So many great memories as a kid hanging out there and my favorite places inside(Clint's, arcade(Nickelodeon, Red Baron, etc), Smak's and Taco Via....). I moved away in 89 after graduation and lived away for 30 years. Just recently moved back and sad to see the old girl gone....
Ah, Smak's. I had plenty of their burgers up on the third floor. :) I actually worked one summer at Charlie Chan on the second floor near the main fountain. My closest friend worked at the Great Little Deli (?) on the first floor and my sister worked at the Jones Store, so it was a big part of growing up. It was sad to see the place grow increasingly vacant over the years, so the final demolition (a few years after these videos) was more of a formality.
@@podunkis Yeah...agreed. My brother and I had a regular ritual for certain summer or weekend days. We'd go to the arcade, play a few games...then check Clint's for latest issues of whatever we happened to be reading..then grab food from Smak's and then we'd sneak up on the fire escape/stair tower thingy out front and go up to the top and eat our burgers and soda and read our new comics if the weather permitted. In the dying years, when the main mall was Oak Park Mall for most of our generation, it felt like our little secret....
So many great memories as a kid hanging out there and my favorite places inside(Clint's, arcade(Nickelodeon, Red Baron, etc), Smak's and Taco Via....). I moved away in 89 after graduation and lived away for 30 years. Just recently moved back and sad to see the old girl gone....
Ah, Smak's. I had plenty of their burgers up on the third floor. :) I actually worked one summer at Charlie Chan on the second floor near the main fountain. My closest friend worked at the Great Little Deli (?) on the first floor and my sister worked at the Jones Store, so it was a big part of growing up. It was sad to see the place grow increasingly vacant over the years, so the final demolition (a few years after these videos) was more of a formality.
@@podunkis Yeah...agreed. My brother and I had a regular ritual for certain summer or weekend days. We'd go to the arcade, play a few games...then check Clint's for latest issues of whatever we happened to be reading..then grab food from Smak's and then we'd sneak up on the fire escape/stair tower thingy out front and go up to the top and eat our burgers and soda and read our new comics if the weather permitted. In the dying years, when the main mall was Oak Park Mall for most of our generation, it felt like our little secret....