve gone goofy.

It’s just a matter of how we think. Besides, I’m sure there will be a certain subgroup of people who have become so accustomed to the Target label on that structure that they will forever think of it that way – and will have an even younger generation think they’ve gone goofy.

“What Target? That’s Amazon.com!,” they’ll say.

OF COURSE, IF you want to live in the past and still shop at the Carson’s brand, you can always hit any of the many suburban locations that have kept that name – even though the flagship store did not.

A place to reminisce about Chicago of old. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Just as you can still walk into what is now the downtown Chicago store of Macy’s and try to pretend it is still Marshall Field’s. Particularly if you go down to the basement level and spend all your time by the Frango mints stand. That brand has managed to outlive the company that originally created it.

Although the Amazon.com move (which previously took over the Whole Foods brand name) toward Target does have me wondering who eventually will wind up taking over the one-time Field’s.

And if we’re ultimately moving in the direction of all types of stores becoming tied together and merged into one massive entity to be known as “The Store.”

  -30-

What will we remember when we think back fifteen years to September 11?

When I think back to Sept. 11, 2001, I have my own personal image I keep in my mind from that day.

As we viewed it from Chicago

It was as I walked through downtown that morning while most businesses were quickly shutting down for the day to allow for an evacuation of the Loop as a precautionary measure – in the event that anything similar to had what just happened in Manhattan and suburban Washington, D.C., was in store for Chicago.

I RECALL THE sight and sound of Chicago Police motorcycles riding all over the downtown area with their lights flashing and sirens roaring, trying to create the visual image of a heavy police presence that would pounce down on anyone who did anything even remotely suspicious.

And while I heard that, I happened to look over at the Borders Books store that used to exist on State Street (it’s now the Old Navy store), where I saw a store manager standing in the display window quickly concocting a sign that informed people the store was closed for business until further notice (it wound up re-opening a day later).

Like I said, the Loop was in a state of chaos. People were headed for the commuter train stations in hopes of catching a ride back home for the rest of the day. In fact, I was one of the few people headed to an office – instead of away from one.

I would up spending the day at a makeshift United Press International bureau, then got to see the Loop later in the afternoon by which time everybody was gone and it seemed like a ‘ghost town.’

ALL BECAUSE OF the activities by fanatics citing their religion as an excuse for acts of vandalism against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (with speculation being that had the plan been carried out to its full extent, the Capitol building and White House also would have been hit that day).

 

'Loop empties' makes Page One

We literally wondered if someone had in mind a plan to hit the Sears Tower as well. It led to the precautionary evacuation that pretty much meant that for Chicagoans, Sept. 11, 2001 was not so much a day of horror, but one in which we got an excused absence from work.

Which makes me wonder what we’ll think about on Friday – which is the date that many communities throughout the Chicago area have chosen with which to have official ceremonies paying tribute to the memory of that date.

 

A view from up and close

One which some people are determined to think lives “in infamy” even if their sense of history is so weak that they have no concept of what that famed FDR quote refers to, or who President Roosevelt even was!

I WONDER ABOUT the point of many of these ceremonies, which I wonder if they will be so filled with all the patriotic gestures one can think of that they wind up becoming trite remembrances of what we actually felt that day.

For one thing, they’re being held now instead of on the actual anniversary date of Sunday. Which makes me suspect that organizers fear people would be too preoccupied with the Chicago Bears season opener against the Houston Texans to care much about a patriotic ceremony!

Has Sept. 11 become just a date? Rather than an event in which we remember how 15 years ago our sense of our nation’s invincibility was challenged, and we might have to consider the concept that someone else would have the nerve to try to challenge our society.

Because that’s what those particular attacks were – meant to strike a blow against the western world that some perceive as leading us into a 21^st Century that has deviated too far from their vision of the ideal.

 

A little over the top

TO THE POINT that Chicago pretty much shut itself down for a day, and I still remember the fact that commercial airlines were shuttered for a week. Car rental agencies received a boon as certain people learned that the three-hour flight across the country was actually a three-day drive if done by automobile.

