Category: Blithe Spirit

Lake Theater at risk

If a “living wage” ordinance becomes the law in Oak Park, mandating $11.50 an hour for all employees, the Lake Theater on Lake Street will close, owner Willis Johnson told the Oak Park Community Relations Commission Wednesday night at a hearing in Village Hall.

Johnson pays many employees $8 an hour, and to raise it to the prescribed level would put the Lake out of competition with theaters in four neighboring communities, he said, delivering the night’s heaviest blow against the proposed ordinance after a series of employers had similarly spoken against it and others for it.

The commission has a document ready for delivering to the village board in which it recommends the $11.50 minimum.  It had been charged by the board with offering its recommendation in the wake of a November 2008 advisory referendum in which a “living wage” was supported by 60% of voters.

The Lake is an anchor of after-hours life in Downtown Oak Park and draws customers from Oak Park and other suburbs and the West Side of Chicago.  Classic Cinemas has had it since 1981.

Lake Theatre ..

Lake Theatre Exterior Old
On April 11, 1936, the Lake Theatre opened with a single screen, and a seating capacity of 1,420. Designed by world-renowned architect Thomas Lamb, the Lake is a prime example of art deco style.

When Classic Cinemas took over the Lake in 1981, its distinctive decorative elements had long been painted over, and water damage from a leaky roof had destroyed much of its plasterwork. Classic Cinemas was finally able to purchase the theatre in December of 1984 and immediately embarked on an ambitious renovation project.
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The guy just can’t bring us around

I know Tingling Chris Matthews dismissed Rasmussen as Republican, but still . . .

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 75% of likely voters now say they are at least somewhat angry at the government’s current policies, up four points from late November and up nine points since September. The overall figures include 45% who are Very Angry, also a nine-point increase since September.

Obama should read Dale Carnegie.

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A store grows in Oak Park

Some nice creative financing is going on at The Villager, family-owned and closing but meaning to stay in business.  Investor meetings are planned, under a community-input aegis, which is Oak Park is how everyone does it — except a grocery store, so far.  The 24-year-old son of owner Butch Novak comments:

“This is the path we have to go down right now,” Joe Novak said. “I don’t think there should be anything to hide. This is for the community, and ultimately it’s for us and our employees to make a living. That’s what this store has always been about.”

Nothing wrong with that.  Building better mousetraps is the American way, but with all respect I’d put it this way: “This is for the community, but ultimately it’s for us and our employees to make a living by serving our customers.”

Lest we go overboard on the community-venture notion.

Judy Baar-none for doggy issues

Tom Roeser on his game with dissection of Sneed-Topinka axis.  Sneed delivers:

another Judy Baar Topinka exclusive! Topinka’s dog, coyly named “Bella Beagle”…the same one who went wee-wee in 10 countries…has just had cancer surgery!  So the woman Sneed calls “irrepressible” (barf) spent election night eating a can of tuna fish caring for the perp—so she phoned in to Sneed.

. . . who ran with it.

As for Madame T.:

Because she isn’t very good at issues (although she served as state Rep, state Senator and state Treasurer)…so bad in fact she faced Rod Blagojevich with zilch ideas (her idea to cut the budget was to eliminate the warming rods under the sidewalks to Blago’s mansion)…she’s cutesy pie-like turned herself into a (supposedly) lovable human brand: Penny-pinching Bohemian lady who pinches pennies (ergo the Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s touch) to convince you she’ll do the same as state comptroller, the post she’s been nominated by a mindless GOP electorate for.

She keeps Republicans in the running for most mindless candidates.

O’Brien’s a tax-cutter, but Preckwinkle is Trib’s gal

Tell me, please, why did Chi Trib, which ran the ed-page graphic counting the days since the Stroger penny tax increase and until the Feb. 2 primary, endorse Preckwinkle the uncertain tax-cutter over the certain, enthusiastic, top-agenda tax-cutter O’Brien?

Has Trib been fooling us all this time?

O’Brien, polling behind Madame P. the alderwoman, who has run nothing bigger than a ward office in her whole life, has run an ad exposing her tax-raising history.  In her book it’s a “desperate attack” of the sort “some candidates make when they’re behind a lot.”

Not that O’B has it wrong.  She denies it not, namely her votes “to raise her salary in 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2006 (from $55,000 to $98,000, cumulatively) . . . to create a real estate transfer tax (1992), boost the sales tax on beer and wine (1993), raise the overall sales tax (2004) and raise the real-estate transfer tax (2008).”

Unable to deny it, she mounts a desperate counter-attack of the sort some candidates make when they are caught doing what voters most resent in the record of the despised and last-in-the-polls incumbent (Stroger).

Why wouldn’t Chi Trib have endorsed O’Brien, who has said from the start of his campaign that he would get rid of the penny increase right away, while Preckwinkle said not right away, she would have to think about it.

And oh, by the way, O’B for 18 years presided over a regional clean-water-supply operation budgeted tentatively for 2010 at nearly $1.7 billion, which I think — correct me if I’m wrong — is more than it takes to keep a ward office going, even in Chi.

Later: A new poll says this race is statistically in a four-way tie.  Huh?