Old Salty's Potato Chips

Don't remember Old Salty's (although I have seen potato chips in a plastic bucket before around the area), but I do remember Yankee Doodle Dandy. In fact the one on La Grange Rd. near 31st was open for a few years after I graduated H.S.; if not mistaken. This was long after the 22nd and Harlem location turned into the radical McDonald's. I say "radical" in the sense that the original building was done in a motif idea similar to the Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's downtown (near Hard Rock Café) or the Future McDonald's that they had at Navy Pier.

The McDonald's on 22nd initially was designed to appear as if it'd gone through a sort of natural disaster with certain elements of it being shifted from the normal McDonald's franchise look, with a more expansive amount of glass used to fill in the designed-in "shifting" gaps. It also had a raised seating section inside with a domed canopy over your head with depictions of a storm on it with backlighting. All of this has since been removed (last time I was in there) and it brought more into line with the rest of the McDonald's franchises out there. It was a rather odd design but since it existed in Cermak Plaza, itself a mecca of abstract art pieces (including the now removed Pork Chop-shaped piece made of trash & cement, and the infamous spike w/ cars featured in a cameo in the movie Wayne's World; which is nowhere near Aurora for those curious), it pretty much fit in. It at least had more liveliness to the aesthetic than the update it received. Assimilate or die...

I don't remember much about the 22nd St. location of YDD other than that I went there when I was younger (30 now) and lived in Berwyn. I do believe their burgers used a special sauce but whether it was mayo + ketchup or Thousand Island, I can't entirely recall. I do believe I got sick off of them once... but then again, I've gone through that with Wendy's and Wag's (now long gone family restaurance chain) too.

Another hallmark of the area and at one time was a large franchise was Cock Robin (ice cream and food, similar to a DQ or Tastee Freez) which existed where the Popeye's Chicken is on 22nd, just a bit East of Home Ave. The only Cock Robin I've seen of late is the one just South of the tracks on Prairie Ave. in Brookfield right near Irish Times not very far from my house. Between it, the Tastee Freez on 26th in Berwyn, or the Polar Bear on 22nd near Des Plaines Ave., that's some of the best Ice Cream places I've been to in the area.

I still mourn the loss of King's and Queen's & Parky's on 12th, the loss of Winchell's Doughnuts to the area (beyond Dunkin Donuts, it's between those 2, Krispy Kreme be damned! LoL), the recent passing of Bambino's on Ogden Ave (now a Los Asadas Mexican fast food place). and Prairie Ave., the loss of Stein's Corned Beef on Ogden just West of First Ave. (now an AutoZone), and the Carm's Beef location on 12th St. Luckily we still have the Carm's on Wolf Rd. They still have some of the best Italian Beef in the Chicagoland area.