It's something that ought to be thought of seriously, and not just an excuse to listen to a poorly-sung national anthem while people struggle to remember the proper words to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Which is what is too likely to occur in ceremonies held across the metropolitan area and the nation come Friday.

  -30-

EXTRA: More homeless in Chicago?

A Chicago spring. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

I realize that homeless people begging for spare change is a part of the urban landscape, and the idea of someone destitute enough to beg juxtaposed with the wealth of the Loop isn’t at all odd.

Yet I couldn’t help but notice one woman who on Saturday chose a very prominent place to set up shop and request money from people – State and Madison.

YES, STATE STREET and Madison Street – that point from which Chicago’s street grid originates. The point from which it spreads in all directions (albeit the easternmost stretch is only a couple of blocks away before one runs into Lake Michigan).

I was in downtown Chicago Saturday afternoon, and couldn’t help but notice the many people seeking my change. Including one couple whose cardboard sign billed them as a father and daughter both in need of money for a meal.

Yet something about the woman at State and Madison, with her sign and her plastic bag containing her possessions and using the signpost to lean up against while she hoped for some change just somehow seemed wrong.

While some people on Saturday were all obsessed with whether or not Hillary Clinton could keep her campaign wishes alive (apparently, she did), I somehow suspect there are others to whom it literally won’t matter who wins the primary and general election to be held later this year.

THEY ALREADY HAVE sunk to the bottom, and who knows if they’ll ever be able to climb back up in life.

Before you say that’s not of your concern, keep in mind that our society as a whole isn’t any stronger than its weakest link.

This woman reminded me of one I encountered about a month ago – when I was in the Loop to meet up with some old friends for lunch at the Berghoff restaurant. When she hit me up for money for food, I would have felt like a complete dirtbag if I had walked right on by to eat well.

I wound up giving her a $10 bill, and still remember the glee she expressed because that would be enough money to get her a pizza. I haven’t seen that woman since, but I hope she enjoyed that bit of mozzarella with sauce.

AS FOR MY encounter on Saturday, I couldn’t help but reach into my pocket for spare change. She seemed pleased with the roughly $1.50 I tossed into her can before snapping the above photograph.

An image of Chicago I wish I could say was a rare one, or one I wouldn’t see often enough in the future!

  -30-

Turning Wrigley Field into a version of the old State Street downtown “mall?”

Remember back in the days when city officials came up with the idea to turn the State Street downtown shopping district.

Much of the Cubs' appeal is that Wrigley Field hasn't changed much from the days of this six-decade-old postcard

No street traffic. Sidewalks widened. Meant to encourage the idea of people walking about from store to store, making that “great street” into something the equivalent of a suburban mall?

IT IS NOW regarded as one of the dumbest things ever done by the city in an attempt to improve its character, and former Mayor Richard M. Daley made it a priority to have it undone – turning the area around State and Madison streets into normal streets once again.

And improving the atmosphere on State Street significantly by returning it to its original character.

It’s obvious that some people don’t learn from past mistakes. Which seems to be the case with regards to Wrigley Field.

For Chicago Cubs officials have said they want a widening of the sidewalks in the block of the ballpark along Clark and Addison streets. Also, the ball club wants those two streets closed off to traffic on game days during the hours leading up to, and following, ballgames.

WHICH MAY BE only 81 games per year out of the 365-day calendar. But it would still inflict significant damage upon the Lake View neighborhood as a whole – not just the portion that likes to call itself Wrigleyville.

The reality is that the more-than-a-century-old building, which the Cubs themselves will celebrate the 100-year mark of playing in come this season, was built for a different era and for much smaller crowds.

The idea of cramming some 40,000 people per ballgame wasn’t something envisioned back in the days when the Chicago Whales of old built the structure at Clark and Addison (the Cubs back then were the West Side’s ball club).

