Phone Messages

K's First Case, written by L.G. Alexander, is a Longman reader for students learning English as a second language. It's 1975 publication in Hong Kong helped inspire an act of self-naming.

The TV series Batman, starring Adam West, ran for three seasons, from 1966 to 1968. Each episode concluded with unanswered questions.

The first pager system was used by the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn. Although associated with drug dealers, by the 1990s beepers became popular among teenagers, who developed elaborate codes based on numerical displays.

Michael Jordan began playing for the Chicago Bulls in 1984. During the first several years of his career, one could see him play at Chicago Stadium for as little as three dollars and fifty cents.

Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story, the 1988 film directed by Todd Haynes, was prohibited from future exhibition in 1990, but bootleg copies continue to proliferate online.

Rolling Stones fans are legendary: some dedicate their lives to transcribing guitar solos from fifty year old live concerts, others to chasing down grandfatherly idols for an autograph.

When Thomas Frank moved from the University of Virginia to the University of Chicago to begin graduate school, the Baffler, which self identified as The Journal that Blunts the Cutting Edge, moved there as well.

In 1973, Robin Morgan addressed The American Home Economics Association as "the enemy." The organization changed its name to the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences in 1994.

Toys made of plastic were rare before World War II. Their late twentieth century ubiquity came to symbolize the excess of consumer society.

In the 1960s, most soda pop was sold in reusable glass bottles, but in the 1970s these were replaced by cans and plastic. The last Coca Cola plant to produce reusable bottles closed in 2012.

Back in 2006, Alison S. M. Kobayashi produced a video based on an answering machine tape she found in a thrift shop.

Moses Asch created Folkways Records in 1948 to document the beautiful and extraordinary diversity of human expression through sound.

From Chicago's Maxwell Street to Colorado's Rocky Mountains, it can be a dog eat dog world.

Harvey's Chicken Shack is one of many little restaurants in Chicago's Bronzeville that may have faded from memory. But with the help of archivists like those at the Obsidian Collection, the role these small businesses played in the community might be preserved.

In the 1980s, clothing was optional at Madison Wisconsin's Nottingham Coop.

In the late 1980s, Club Dreamerz on Milwaukee Avenue marked Wicker Park's transition from old immigrant neighborhood to trendy tech hub.

With the help of festivals like the New Orleans Jazz Fest, Cajun music saw a revival in the 1960s and 70s. Many of the voices from this revival were captured in Les Blank's poetic J'ai Été Au Bal and Alan Lomax's more historical Cajun Country.

In 1989, 1.4% of U.S. households had cell phones while 28% had an answering machine. In 2020, there are 1.29 cell phones per person in the U.S. and only 40% of households still have a landline.

Ted Williams was a hall of fame left fielder and a Sears label for certain sporting goods, including bicycles made in Austria by Steyr-Daimler-Puch.

The word "Dude" had a strange historical journey before becoming a popular sign of young male solidarity, and Dudeism is now a serious philosophy inspired by the 1998 film the Big Lebowski.

Some historians claim the mass killing of cats in medieval Europe led to the Black Death. These days, researchers have found domestic cats fail at urban rat control while harming billions of native birds.

Chinese restaurants came to the United States in the 19th century with Cantonese migrants who worked in mines and built railroads. But Chinese restaurants that were also Vegetarian did not emerge until the 1980s.

For the AACM 20th anniversary celebration, Cecil Taylor performed at Mandel Hall with Roscoe Mitchell, Douglas Ewart, Malachi Favors and Steve McCall. After the concert he recorded a station ID for WHPK.

Somewhere in the Wayne National Forest, a massive blue spruce memorializes a Florida flea market dealer from Fond Du Lac Wisconsin.

The Polk-A-Lay-Lee was a ukulele like instrument created for Polk Brothers Electronics in 1965. One could buy it for five dollars with the purchase of a tape recorder or TV.

Scholars debate the origins of the term y'all. It's usage typically but not always marks one as from the South.

In 1980s Chicago, Hyde Park's Promontory Point had a semblance of racial integration, but most of the city was marked by a history of severe segregation imposed by violence and racist institutions.

The University of Chicago's first radio station began broadcasting to Burton Judson Courts in 1945. In 1951 they extended to the entire campus as WUCB, in 1968 moved to the FM dial as WHPK and in 1985 increased their power from 10 to 100 watts.

In the late 80s, the artist Garry Hayes brought a couple of lucky kids to the happiest place on earth: a legendary Minneapolis bar called the Gay 90s.

In the Spring of 1989, a fatwa by the Iranian Leader called for the killing of Salman Rushdie. During his first few months in hiding, Rushdie moved dozens of times. Could one of these hideouts have been my studio apartment in Hyde Park?

The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the most highly rated art schools in the country. But is going to art school worth it?

Arthur Mann, whose class on American Social Movements was always packed, researched and practiced the ideals of urban order.

Les Misérables has been on London's West End continuously since 1985. Its first Chicago performance came in the Spring of 1989 at the Auditorium Theater, and at least two tickets went unused.

An old barn on the south side of Chicago's Midway Plaisance became the center of artistic creativity throughout the twentieth century.

Living above Harold's Chicken Shack can have surprising effects on a vegetarian.

When playing four square at Hyde Park's Promontory Point, be prepared to address the physical needs of toddlers.

Watching nineteen seventies television could be compared to eating cheeseburgers, but its screen angels should be taken seriously.

Can a 1980s answering machine function like a Star Trek transporter, moving me through space depending on the caller?

Walking west on Chicago's Grand Avenue provides ample time to formulate rap rhymes.

Chicago in the 1920s could be an exciting place for a young, church going woman of small town Michigan.

Lawrence Welk was born in 1903 in Strasburg North Dakota. His TV show started on a local L.A. station in 1951 and ended on PBS in 1982. After that, reruns continued to be shown on PBS hosted by Welk and after his death in 1992, by former cast members.

A parent's love can sometimes be expressed by saving old issues of the Grey City Journal.

These days it is difficult to find shops that repair vacuum cleaners, but Repair Cafés have opened around the world to rebuild a culture of conservation.

The University of Chicago's Regenstein Library was constructed on the former location of Stagg Field in 1970.

The lyrics to Pete Seeger's Turn Turn Turn come from the Book of Ecclesiastes. In 1965, the Byrd's version of the song topped the charts.

Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap opened in 1948. It was one of many Hyde Park bars at the time, and one of the few to survive urban renewal.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland Florida. He called it a Child of the Sun.

Sixteen Candles, performed by the Crests, became a doo-wop hit in 1958. The song's sentimentalism is ideal for a punk guitar to rip apart.

In the 1980s, the superb flute and saxophone player Hanah Jon Taylor performed regularly at the Cove and the Hotel Del Prado in Hyde Park. In the 1990s he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where in 2019 he opened Cafe Coda.

In the late 80s, The Grey City Journal staff also produced The Chicago Literary Review, a quarterly supplement to the Chicago Maroon.