I don't even know what they sell in the building with the Indian standing guard on the rooftop at the NW corner of 63rd & Pulaski. The eye care center is still down the next storefront, and there had been a cigar store there for decades. I believe it was a White Owl store, unless that brad of cigar is as common as, say, Old Style signs. Before I moved to Burbank, it had already turned into half tobacco sop/half crappy figurines in the windows. I have taken the opportunity to show how, if taken at the right angle, it looks as if the Indian has L'il Kaw-liga out for a visit.
The huge building on the NE side of the intersection is one of my favorite buildings, and I was always hypnotized on summer nights as I watched cheap window fans cranking silently in the upper windows. The third photo shows that First Lawn Bank was its anchor, but that had closed in the early 90s. I've written about an incident involving my dad, back when he was a cop, which occurred in this building. The story is called "This Old Man Came Rolling Home." The short end: an old guy died ad the neighbors called the police after a few days of not seeing him, my dad and a few other cops from the 8th found a paper about five days old, and the crime scene evidence showed that the guy likely fell and died in the bathroom. The funny (as in peculiar) thing was that the guy had two Dobermans, and they seemed quite content. That was because they ate the old man. Along with other bags of food in the pantry. The clincher was when one of the cops found a thigh bone hidden behind a couch cushion. The apartment is a few windows to the left of the shoe store sign, maybe three stories up.
I kept walking towards the viaduct at Central Park, to take photos of the old station house, and I'll post those tomorrow, along with pictures of what had been Traxx. I passed this bungalow where the owners seemed to have gone overboard with the lawn statues.
5 comments:
Roll Them Bones! Some dogs are funny that way. Those dobermans don't seem to have wasted any time, though!
How long did it take you to find that angle shot of the giant Indian?
I thought it was usually the cats who ate their dead owners.
There was an exact replica of that statue at the Orange County Fair in Middletown, NY some years ago. If you stand along the side of it, at one point the thumb of the hand at it's side looks just like the figure's dick. *L*
I think that big ol' building across from the Indian is the one my uncle had an appliance store in. The appliance store didn't do well, and he got a job in a casket factory. This was in the years after the war.
Just east of this corner used to be a great music store, Carnivale's. All the garage bands got their stuff there. A little further from there was Steinberg-Baum, a discount store -- so you know my dad always took us there. I got an 8mm 5-minute version of "Rodan" at the their camera counter. One of the owners, don't know if it was Steinberg or Baum, tried to run off with the funds -- the traditional flight to Brazil, but he got caught, made a big scandal and the store closed.
In the '70s an Arby's clone opened up just east of there, too. It was called HEAP BIG BEEF -- the accent on "Heap." And it was bad. Heap Bad. Maybe that's where the Indian came from -- someone bought it from the Heap Big bankruptcy auction and said, "So what the hell am I going to do with this thing?"
"Ah, put it on the roof. What the hell."
And so great ideas are born on the Southwest Side.
Little Kawliga, love it!!
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