Hi neighbor.

there was a little diner on the NW corner of addison and california (right across california from GT) in the 70s where i would go sometimes because they had a "pinball wizard" pinball machine. i imagine that place was crowded during lunch break with gordon students. on western we had a much greasier spoon called dennis' or dennis the menace, owned by a chicago cop....the food was typically lousy for that kind of place but he had a ton of pinball machines and video games.

i graduated HS in '80, so depending on when you were at gordon, those places may or may not have been there.

I loved the sub shop at western , I think it was called Hero's. I'd stop on my way to my after school job to grab one. Graduated in 74.

...i liked the sandwiches but the bread was always too hard. i grew up on gonnella (and turano) and, of course, italian beef sandwiches.

i was born on the south side

the majority of my friends at lane lived in rogers park so that's where i spent a lot of my time as a teenager. i started hanging out at biddy mulligan's when i was a senior at lane...i looked young, even for 18, but somehow never got carded there...that's where i got introduced to live chicago blues. then, of course, when i was at loyola, i was in rogers park all day long and spent my evenings at biddy's or some of the local bars close to the campus, or the no exit cafe right next to the morse el train station.

if i wasn't in rogers park i was in lincoln park. i miss those neighborhoods back in the 70s and 80s.

I was a true introvert and didn't like beer or bars. I went to some bars at some point with my older sister when we both got kicked out of the house by my mother. I am not sure when that was.

Rogers Park was wonderful, mainly because of the close proximity to Lunt Beach

I worked at the Heartland Cafe for a while as a waitress, but didn't last long. Owned by a hippie couple. I read it closed in 2018

Heartland Cafe, 7006 N Glenwood Ave, closed on December 31, 2018



No Exit Cafe 6970 N. Glenwood Avenue, closed June 30, 1999

....when i first started going there around 1979, it was just a small coffee shop and was just the small corner section of the building (see photo below). then it grew into the entire storefront and became more than just a coffee shop.

And St Xavier U. BA, U of I Circle MSW

how did you like circle? i was there for my first 2 years and the classroom sizes were too big for me. the place seemed drab and cold to me because of the architecture...it almost looked like a prison. i was uninspired by all but a few of my classes there and because of that i spent most of my time in the bowling alley or on maxwell street.

But I was an older student who rushed in and out and home to family. Never socialized. All a blurr now!

It was in the "we don't call it circle anymore" era.

Before that I was not in Chicago.