More Top Picks Miroco Electric Kettle
player ready...For centuries, the brick-and-mortar store has been the ultimate status symbol of the independently owned service provider’s success. After building a clientele base and squirreling away enough in savings, signing a lease on a space meant officially sealing the deal: A product’s worth was ensured with a roof over its head, and the responsible parties were, quite literally, put on the map.
Along came the Great Recession, and everything changed. Small-business owners, and even some larger-business owners, surrendered and moved out, vacant storefronts were common, and even the densest of retail corridors, like the Loop and Wicker Park, began to sprout metaphorical tumbleweeds.
And then, rising from the ashes, the pop-ups popped up.
From weekend-only top-chef eateries in Logan Square to Target’s three-day Bullseye Bazaar on Michigan Avenue last spring, temporary vendors, suddenly, are everywhere. Alongside eateries, drinkeries and retailers, artists are having a field day. Temporary installations have been mounted renegade-style in the dusty shells of shuttered shops and broken leases; weeklong group shows and affiliated fetes have taken over darkened pharmacy storefronts along some of the hippest blocks of retail in the city. The Chicago Loop Alliance founded an official initiative, Evanston’s chamber of commerce followed suit and even Pilsen’s Podmajerskys got on the pop-up bandwagon.
And just like that, art is alive in neighborhoods previously reserved for business.
We trace Chicago’s pop-up gallery origins back a full year to the Loop’s initiative, reaching even further into the recession to get to the heart of its predecessors on the West Side.
It’s all mapped out, literally and figuratively, on Page 5.