And in 5....4....3...2 all the sox fans will be here to share their commentary.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

They're never wrong. I want them to tell me what to think.

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=77792&p=1690415#p1690415





Good for the Cubs.

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I was actually wanting them to move out of Wrigley. The place is a dump and it's not that easy to get too. Save the public transportation bullshit because I don't think having to take 3 trains down to the game is easy. I would have preferred Rosemont.

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Terrible that this shit even happened.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

It's about time. That neighborhood would be nothing without the Cubs. I remember working with a guy who purchased a building in the 80's for $50k and when I told him that building was $800k in like 2005 he almost had a heart attack.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Where are you coming from that it takes three trains? and how is that worse than driving around O'Hare between 5 and 7?

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Why only 40+ night games? Demand 60+. WTF Tommy Boy?? You had some leverage and sounds like you didn't use it?? Shocking. Not.

I also preferred a new suburban park preferably without planes overhead every two minutes.

If they didn't get 80%+ of what they wanted, they are idiots.

I just hope the rooftop owners don't get screwed. That's what really matters. Can't wait to go through this whole circus again someday when the Cubs want to do something.

Very disappointing. The Cubs could fill a 50,000 seat stadium in the suburbs, & it would be a hell of a lot easier to get to it. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to an improved Wrigley Field for those who attend games.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

How is your Dunn-O-Meter going?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

There are a lot of places in the suburbs that require 3 trains to get to Wrigley.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Not to be all "Occupy Wrigleyville! Corporations are so bad!" but it's pretty interesting that we live in a climate now where it's actually considered relevant to a negotiation that a private company will pay for it's private enterprise with it's own money.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I'm just curious as to what makes you believe that. What exactly is the basis for such thought? They can't sell 50,000 seats now when they play in a ballpark that is renowned the world over and widely considered the gem of baseball, the green cathedral, The Friendly Confines, Beautiful Wrigley Field, the best park in baseball, The Shrine, the greatest place on earth. Why are they going to sell an extra 20,000 seats in a Schaumburg replica?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I can't think of one. Metra into the city, walk to Jackson/State, Red Line up to Addison. Where's the third train? I mean, I suppose you could take the Blue Line from Clinton to Jackson, but if you're going to a ballgame, the weather is probably nice enough that you can muster a half-mile walk over a quarter-mile walk.

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Kinda wrong here Nas!

Guys like Jim Murphy and George Loukas helped that area boom as well.

George Loukas and his brother bought opened sluggers in the early 70's for $175K. He and his brother graduated from SIU and his family thought he was crazy getting into the bar business for $175K back then. Jim Murphy, former cop, was the one who pushed them to do it and he would help clean up the area, but they needed the commerce!

Then came Cubby Bear, Sports Corner, Hi Tops all before or in unison of 84 cubs, which was the first year of real national buzz. Others saw how packed these places are and then came Yakzees (From diversey Ave basement!), Bernies expanded and remodeled and Kevin kellerman started buying land and shit little bars in the area (Now Casey Morans and The Douchebag).

People already lived in adjacent neighborhoods (Lincoln Park) and as any progession of development happens, people overflow into the lesser expensive neighboring areas and those areas become popular.

Lincoln Ave had nothing to do with Wrigley and is one block of pure bars, clark street could have easily become the same thing without the cubs, but the cubs made it an area of Mega bars (Moes, Barleycorn,Ivy,Vines, Cubby,The Douche, Morans) these are places that are so big, they are usually closed 2-3 days a week if the Cubs are not playing because the Overhead is too much to open for a smaller crowd.

The combination of the park and the bars is what made the area.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Exactly. It all just kind of coalesced naturally. You could put a room full of the smartest businessmen, designers, bar operators, and entertainment mavens in a room for six months and they couldn't come up with a plan to recreate that in a suburb. It's just not that easy.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I assume he was talking about the UP-W line. From Elmhurst, UP-W, to Green Line, to Brown Line. Now, there are probably ways in which you can take a bus or make a walk to the red line just like you can on the BNSF line but it still can happen.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Is there an answer I can provide that doesn't initiate an argument?

No.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Follow the red line and brown line of the el and lincoln avenue and you will see uninterrupted corridors of land speculation, development and increased property values for about 5 miles from the city to the northside. Wrigley happens to be in the middle of all three of those.

I bet you could make an argument that the centralization of the gay community along Halsted had as much to do with increased property values in Lakeview as the Cubs.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Of course. All that double-income-no-kids investment in the neighborhood was huge for the north side of Chicago, as it's been for any number of major American cities. And thanks to that, you can now move in from Batavia with your husband from Michigan and raise your obnoxious Starbucks-addled brats in Lake View!

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This would be a pretty silly way to work the trip to Wrigley from the Suburbs, but I guess it works.

The walk from Ogilve or Union Station to the Red Line is like 5 blocks. Most people can handle that. You can even get on the brown line in the loop if you're a lazy bastard.

The 3 train thing doesn't make much sense to me.

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Joliet is not one of them though

Rock Island downtown, Redline to Wrigley

I dont hate Scorehead. But look at ALL his thoughts.

Why would you expect sound reasoning? That's not how he rolls.

In looking at it, there aren't a ton of ways to go that take 3 trains that make sense to take. There are a lot that are two long train rides and a relatively long walk given the "ease" of public transportation.