Would Cubs really copy one of Chicago's redevelopment failures? Photograph provided by old-Chicago.tumblr.com

So I don’t doubt that the Cubs have a legitimate point when they say the current structure isn’t really adequate for the number of people they’re cramming in to see Cubs baseball.

BUT I COULD see where such changes would have a negative impact on the neighborhood itself. Bringing in all those people could further enhance the complaints of Lake View neighborhood residents who already complain about Cubs fans who can’t wait long enough to use a port-a-potty or a neighborhood tavern and instead insist on using the alleys behind peoples’ homes for their bathroom needs.

And while I’m sure the Cubs are sincere about their desires to accommodate their crowds, the reality is that much of the reason the Cubs actually draw fans and attract tourists to Wrigley Field is because people want to see its antique character up-close.

The changes being desired by the Cubs would turn Wrigley Field into a second-rate version of any other stadium built during the past couple of decades.

I say second-rate because the changes would be add-ons, instead of features that were designed with the structure in mind.

SOMETIMES I THINK the Cubs don’t appreciate the uniqueness of the facility they play in and its ability to draw people and bolster attendance. If they did, would they be so quick to ask for changes to the structure and its character?

Where else do you see fans buying (and wearing) jerseys touting not the Cubs, but Wrigley Field itself? Besides, so much of Wrigley Field’s character is based off the way it fits into the existing neighborhood. If these kind of features are needed, perhaps it is time to move on to a suburban site for a new stadium – which I’m sure even the Cubs would view as a mistake.

So as for this latest dispute, I’m not surprised to learn that neighborhood activists are speaking out against the Cubs’ demands. These are, after all, the descendants of people who for years fought against the Cubs being allowed to install light towers on the building.

I only hope that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city officials will feel enough backbone to listen to the neighbors instead of caving in to team owners – which is the stance that politicians everywhere usually wind up taking.

  -30-

No more “Sears” on State Street! Will anyone in Chicago miss it in the least?

My initial reaction to learning this week that Sears plans to close its so-called “flagship” store on State Street was to wonder to myself, “Didn’t they just get here?”

Big news! Or the ultimate "ho-hum?"

It actually shocked me to realize that the return of Sears to State Street occurred in 2001. They’ve been back for nearly 13 years – with the help of funds provided by city government from Tax Increment Finance districts. It was state funding that kept the corporate headquarters in suburban Hoffman Estates a few years ago.

YET I ALSO have to confess that perhaps it is people just like myself who are responsible for Sears’ inability to maintain a major department store in the downtown Chicago area.

For in those 13 years that Sears was back on State Street, I personally never set foot in the store. From accounts I have heard and read from people who have been inside, they were the rarity.

There weren’t enough customers for Sears to make a go of it. Some of you may want to wisecrack that none of the Sears stores have enough customers to survive. But the modern-day Sears customer is someone who is using one of their suburban shopping mall customer.

Not exactly the kind of person who’s going to want to make the trip to downtown to lug around shopping bags from store to store in search of their life’s necessities and luxury items.

YES, I REALIZE that there are many millions of people who work in the Loop who could include a trip to Sears in with their routine before returning home. Although I suspect even many of them weren’t going to want to be bothered.

It’s hard to think of the State Street Sears store as the company “flagship” when it most likely was an afterthought to any kind of person who was still inclined to think “Sears” when they had shopping to do!

The Chicago White Sox' "real" home....

Which is why the idea of Sears on State Street (at State and Madison streets, to be exact) will be no more once we get into spring. In fact, the whole idea of Sears as a Chicago entity is really no more. The corporate headquarters is in suburban Hoffman Estates – and even that has threatened to leave our area altogether in recent years.

Sears, it seems, has become an element of Chicago history – not its present. Just like Marshall Field’s, that little tugboat-like building on the Chicago River that once housed the Chicago Sun-Times, and Comiskey Park.

