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Curious City

Signs Of The Times: How Chicago Bars Got So Many Old Style Signs

Curious City

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture, Education, Public, Chicago, Arts, City, Radio, Curious, Investigation

4.8642 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We uncover the history and bask in the glow of a ubiquitous Chicago bar sign.


Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Planet Money helps you understand the economy.

0:02.7

We find the people at the center of the story.

0:05.1

Garbage in New York.

0:06.5

That was like a controlled substance.

0:08.6

We show you how money influences everything.

0:11.6

Tell me what you like by telling me how you spend your money.

0:15.5

And we dig until we get answers.

0:17.5

I had a bad feeling you're going to bring that up.

0:19.4

Planet Money finds out.

0:20.7

All you have to do is listen. The Planet Money podcast from NPR.

0:24.7

Hey, John Fasiel here. I'm meeting Oswaldo Alvarez, our questioner this week at a bar called

0:30.4

the double in Logan Square. It's at the corner of Fullerton and Drake. Oswaldo grew up down the

0:36.4

street here in the 90s. Oswaldo?

0:38.3

Yeah.

0:39.3

Hi, nice to meet you.

0:40.3

Oswaldo's dad worked as a clerk for Cook County.

0:43.3

When Oswaldo was a kid, his dad would hang out at this bar every day,

0:48.3

until little Oswaldo was sent by his mom to drag him home.

0:51.3

Oswaldo remembers seeing the corner bar's electric old-style beer sign

0:56.8

hanging on the outside, gleaming like a beacon for the whole neighborhood. His dad passed

1:03.3

away 16 years ago at age 46, and whenever Oswaldo sees an old-style sign like that, he thinks about

1:10.2

him. And that happens a lot because you can see these bright old-style sign like that, he thinks about him. And that happens a lot because

...

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