Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Nostalgia’ Category

50 years and counting for the Village Squire in West Dundee

Posted in Entertainment, Nostalgia on May 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The Village Squire is celebrating 50 years in business in West Dundee. | Rick West / rwest@dailyherald.com

By Rick West | Daily Herald

A community fixture in West Dundee is marking a half century of hospitality at the corner of Washington and Second Street downtown this month.

The Village Squire is celebrating its 50th anniversary of being “a good place to be since 1974.”

Karas Restaurant Group managing partner Bob Karas said the restaurant, opened by his dad and uncle, holds a special place in his heart and the hearts of community members because of it’s longevity.

“People tell me they got engaged here, or had their first date with their wife here,” Karas said. “They’ve had celebrations, post-funeral luncheons. No matter what we’ve always delivered. Good food, good service, value for the price.”

The Village Squire is celebrating 50 years in business in West Dundee. | Rick West/rwest@dailyherald.

The Squire, as it’s known colloquially, has a number of promotions and events planned as part of a monthlong celebration.

A ribbon cutting is set for 11 a.m. Thursday, May 16, with lunch specials featuring flashback pricing until 2 p.m.

A limited-time menu with anniversary specials starts Monday and runs through the end of the month. And since May 1 the Squire has been giving each table of guests one of 5,000 golden envelopes, each featuring a surprise reward including a free appetizer, a percentage off the bill, and a $100 gift card.

The 50th anniversary celebration will take place from 5 to 9 p.m. on May 30 with special offerings and entertainment.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

Big Band jazz, roses and more for Mother’s Day at Palatine’s Durty Nellie’s

Posted in Entertainment, Nostalgia on April 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

By Roy Vombrack

Big Band jazz and a rose for the first 25 moms are in store for Mother’s Day, May 12, at Durty Nellie’s Gastropub and Entertainment Hub, 180 N. Smith St., in Palatine.

The McHenry Community High School Jazz Ensemble, directed by Ryan Cabildo, will perform at 6 p.m., followed by the Jazz Consortium Big Band, led by Roy Vombrack, at 6:30 p.m.

Seating is limited, so reservations are encouraged. Call (847) 358-9150 or visit durtynellies.com.

The performance is for all ages, with a $10 cash cover, or $5 for ages 17 and younger with student ID. Food service is available throughout the evening, so moms can take in the Big Band sounds with menu selections from Durty Nellie’s newest menu.

Although the Jazz Consortium Big Band has been featured in concerts and venues throughout the Chicago area, including the prestigious Jazz Showcase and FitzGerald’s nightclubs, Nellie’s has remained its monthly home base the second Sunday each month for 13 years. The 17-member group’s performances are always open to all ages, and feature Big Band sounds from the Swing era to modern-day Big Band selections.

The Jazz Consortium Big Band’s upcoming schedule can be found at jcbigband.com.

Read Full Post »

West Dundee closes on purchase of Spring Hill Mall property

Posted in Nostalgia, Topics Of Interest on April 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

By Alicia Fabbre | Daily Herald

West Dundee is now the official owner of the recently shuttered Spring Hill Mall.

The village on Thursday completed its purchase of the 500,000-square-foot building for $7 million. Previously, West Dundee acquired the former Macy’s and Sears anchors at the mall for $1.1 million and $2 million, respectively.

The Kohl’s store at the mall remains open and was not part of the acquisition. While the Cinemark movie theater was part of the acquisition, it remains open.

The mall, which opened in 1980, officially closed to the public on March 22.

After the mall steadily declined in recent years, West Dundee officials looked to purchase it to spur redevelopment.

“The acquisition of the mall property is essential to the long-term reformatting of what will soon be the former Spring Hill Mall area,” Village President Chris Nelson said in a news release. “The complex nature of mall real estate all but requires the village’s involvement to make the property attractive for substantial reinvestment by the private sector.”

