Killing Wrigleyville

I remember the old man and my uncle leaving Wrigley between games of a doubleheader to down a shot or two at the Cubby Bear. In those days you could get readmitted with your ticket stub.

The Cubby Bear was a dark and smoky place. It had a huge triangular bar and a black and white TV. Pictures of heroes in flannel decorated the walls. The trains still ran on the track outside and unloaded at the huge "coal and coke" elevators.

That was nostalgia. I do miss the old style Chicago bars with shadowy drinkers cradling their whisky in one hand and a cigarette in the other, but I realize times change.

The Cubby Bear has burly bouncers and teenage girls with fake identification giggling at the doorway. Bar girls stand over tubs of beer bottles while their sisters offer sweet Jell-O shots. The music blares so loudly that it drowns out your thoughts. I wonder how any guy can talk a girl into anything. It must be all body language or some sort of mime theater.

I point at what I want to drink and give them my credit card, wondering where the twenty first century will lead me.

Aside from location and the name, the bar has nothing to do with what is going on in the ballpark across the street.

The way the Cubs have played the last couple of years that is probably a wise business decision.

The Cubby Bear will stand and survive. The other businesses across the street are not so lucky.

The new plan is to place a hotel on most of the southeast corner of Addison and Clark. The auto body shop and the souvenir shop will stay in place, but everything else will be torn down. A food store and a Best Buy will go in and a seeming dagger in the heart of what has turned into a yuppie Bourbon Street.

I don't know what business school promotes a location on the basis of a built in down time of 81 down days per year. Non-baseball related retail doesn't seem to be a fit.

Places like Glendale, Arizona have tried to create a Wrigleyville outside of their new stadiums. Chicago tries to turn it all into Glendale, Arizona. In another couple of years, we may be nostalgic for aging frat boys staggering on Clark Street as we look at the 'for rent' signs on the windows where the Best Buy had been. I'll still be looking to drink a shot to a ball player wearing flannel.