... just like this is the "real" Sears

IN FACT, MY own thought process thinks that the Sears store on State Street is comparable to U.S. Cellular Field – the stadium used by the Chicago White Sox.

We go to it, we sit in its seats and watch a ballgame. Yet we can’t help but remember that old whitewashed brick building that used to be to the north of 35^th Street and think the current structure is somehow lacking.

As though it’s not the real ballpark.

Just as Sears used to be one of the anchors of the shopping district on State Street, until they gave in to contemporary retail trends (the ones that favor a cut rate-type marketer like Wal-mart) and closed their long-time flagship a couple of blocks further south near Congress and Van Buren streets, the current Sears store somehow felt like it was an imitator.

TO THE POINT where I never felt compelled to spend money there – even though the history buff in me fully comprehends the significance of a business flagship on State.

So what happens now? Other than the fact that the Chicago Public Schools has expressed interest in moving their main offices from Clark Street over to State – taking over at least part of the store

Will we someday wonder why it was called Sears?

The company has said the closeout sale will begin soon and will carry on until mid-April. Maybe somebody has dreams of people who file their tax returns early, and spend their return in one last shopping spree on State Street.

Wouldn’t it be just Sears’ luck of late that they mark everything down significantly in price – only to find out that still, nobody wants to make the trip to buy.

  -30-

Was it Thanksgiving? Or merely the first official shopping day of X-mas?

I don’t much care for what the Thanksgiving holiday has become.

Christmas on State Street ...

Because as much as I’m sure some people are going to respond to me by saying it was a chance to spend time with family while enjoying an elegant, overly-fancy meal together, I can’t help but sense that some people thought of it as merely the food they ate to give them sustenance before they went shopping.

YES, I REALLY believe that the Thanksgiving holiday is at risk of being overtaken by all the holiday shopping gimmicks meant to get people into the stores so that they will spend more money than they had planned to.

I don’t mean to be a downer. But I was always the reporter-type person whose least favorite work day was the day after Thanksgiving.

I have many memories of people engaging in ridiculous behavior because they thought the day after Thanksgiving was when they were supposed to go shopping for all those Christmas-related presents. Interviewing the guy who was selling velvet paintings of Elvis Presley from a van parked along Wabash Avenue near Randolph Street is probably the most garish.

But my point being I never comprehended the people who felt the need to rush into the holiday shopping mess. It makes the process of picking out gifts all the more hectic. Why turn it into a hassle?

FRIDAY WAS ALWAYS the day I went out of my way to avoid anything resembling a shopping mall or other place where retail was being performed. A part of me will even be reluctant to set foot in a supermarket on that day.

But now, with the trend of stores opening up on Thursday, it seems that I have a pair of days in which I will need to be careful – less I get sucked into the madness of crowds of people who don’t really have a clue what they want, but are looking to pick out things that will make them appear not to be cheap.

... has a certain character, regardless of when ...

Even though, in reality, they’re probably counting every penny they have (and some they really don’t have) all so they can be tightwads without looking the part.

It’s not so much that I don’t like crowds. I just don’t care for the vibe that comes from these people who feel that holiday shopping is a mission.

IT MAKES THEM all too susceptible to the deals that aren’t all that special. It is a scene I’d just as soon avoid. Even if that makes it seem as though I’m spouting a “Bah, Humbug!” or two.

... it occurs. Photos by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia

In fact, if there’s anything about this particular holiday season that catches my attention, it’s the fact that Hanukkah is coming earlier than usual this year – and won’t coincide with Thanksgiving again for another 77,000 years or so.

Friday will be the third night (out of eight) of that Jewish holiday, and it is going to be long complete by the time the Christmas madness gets underway.

In my case, my step-mother is Jewish, and our Thanksgiving meal Thursday included a lighting of the candles at sundown that mark each day of the holiday. For some people, the concept of “Thanksgivikkah” was the reality.

ALTHOUGH FOR US, we’ve actually had enough family conflicts in schedules that the decision was made to postpone Hanukkah until mid-December.

So I have a couple of weeks to fret over finding the perfect presents for my Jewish nephews and nieces. Whom I care for too much to snub outright.

Which means I’ll have to wind up plunging myself into the retail madness of this holiday season.

My warning to you now; get out of my way, unless you want my elbow in your ribs!!!

  -30-

Holed up like a hermit? Or using what little common sense I still possess?

The scene along Chicago's State Street, or any other shopping scene, bore no resemblance Friday to this 1935 Christmas holiday parade. Photograph provided by Chuckman's photos



I was not amongst the many people whom retailers would have you believe were so eager to start their Christmas holiday shopping that they felt the need to take their turkey-bloated carcasses out to whatever shopping mall or big box store is near their homes to begin expressing their love by blowing away their money.

Nor will I be amongst those who will feel the need to make the special trip to State Street (which is a “Great Street” every day except on Friday), or to any other retailer.

I’M SURE SOMEONE is going to think I’m expressing an “un-American” spirit by refusing to do my part to bolster the economy at this “Black Friday” time of the year.

Actually, I’m just doing my part for common sense by refusing to indulge in this shopping mania. I’m going to wind up spending my share of money in coming weeks. I don’t feel the need to be a lemming and throw my wallet over the financial cliff.

Not quite yet, anyway!

Call it my own personal tradition. Friday is the one day that I try to go out of my way to avoid shopping.

MY AVERSION TO having to go out and join the crowds of people who think it is their “duty” to spend money and bolster the financial status of their local retailers is so much that this is the one day of the year that (if everything goes alright) the only money I’m likely to spend is a couple of bucks for newspapers (or maybe close to $5 if I decide to not be so cheap and pick up a copy of the New York Times -- which gives me less of a headache reading it on paper, as opposed to off a digital screen.

Part of it is that I’m not that fond of crowds of unruly people. It’s the same reason I don’t think much of the Taste of Chicago or parades (you’ve seen one, you really have seen them all) in general.

But there is something about the spirit of the day on this Day after Thanksgiving that troubles me.

I don’t like the idea that some people feel like it is a requirement to shop. They really could avoid much of the hassle of dealing with crowds by simply pacing themselves a bit better during upcoming days (or weeks),.

I DON’T WANT to feel like I’m following the rat pack (unless it’s in the spirit of Sinatra, Martin or Sammy Davis, Jr.). Then again, I’m also the type who thinks that Opening Day for the baseball season is overrated.

It’s cold, miserable and the second game of the season is just as good an introduction to a ballclub for the season as the first – except you lose all the people who could care less about baseball and are there because they want to partake in a spectacle.

Friday’s holiday shopping is way too much of a spectacle for me to take seriously.

Besides, I have never believed that the alleged “sales prices” being offered for those who bothered to show up during limited hours Thursday night or Friday morning are all that special.

THE AMOUNT OF money being saved just isn’t significant enough for me to have to put up with the pushy people who are prepared to turn fellow shoppers into road kill if they dare get in the path of that special something of a present for their alleged loved one.

In fact, the only times I have been out in this pack have been the years in which my duties as a reporter-type person provided me assignments requiring me to go out and interview shoppers.

A part of me always wanted to verbally assault these people for being nit-wits. I always felt my resulting stories were more mocking in tone than anything else. So excuse me for being thankful that no editor this year has decided they’d like me to find out what the “hot” gift item is this holiday season.

I don’t know, and I don’t care. Those people I choose to get gifts for will get items I think they will find interesting. Because personally, I don’t despise them enough to just grab some item off a shelf on Friday just because it’s “on sale!”

  -30-

It’s beginning to look a lot like a four-day holiday weekend to start off the Christmas/winter holiday celebration

There was one moment last week when the Cook County Board was going through its excruciating process of searching for places in the county budget to cut costs when I felt like standing up and cheering.

These still-standing halls will be vacant a year from now

Except that my legs were so cramped up for sitting for hours on end that I suspect I would have pulled a muscle or done something else to seriously hurt myself.

THAT WAS WHEN the county board came up with a day they believe they can get away with shutting down the entire apparatus of Cook County government (except for those few all-hours people who work at the county hospital or for the sheriff’s police).

I’m talking, of course, about today. This unique day that comes up every single year. It’s the Day after Thanksgiving, which because that food-fest holiday falls every year on Thursday means this one comes on Friday.

Which means they both come before the Saturday/Sunday weekend that would see them take off.

The county budget for the 2012 fiscal year was balanced in part because beginning one year from now, county government will no longer even pretend that it is open and functioning on a regular basis on this day.

WHICH FAR TOO many people have either turned into an unofficial day off, or become the work ethic-equivalent of Homer Simpson if by chance they do have to show up at the office on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

It seems that nothing of any practicality gets done.

So perhaps we should just acknowledge that there’s no point to the first official day of the winter holiday shopping season should be anything more – except to those people who work in the stores that are selling all those goods.

Those people get to endure a true “Day from Hades” on Friday, having to endure the crowds AND the fact that too many stores seem determined to boost their profits from the day by being open at ridiculous hours in the early morning.

BY THE TIME most of you (those of you who are sane individuals) will have read this, there will already be some people who will have started their holiday shopping (and at least a few of those people will be of the type who will be grossly offended at my use of the word “holiday” in place some something with a “Christ” in it).

There have been times in my work as a reporter-type person where I have had to work on this day, and have wound up spending it chasing down holiday shoppers on State Street or Michigan Avenue.

As though that was the only serious work being done on the day.

For even the people who are pretending to work, it seems, are just looking for a chance to step out of the office for a “break” that will allow them to do a bit of shopping of their own.

NOW, WE WON’T have to endure the sight of county employees cheating in such a way. The county will be closed on Nov. 23, 2012, except for those emergency workers who do their jobs in large part out of a sense of public dedication as much as the actual paycheck.

Which will wind up taking a hit. Because the Day after Thanksgiving won’t be a paid holiday.

The budget amendment crafted by staffers for county commissioners Jerry Butler and Jesus Garcia decrees that all workers (both union and non-union) will get their salaries reduced by 1/261^st to account for the fact that they won’t be coming in to work a year from now.

It also says that managers will have to monitor their employees’ hours during the Thanksgiving holiday week to ensure that someone doesn’t wind up hitting 40 hours and getting overtime pay, in addition to the day off.

I MUST CONFESS that I despise the idea of furloughs – those days that county officials have used in recent years to get away with unpaid days for their workers. For in some cases, those workers wind up having to put in extra hours some other time to make up for the undone work on the day off.

To my sensibility, it comes across as asking workers to work a few hours for free.



Even 70 years later, State Street will have some hustle and bustle and holiday activity on Friday. Image provided by Chuckman's Collection.



But this one bothers me much less because it’s coming at a time when there just wasn’t much work being done. It’s a reflection of reality, and I’m sure it will be appreciated because it will mean that we won’t have workers trying to get themselves enthused about one more workday before the weekend – right after that day in which they stuffed themselves silly.

Better to have them stay at home. Perched in front of the television for a bit, where they can watch the overzealous (and ultimately trivial) reporting being done about all those crazy shoppers – the kind of people that make me NOT want to set foot near a shopping mall for the next month.

  -30-

Is Chicago Christmas still special?

Who remembers Uncle Mistletoe?

Going downtown to check out the department store window displays for the Christmas holiday season is supposed to be one of those quintessential experiences that defines the character of Chicago. Yet I can’t remember the last time I actually did that.

It may well have been back when I was still legally a child. Considering that I’m now into middle-age, that means it has been a long, long time.

