🚀 go-pugleaf

I'd like to suggest, ... hey, SERIOUSLY!, really ... suggest that
whatever goes into that Agora ==> Prairie Whosis ==> Ann Sather ==>
Bob's Big Boy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Eddie's Collage site at 57th and
Kenwood should be asked to take on the name "Closed For Remodeling".

Some of the appropriate signage is already in place, and it's really
quite tasteful -- straightforward and legible, yet not altogether
eschewing ornament.

The name also provides a fertile theme for the decor.  Bare brick
walls, while not as "in" as they were some 10 years ago, are not
entirely "out".  And disclosure of structural elements that once would
have been carefully hidden is part of a great Chicago tradition,
embodied in the genius of the Hancock building and McCormick Place.
So let's see some exposed carpentry (with the nails pounded down
enough to avoid liability, of course), some practice paint swatches,
some drying plaster!

       No?  You don't like?

Well, as long as I've got you here, let me repeat that list of
previous occupants:

 Agora ==> Prairie Whatsis ==> Ann Sather ==> Eddie's Collage

and ask you to remember, and reconstruct with me, how long each one
flourished.  I'm pretty sure the Agora must be the champ, at over a
dozen years.  Ann S probably comes second, but nowhere up there.

So I will count the Agora as the most successful.  True, something
happened and it had to close, but the same is true of all the others.

Now, what factors distinguish it from its succesors?  I suggest that
it wasn't "Greek Food" that had much of the credit, though perhaps it
was something of a plus that they had this specialty amidst their
general diner cuisine.  Rather, the winning factors seem to me:

	-- cheap
	-- simple
	-- quick without being fast-food
	-- had a counter as well as tables and booths
	-- unpretentious
	-- untrendy
	-- majored in general diner cuisine
	      (with an ethnic/national specialty as their minor)
	-- easy to ask for bread not made with flax or other
           surprising ingredients
	-- not expensive
	-- not fancy
	-- didn't take a long time (without being fast-food)

Supposing that similar causes can have similar effects, if the
University as landlord is looking to rent that location to a
successful enterprise, I think we now have a checklist to measure the
proposals against.


Please, Mr. Kleinbard, do not become hypnotised with the notion of
bringing Fine Dining to Hyde Park.

It won't work.

At least, not on 57th Street.  And not in that nook of the Hyde Park
Shopping Center that has served as Santa's Workshop and an adjunct of
the mall office ever since the last overblown culinary delight
installed there fell flat on its souffl�.

So for 57th street, let's have Agora Redux, Agora II, Back to the
Agora, Agora Fights Back! ... But call it "Closed for Remodeling".

-- Mitchell Marks
   S.M. 198x?
   Computer Science Department
   Technical Staff

P.S. If this doesn't work, we're going to get all the Hyde Park old
timers to start reminiscing about The Dove!


-- 
Mitch Marks          Technical Support Staff        mitchell@cs.uchicago.edu
INFJ     Sun: Sag.   Computer Science Dept.         m-marks@uchicago.edu
Ennea 4/5            Univ. of Chicago         (312) 702-9864 (ofc)
DSM-III-R: 300.40    1100 East 58th Street          702-7108 (fax)
241-7166 (home)      Chicago IL 60637 USA           490-0121 (pager)
::: When the excessively shy force themselves to be forward, they are
frequently surprisingly unsubtle and overdirect and even rude: they
have entered an extreme region beyond their normal personality, an
area of social crime where gradations don't count; unavailable to them
are the instincts and taboos that booming extroverts, who know the
territory of self-advancement far better, can rely on. --Nicholson Baker