The mall, which straddles West Dundee and Carpentersville, will not reopen. Village officials anticipate demolition of the structure to begin this fall and take six months to complete.

More here.

Read Full Post »

One big reason it’s hard to track Illinois’ educational failures. Officials keep changing the standardized tests.

Posted in 220, 300, Barrington Education Association, Clown Car, Deception, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Education, Ethics, FUBAR, Look For The Union Label, New Normal?, Nostalgia, Politics, Pritzker’s Rules of Order, Property Taxes, School Districts, Springfield, Topics Of Interest, Unions, What the Ficke (Bradford)? on March 25, 2024| 1 Comment »

By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner | Wirepoints

Wirepoints is continuously asked by parents and educational groups for long-term student outcome data for their districts and schools. They are looking for trends to understand how badly outcomes have stagnated or worsened.

The problem is, we can’t provide good long-term trends. The Illinois State Board of Education has a history of switching up its standardized tests every half-decade or so, making it impossible for us to track long-term outcomes at the school and district level. And national tests, which do provide long-term data, only cover top-level state and Chicago data.

Unsurprisingly, ISBE is about to make another change. They’ve announced a switch to the ACT from the SAT. Whether by chance or design, they’re making it more difficult to hold individual schools and districts accountable. And given the dismal student outcomes and spiking education costs in Illinois, one can’t be blamed for thinking they’re switching it up on purpose.

The ACT was the test of choice from 2009 to 2017. Then ISBE switched to the SAT from 2018 through 2024. Now it’s apparently going to switch back to the ACT.

From Chalkbeat:

“Next year, Illinois high school juniors could take the ACT instead of the SAT as the federally-mandated state test. The Illinois State Board of Education has started the process of awarding a three-year, $53 million contract to ACT Inc.

The College Board’s contract to administer the SAT for 11th graders and PSAT for ninth and 10 graders is set to expire June 30.

Illinois education officials are essentially resetting the baseline for student performance by changing the test high schoolers take. Results in 2025 and beyond won’t be directly comparable to the 2017-2024 period because the ACT and SAT are different tests.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

McGonigals Pub 4 Day Liquidation Sale By Appointment

Posted in DARCHED, Nostalgia, Politics, Press Release, Topics Of Interest on March 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

“This sale is the total and only liquidation of McGonigals Pub in Barrington. Everything in pub is for sale by appointment only.

3/19 3pm to 6pm (Today)
3/20 9am to 4pm (Wednesday)
3/21 9am to 4pm (Thursday)
3/22 9am to 4pm (Friday)

From kitchen equipment to bar decor will be for sale. McGonigals Pub is housed in a 100 year old building in the heart of downtown Barrington. This traditional Irish pub contains a treasure trove of great item.

Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to get some great finds or quality equipment for your restaurant or bar. PLEASE CALL 847-393-6715 TO SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT.”

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

60 Years Later: How The Beatles Met the Moment on Ed Sullivan

Posted in Nostalgia, Topics Of Interest on February 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

020924-beatles-hero_xs8t6s

On Feb. 9, 1964, Americans witnessed the first truly seismic television event. What stands out most 60 years later, is just how ready The Beatles were for their invasion. | Bettmann/Getty Images

By Colin Fleming | The Daily Beast

In the days before everyone cut their cable because no one had cable yet, there were these things called networks. Only a handful of these networks existed, which meant that people couldn’t help but watch the same things. Sometimes there was a very big thing, and just about everyone who was able to would sit down to watch.

The Beatles’ debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, is the first seismic event in American television history. Americans had been wedded to their sets the previous November in the aftermath of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but there hadn’t been an event like this, one that people knew was coming.

So people gathered. And gathered. People of all ages. Kids tended to be frenzied with excitement for something novel and new, as kids always have been. Whereas, members of the older crowd seemed determined to practice tolerance for the follies of youth and set the good example, or perhaps conjure an anecdote for how things were better in their day.

