Vintage Ad for Concerts at Riviera and Aragon, 1975

My upstair's neighbor is the coolest mom. She and her eleven-year-old son go to concerts on the weekend, hang out at jazz, rock, and reggae clubs when they allow all ages in, and peruse record stores--yes, record stores--looking for that perfect album.

I was never that lucky as a kid. I never went to concerts. In fact, it wasn't until I was 16 that I saw my first performer on stage--Corey Hart. (He had only a couple of hits that I can remember, "Sunglasses at Night" and "Never Surrender," but he sure was cute.) I had to beg and beg my parents to let me go with my friends; we were suburbanites, and I was pretty sheltered and oblivious to the "dangers" of the city. I snuck into town more often than I was allowed to go.

I wonder what my musical education would have been like if I grew up near such fabulous concert venues as the Riviera, Aragon, and Uptown. I'm sure I would have been scraping my allowance together and standing in line at the Ticketron to see shows more often.

Riviera Indoor Golf Course 4845 Broadway, Uptown, circa 1930

I'd love to find an exterior photo of the signage for this golf course, so if you have an image, please let me know!

Riviera Dance Club, 1985

When the Riv was a dance club.

Lawrence, Racine and Broadway, with Riviera Building and Theatre, Uptown Chicago

While the original painting has been sold, you can visit artist Nancie King Mertz's site for information on where to purchase Riviera Redo as a print.

The Last Northern Frontier

I stumbled across this today, an article in an online magazine called Jargon Chicago about the Uptown neighborhood:

Idiot Soldier at the Last Northern Frontier

by Andrew Reilly

When Thadeus Wong bought the Uptown Broadway Building for a cool $1.1 million in 2003, he probably wasn't thinking about the perpetual mystery he was about to foist onto a part of town that for so long has wondered when it was going to get a taste of that sweet, sweet municipal facelift going on everywhere else. He probably wasn't anticipating the legends that would eventually spring forth from the bookstore set to open across the street, nor was it likely he was licking his chops over the $4 million the city would later hand over to cover the cost of the seemingly endless renovation of that hulk at 4707 N. Broadway...

Read the rest at Jargon Chicago.