Milwaukee Avenue is magically nutritious

A plethora of Herbalife nutrition clubs have popped up on Milwaukee Avenue.

I saw the first one some time over the summer in the building at the southeast corner of Diversey and Milwaukee Avenues with a Diversey Avenue entrance.  Fair enough.

But in the past month, another has popped up at 2641 N. Milwaukee Avenue.


And another right next door at 2643 N. Milwaukee Avenue.

A store with a view

Susan Braun writes “Get rid of the fake windows” in Minneapolis’ Downtown Journal (via Planetizen).  Her particular gripe is with chain stores that try to replicate their auto-oriented suburban models in the city.  She calls out CVS Pharmacy in particular for its fake windows, which she deems worse than blank walls because they pretend to be something they’re not.  I wrote about windows as walls in When does a window become a wall?, and Braun has an elegant way of articulating the urban preference for real windows.

CVS…is taking the anti-pedestrian environment to an extreme.  A review of three of their urban locations…yields at least 10 different ways to block windows or in other ways destroy an interior-exterior connection and a sense of street vitality and safety.  As you walk by these stores, here’s the view:  The backside of display shelves, blank walls built into the windows, blinds pulled all the way down, film over the windows, walls built into the windows with generic advertising on them, a view into a poorly organized storeroom, a view into the chaos of the backside of sinks and counters in the photo area, a wall with a shelf of gift bags stuffed with tissue paper (how symbolic — empty gift bags), a wall with a shelf of teddy bears with their backs to the street, and the crowning jewel is a display of once lovely prints, now an eerie green as the red ink fades, of the lost

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Blocking out the scenery*

…and the merchandise, and the other shoppers, and the ambiance of the store, etc., etc.

Window Signs Become Walls – Milwaukee Ave.

Take the Cheetah challenge!

Grace’s Furniture/Cheetah Gym building

The first building of prominence as you travel north on Milwaukee Avenue from Logan Square’s square (BTW, it’s not at all square, but oval in shape–and may be a topic for a future post!) is the former Grace’s Furniture building.

Some may know this as the location of the once future Cheetah Gym Logan Square location. The hope of what was once heralded by many as a welcome addition to the Milwaukee Avenue corridor seems to have all but vanished from the landscape. A recent check with the manager confirms that there are no current plans to open a Logan Square location of Cheetah Gym. [Update: Cheetah Gym is on again! (See One step backwards, two steps forward on Milwaukee Avenue.)]

The loyal opposition, on the other hand, who feared the impact of the Cheetah Gym (you know, more people on–and the revitalization of– the street) and loathed the introduction of a non-(hyper)local business