020924-beatles-1_lzrytf

Ed Sullivan talks with The Beatles, on the set of The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. | Bettmann/Getty Images

Certain things will simply never change. Popular culture, though—and, really, the world—did change on that winter night when most of America met these four young men from Liverpool.

The Beatles had touched down at New York’s Kennedy Airport two days prior. Only one of them—George Harrison—had been to America before. These were guys who worshiped American culture. This was where the gods, in their view, had originated: Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and, most of all, the god of the gods, Elvis Presley.

Think about this for a moment: You come to this place, all eyes are on you thanks to one of the most successful, buzz-generating marketing campaigns in history. You’ve never played a note in this new land, and then you appear on TV to perform for seemingly everyone across four dozen states.

We know what happens next. The Beatles became as huge as any entertainment act in history, though they would not have done so without being able to deliver the goods—never underestimate the staying power of those who are both given a chance and able to deliver the goods.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

What’s That Building? Prudential Plaza

Posted in Nostalgia, Topics Of Interest on January 18, 2024| Leave a Comment »

5--prudential-plaza-eric-allix-rogers-web-06-05

By Dennis Rodkin | WBEZ

The Prudential Insurance Company is planning to leave the Randolph Street skyscraper it built seven decades ago — and taking the name with it.

The Prudential name has been on the 41-story Loop building since it opened in 1955. The name has also been on the 64-story younger sibling, Prudential Plaza Two or Pru Two, since that building opened in 1990.

The departure is momentous. Prudential stuck with its namesake skyscraper long after Sears, Wrigley, the Chicago Tribune, Montgomery Ward, Kemper and other big corporations left their buildings.

There is more than just a change in name. When Prudential goes, the company leaves behind a lot of the legacy it embedded in that building. The tower was the first high-rise in Chicago built since the Great Depression and the first built on air rights over a vast Illinois Central rail yard that filled what’s now 15 square blocks of high-rises and park land — Illinois Center and Lakeshore East. It helped pave the way for Millennium Park, the Pedway week and between 1955 and 1965 was the city’s tallest building.

The Prudential name isn’t just “on the building” — it’s prominently displayed 200 feet long across the top of the older building’s façade in blue letters, and carved into the façade beneath a sculpted rendering of its Rock of Gibraltar logo.

Prudential sold the two buildings in 2000 but has held onto office space and the naming rights. Prudential is planning to move out of its 50,000 square feet in Prudential Plaza and move to a 28,000 square feet space clear across the Loop at 150 N. Riverside Plaza.

Read more here.

Read Full Post »

Editorial: On 60th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a fresh look at the day that changed everything

Posted in Nostalgia, Politics, Resident Spotlights, Topics Of Interest on November 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

JFK

President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Riding with President Kennedy are first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, right, Nellie Connally, second from left, and her husband, Texas Gov. John Connally, far left. The 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, marked on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, finds his family, and the country, at a moment many would not have imagined in JFK’s lifetime. (Jim Altgens/AP)

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

Sixty years ago today, Americans of all stripes were shocked when Walter Cronkite told them, wiping away tears, that John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas.

It verges on trite to say everything changed after that. It also happens to be true. As Stephen Sondheim famously wrote in a song lyric, “Something Just Broke.”

But, that truth has taken on new forms as time has passed. The legacy of JFK has evolved as has its lessons for America.

For the first few decades after the tragedy, the narrative was one of before and after. For many, JFK’s death marked the loss of the country’s innocence, as manifested in the turbulent 1960s, the sexual revolution and a litany of cultural changes.

Where were you when you found out? Virtually every American old enough to remember could tell you.

JFK in those early decades was put on a pedestal. He was seen as inspirational (“Ask not what your country can do for you,” “We choose to go to the moon”) and a symbol of a nation on the rise — of a younger, vigorous, forward-looking country.

In more recent times, the legacy has morphed into something more complicated and in some respects worrisome.