NOW I KNOW some people are going to argue that the unique character of those department store displays was lost when places like Marshal Field’s and Carson, Pirie, Scott ceased to be locally-owned entities. The fact that Field’s is now Macys and Carson’s on State Street is nothing, although it may someday become a Target only further adds to any loss of distinct character.

What we get now are some sort of generic displays that I must admit to paying no attention to.

In fact, this time of year, I go out of my way to avoid State Street and Michigan Avenue whenever I can, along with anything resembling crowded shopping malls. Too many people creating congestion for the mess of commercialized holiday shopping.

(Yes, I’m probably in need of “Linus” coming in about now to remind me of the true meaning of Christmas, but that is a commentary for another day).

MAYBE IT IS just age coming on for me. But where is the sense of holiday spectacle that used to make a trip to our city’s downtown business district worth making? I can’t help but think that the children of today (such as my nephews and nieces) have lost out on something by never getting the chance to see a mass spectacle of people showing up along State Street (even if their parents had no intention of buying anything that day) to guess at what wonderments they would get to see along, “that Great Street.”



This 1909 postcard of the old Siegel-Cooper department storeon State Street (later, Sears Roebuck & Co.) includes the holiday-decorated windows. Image provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia



I’m not normally of the type who thinks that everything was better back some 30 or 40 years ago (even though, in many cases, it was). But I’m feeling particularly nostalgic these days for the Christmases of my youth, and wishing that some of those traits could have been retained.

Part of this may very well be due to the loss of my mother just over a month ago. So much of my Christmas holiday routine in recent years had centered around trying to bring her some joy. Now, I have to figure out new ways to occupy my time at this holiday season (or else risk becoming one of those hermits who spend the day locked away).

That certainly is not my intention. But it does seem to have me reminiscing for those December days back when I was 7 or 8 (and my brother, Chris, was about 2 or 3) and our parents took us to State Street.

I CAN REMEMBER the anticipation of checking out each store, going from window to window to watch whatever respective story line was being told build to its conclusion. Even with that hideous mall-like configuration that kept traffic off State Street, the area seemed to have more character then than it does now.

Simple stuff, but more mentally intoxicating than any of the video games that I see my nephew who is roughly that age play these days. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m becoming a tad grouchy in my old age.

It almost seems like when it comes to a public holiday display in Chicago these days, we have to focus our attention away from State Street and its generically-decorated windows and focus on Daley Plaza.

In the shadow of the Picasso statue, we get the official city holiday tree (which was lit back on Nov. 24) and the official city Hanukkah menorah (whose time has passed since the Jewish holiday came early this year at the beginning of December).

PERHAPS THAT IS part of my dismay with public holiday displays – they come so ridiculously early. I know that in my immediate neighborhood, wreaths with red bows were hung from all the public lamp-posts and some colorful Christmas lights were set up – back at the end of October.

I hadn’t even seen the kids come scavenging through my neighborhood in search of Halloween candy when the first municipal Christmas decorations were erected.

Although I’m sure to some people, the more tragic act of Chicago-style Christmas is the restrictions in the downtown high rises against live Christmas trees in the residential units (officials fear the potential of a fire – one nitwit with a dried-out tree can cause an ignition that leaves many pricey units uninhabitable).

Personally, the idea of an artificial tree doesn’t bother me too much. In certain circumstances, they can be more practical. I could even see in cases of the high-rises, where there might be risk of branches or bristles falling hundreds of feet to the streets below, creating more of a mess.

SO THIS IS what has become of Christmas in Chicago – generic window displays, public decorations erected a couple of holiday seasons too early, and some people griping about too-tough restrictions.



How many children of a century ago were scared off by this 1902 incarnation of Santa Claus on State Street?



But perhaps I’m coming off a bit too grouchy. It is, after all, a holiday to celebrate the spirit of life and joy, which is why I always find it a downer that some people are determined to put a negative spin on this holiday by making a stink over whether to say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays?”

Either works in my mind. Or how about, “Feliz Navidad” (except that will leave the nativist crowd p-o’ed these days).

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