The bigger issue is how poor off peak service is from the suburbs to union station and back. It's a legitimate fear that you'll miss the last train out of union station until 5am if you stay for a night game at either Wrigley or US Cellular. That's why we always drove.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

George was a badass football player. Loukas bought the Sports Corner from my dad's very close friend, the guy who invented gyros. I think I've mentioned it before, gyros as we know them were invented at the Sports Corner. There should be a plaque or something on the side of that building. Now there's something for Tunney to work on.

Also, I've got one Jimmy Murphy story. In the mid-70s after my parents divorced my mom would drop my sister and I off at the bank where my dad worked at Belmont & Clark right before he got off on Saturday. My dad never drove in his life. We would take the bus home or sometimes he would call a cab. There would almost always be a stop at the Sports Corner involved.

One day we were in there and my old man was getting his drink on. He was a little guy and he got lit up pretty quick. I'm having a good time drinking as much pop as I want and eating Slim Jims and playing shuffleboard bowling. Jimmy Murphy and his partner were on duty and they parked their unmarked car outside and came in and started drinking with my dad.

This was before Murphy owned the bar. It was still Ray's and I think Ray the father was still alive. I think Ray Jr., the postman sold the bar to Murphy because postal workers are too dumb to run bars but cops aren't.

So my dad and these two plainclothes cops are getting loaded. Jimmy tells my dad they'll give us a ride home to Sauganash. They take beers to go and we get in the unmarked car. These guys are all fucked up and the cops are still on duty. Murphy is driving down Clark Street like a fucking lunatic. My dad is smashed and he's oblivious but I'm afraid for my life. Every time we run into traffic the partner turns on the siren and puts out one of those portable Mars lights. I still remember Murphy blasting up Elston like a maniac with the partner working the siren and cackling like a madman. Those were different times.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

I believe that the demographics are such that there are more Cubs fans in the Suburbs than the City, & the upside of a move to the suburbs would far outweigh the losses.
I'm not the only one that believes this.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

I have no idea how many Cub fans are in the city or the suburbs and I doubt you do either. Regardless, those numbers don't necessarily coincide with attendance. The rotating cast of twenty-somethings within a short walk of Wrigley that have few responsibilities and plenty of disposable cash aren't represented in Rosemont. Out there you'll find guys who would love to go to the game tonight, but little Tommy has his own game or little Susie needs to be driven to dance class.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Matthew, Tulsi, and Don

And now...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/clout/chi-night-games-reemerges-as-wrigley-renovation-sticking-point-alderman-says-20130410,0,1820894.story

Night games re-emerge as Wrigley sticking point, alderman says

By Ameet Sachdev and John ByrneClout Street
3:34 p.m. CDT, April 10, 2013


Wrigleyville’s alderman said Wednesday that the number of night games has re-emerged as a sticking point to getting a deal done on the Chicago Cubs’ proposal to spend $300 million to upgrade their historic stadium.

Ald. Thomas Tunney, 44th, said the Cubs and the city had come to an agreement last week for additional night games but the team changed its request Tuesday night at a community meeting that was closed the media. Tunney declined to offer specifics other than to say “there was a tweak of what the definition of ‘night games’ would be” and therefore there is no agreement on night games.

But sources familiar with the negotiations explained the change. The city had agreed to increase the number of night games from 30 to 40, plus allow the team to host up to 4 concerts, for a total of 44 “night events.” But at Tuesday night’s meeting, according to two sources, the Cubs officials asked for flexibility in the cap of 44 night events to accommodate changes to the schedule requested by Major League Baseball and its television broadcast partners. During the season, MLB asks teams to change a day game to a night game to feature a matchup that might attract higher ratings.

Cubs officials told residents that MLB could switch as many as six games and they don’t want those games to count against the cap.

“So here we have an agreement for additional games, but then it’s going to be watered down,” Tunney said. “So we’ve got to pin them down as to what they really want.”
Late last week, Tunney told the Tribune that he was optimistic a framework of a deal could be announced by Monday, the day of the Cubs’ home opener. But the day came and went with no announcement, casting some doubt over negotiations. Even without an agreement, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts on Monday put to rest any talk of the team leaving Chicago for the suburbs and said discussions were “going in the right direction.”

Ricketts has said the family would be willing to pay for the entire project ­­– dropping his request for taxpayer dollars -- if the city would agree to additional night games and signs. Night games and advertising in the ballpark are currently limited by city regulations that help protect historic features of the 99-year-old ballpark and address residents’ concerns about traffic, congestion and security around the stadium. The team says it needs the additional revenues more night games and signage would generate to help pay for the renovations.

In exchange for more night games, Tunney would like the Cubs to add more parking and security in the neighborhood. But some residents Tuesday night voiced their opposition to a plan floated last week that would call for the Cubs to build a parking garage at a gravel parking lot it owns near Clark and Grace streets.

“We have to figure out a combination of parking in the neighborhood or on the perimeter of it, or a remote parking strategy,” Tunney said. “I’m good with either way. That’s why it’s important to listen to the community.”

Regarding signage, the alderman and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration have conceptually agreed to the team’s request to erect a large video scoreboard in left field and a second sign in right field. Tunney’s agreed to the signs despite objections from rooftop club owners surrounding Wrigley who worry that the signs would block their views and force them out of business.

But there is still disagreement over placement of the signs so they block as little of the rooftop views as possible, sources said.

“The devil’s in the details,” Tunney said. “We’re going to continue to work around the clock. We’ve got to make sure we know what each side is agreeing to before we move forward.”

This is getting to be dumber and dumber by the day.

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