Phone Messages

Four years after Disco Demolition Night, the Police performed at Comiskey Park. In the Quad Cities, 80s entertainment included the Bix Beiderbecke festival and cruising on Saturday Night.

The Chicago Defender played an important role in the Great Migration of African Americans fleeing the violence of the Jim Crow South. Beginning in the 1970s, digital technology like VDTs had a big impact on newspaper production, including at places like the Defender.

In 1979, Methuen Press published Subculture: the meaning of style by Dick Hebdige, the first academic book to address Punk culture. In 1984, the University of Chicago Press published Paths of Neighborhood Change whose lead author was Richard Taub, a section of which discusses Hyde Park's urban renewal.

The mix of orange juice and rice can be used in a wide range of savory and sweet recipes. Before college students had cell phones, dormitories hired receptionists to direct calls to a phone in each resident hall.

Pure Hype began on WHPK in 1986 as a way to promote upcoming indie rock shows with free tickets and interviews with musicians. By 1988, the show also began hosting live performances in the middle of the radio station's record library.

The Indian Termination Policy from the 1940s to 1960s encouraged Native Americans migration to cities like Chicago, where they often settled in the Uptown neighborhood. In the 1970s, a movement for self determination inspired public school programs meant to reintroduce native children to their heritage.

The Seminary Coop Bookstore began in 1961 when a small group of students grouped together to buy academic books at a discount. In 2013, it moved from the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary to the McGiffert House, a former CTS dormitory.

In the 1980s, video stores sold eighteen inch statues with oversized heads of celebrities from music, TV and film. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Esco Products of Brooklyn fabricated hundreds of different figures, from Groucho Marx to Louis Armstrong.

The mixing of entertainment and news can be traced back to the penny press, but for the model of New Yorker style personal journalism, we might look to The Spectator column from the nineteenth century magazine The Outlook.

In 1996 a scene from the film That Old Feeling was shot in the lobby of Toronto's Royal York Hotel. The Empire Room at Chicago's Palmer House was a legendary supper club that feature vocal greats from Frank Sinatra to Peggy Lee.

The first pancake mix in a box was made by Pearl Milling Company, but soon other companies would follow such as Pillsbury and General Mills, which came out with the multipurpose Bisquick in 1931.

In 1988, Pussy Galore released a tape covering the entire Exile on Main Street. Not long after that, the Minneapolis trio Zuzu's Petals performed their own cover of a Stones song at the 400 Club.

The building for the old Minnesota Club is now occupied by a restaurant dedicated to Herb Brooks. The St. Paul Athletic Club building now hosts wedding receptions and special events, and guests can stay in its boutique hotel.

The Music Man got his start in Rock Island, Illinois. The horns he sold likely came from Elkhart Indiana, the drums from Gretsch, the pianos from Wurlitzer and the violins from a Sears catalog.

Rod McKuen was one of the best selling poets of the late twentieth century and recorded hundreds of albums both singing and reading poetry. His also introduced Belgian singer Jacques Brel to a wider audience by translating many of his lyrics into English.

Lynn Throckmorton was known for his research comparing the evolutionary speed of fruit flies, but from 1986 until his death in 2009, his academic career appears to be lost.

The word "Man", was used as a form of greeting back in the 16th century, but in the contemporary U.S. it most likely comes from African American jazz musicians. Willie Mays inspired a song by The Treniers and a generation to say "Hey" instead of "Hi".

The term Fanzine was coined in 1940 to distinguish fan created publications from professionally produced Hollywood fan mags. Later, the shortened term zine became associated with a punk rock DIY aesthetic and often featured interviews with iconoclastic musicians like Weasel Walter.

As part of an effort to integrate Milwaukee schools, in 1976 Rufus King High School became a magnet school focused on college prep and welcomed students from far away suburbs, including Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico became a UNESCO world heritage site in 2007. A lesser known attraction, also located in Mexico City's Coyoacán borough, is the home of film director El Indio Fernández.