The theorizing rampant on the internet — a technological advancement JFK no doubt would find mind-boggling — in some ways has its origins in the still-raging debate over who was responsible for the assassination.

Read more here.

Related: “Resident pens revealing book on the Kennedys”

Read Full Post »

Farewell forever to Netflix DVDs

Posted in Entertainment, Nostalgia, Topics Of Interest on September 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

netflix-poste

Home movies
On Friday, Netflix is shutting down its mail-order DVD service. Customers who still receive physical DVDs can hold on to the ones they have. “Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you like!” the company wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. I misread this as “Please enjoy your final shipments for as long as you live!,” a chirpy and morbid send-off, conjuring images of a devoted Luddite breathing his last in a room littered with faded red envelopes and dusty remote controls.

This is not a eulogy for the DVD. I stopped receiving DVDs by mail more than a decade ago with little remorse. Or at least I think I did. I tried recently to access my complete Netflix viewing history only to discover that all DVD data is deleted 10 months after your subscription ends. Now I’m left with just my streaming history, which begins in 2009 with “Party Down,” a show which, for many reasons, feels recent and very much of the streaming era.

If I’m forlorn about anything, it’s the lost data. I can’t remember a single movie I watched on DVD from Netflix. I remember the first rentals my parents brought home to play on our hulking faux-bois VCR (Billy Wilder’s 1960 film “The Apartment,” “A Little Romance,” with Laurence Olivier and a teenage Diane Lane). I remember borrowing the comically gigantic laser disc of “Koyaanisqatsi” in the college library and renting “Say Anything” from Tower Video in the East Village.

These movies, these moments, are the pegs that threads of memory wind around. Who I was, what I did, how I felt at a moment in time. I rented Jim Jarmusch’s “Down by Law” from Kim’s Video, then I went and got steamed eggs at a cafe. I can see the video on the cafe table. I remember the winter coat I had. I wish I could recall the Netflix rentals, summon the memories that accompany them.

For a short time, Netflix had a feature that I loved called “Netflix Friends.” It allowed you to share your queue with friends and to see their star ratings for movies they’d watched. I remember adding ratings and comments to movies I’d seen before the launch of Netflix, so I could recommend them to friends.

Netflix canceled the Friends feature in 2010. I wish I’d kept track of each movie I watched and the ratings I gave them. Why did I give away the information? Why didn’t I save what could be a log of prompts to help spur memories of other eras, an archive of how I spent my time?

At the end of each year, the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh posts a list of everything he watched and read in the previous 12 months. I’ve been envious of this record, but for whatever reason, maybe because my intake seemed so feeble compared to Soderbergh’s, I’ve never kept a list of my own. That changes now. I downloaded my Netflix streaming history and plan to do so for all the streaming platforms that allow it. I’ll log my viewing in a notebook, be my own data collector, the custodian of my own cultural history.

Source

Read Full Post »

Reminder: The Barrington High School Homecoming parade is this morning

Posted in 220, Barrington High School, Board of Education, Nostalgia, Resident Spotlights, School Districts on September 23, 2023| 1 Comment »

Fick This

District 220 Board of Education President Sandra Fick-Bradford was seen leading a cheer during the 2022 Barrington Homecoming Parade. Hopefully District 220 purchased a LARGER selection of t-shirts sizes this year…

“The parade will begin promptly at 10:15 a.m. on Saturday, September 23, We will all meet in the COMMUTER LOT AT THE BARRINGTON TRAIN STATION IN DOWNTOWN BARRINGTON.

The parade will follow the traditional route from past years from Wool Street to Main Street, and west on Main Street toward BHS. If you have a float, please be at the commuter lot at 9:00 a.m.

THERE WILL BE NO CARS ALLOWED IN THE PARKING LOT THAT ARE NOT IN THE ACTUAL PARADE–please communicate this to all members of your group! When arriving the day of the parade, you will be designated a waiting area for your group and float (if applicable).”

Photos from the 2022 BHS Homecoming parade can be seen here.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »