Only a Few More Days Left to Enter to Win a Beautiful Bucktown Poster

Answer questions on what kinds of businesses you'd like to see in Wicker Park Bucktown and where you'd like to spend your dollars and you're entered to win this beautiful screen-printed Bucktown poster by StudioChris. Make sure to include your email address for a chance to win! Take our survey now. 

May Chamber Mixer at The Anthem

When: Wed, May 16th, 6-8pm
Where: The Anthem, 1725 W. Division
Cost: Free for Chamber Members, $5 for Non-Members
Grow your network or just casually meet your neighbors at the Chamber's May Networking Event at The Anthem! Click here for more information and to RSVP. 

Summer Sidewalk Sales

Wicker Park Fest 2012

Every Day is Earth Day

Keep up your efforts to go green and save money with some earth-friendly ideas that you can act on any day of the year: 

Small Business Energy Savings Program 

Small businesses receive expert advice on energy-saving improvements for their business, and assistance with the application for rebates on energy improvement investment. There are program freebies too, such as compact fluorescent lamps, faucet aerators, and pre-rinse sprayers! For more information, please click here. 

10 Simple Things: WPB Green Designation 

The Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber's Green Committee has assembled a list of actions, ranging from simple, low-cost tasks to big ticket investments with long term pay-offs for member businesses that wish to go green and save money. Review the list, complete ten action items, and earn "WPB Green" designation. For more information, please click here. 

Featured Green & Eco-Friendly Chamber Members:

Greenheart Shop, 1911 W. Division, is Chicago's premier eco-fair trade non-profit shop, carrying eco fair trade products made by artisans from around the world.

The ReBuilding Exchange, 2160 N. Ashland, a project of the Delta Institute, offers reclaimed building materials at a fraction of the cost, keeping them out of our landfills, and available to residents at all income levels, particularly those who can't afford the rising costs of such materials. Classes and volunteer opportunities also available!

Reynolds Power/Zap My Bill, 1286 N. Milwaukee, is a commercial, medical, municipal and industrial full-service energy solutions company that offers a fresh and innovative process for helping you save money on electricity and natural gas. 

For a complete list of Green & Eco-Friendly Chamber Member Businesses, please click here.

Win a Bucktown Poster! 

Take our survey, do something great for our neighborhood and get a chance to win a beautiful screen printed poster by StudioChris! In this 10-minute survey, you can tell us what kind of businesses you want (or don't want) to see in Wicker Park Bucktown. Include your email address and you've got a chance to win. Fast & Easy! Take the survey now. Good Luck! 

Summer Event Vendor Applications

We are NOW accepting vendor applications for the following exciting upcoming Chamber events and festivals. 

For artists, retail, restaurants and non-profits:
Wicker Park Fest 
July 28-29

Polish Triangle Marketplace
June 7-Sept. 27 

For Wicker Park Bucktown Businesses:
Summer Sidewalk Sales
July 21-22 and/or Aug. 25-26 

Space is limited, so please send in your application today!

Your Input Needed!

The Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce and WPB SSA #33, 1414 N. Ashland, need your input! We have hired Business Districts, Inc, to conduct a market study to identify our neighborhood's unique strengths and opportunities. Please take the survey now and pass it on to your customers, partners, neighbors, and fellow business owners. Your help completing and circulating the survey will be invaluable to the market study results and help our local economy thrive. Thank you!

Read more...

Last we met on this here local blog, I mentioned a bit about The 3/50 Project. It's a simple concept based on the idea of "saving the brick and mortars our nation is built on" one local store at a time.

Easy, right?

If you take a moment to check out The 3/50 Project's website, you'll find the following local businesses:

Shop small, shop ethically and save the community in which you live. Your neighbors will love you for it!

This blog was contributed by: Stephanie Sack, not your typical, well, anything. She is a Chicago native, your friendly neighborhood Wicker Park and Bucktown Chamber Vice-President, small business owner, plus-size fashion expert, Bikram Yoga addict, and rabid Kraftwerk fan.  She rarely reads fiction, because she far prefers the unbelievability of reality. You can come see her or her awesome staff at her two shops: vive la femme, which is Chicago's only independent boutique for curvaceous cutie pies between sizes 12-24; or violette, Bucktown's only cheap-n-cheerful shoe store that features street chic footwear up to a size 11.

Clinking cocktail glasses. Suburban homes. A bowl of gin for dinner.

The American lifestyle from the fifties and sixties has been brought back from the sidelines to the limelight thanks to the glamorous gals in television programs such as Mad Men and Pan Am, as well as other cultural touchstones in independent film and high fashion.  Happily for the broads who like to show off their gams, Wicker Park boasts an welcoming oasis of ladylike vintage style, Store B.

Open now for nine years, Store B is packed with carefully curated fashion treasures thanks to the studied eye of its owner, David James Ginople.  A student of costume design with a degree in textiles and clothing, Mr. Ginople has been a resident of Wicker Park for seventeen years and came into the concept basically by accident when the previous shop in the space began consigning a handful of his vintage pieces and suddenly asked if he wanted to take over the business.  Having sold labels in the past such as Pucci, Leonard of Paris, and Zandra Rhoodes, Mr. Ginople knew he had a practiced eye for retro clothing and, luckily for Wicker Park, Store B was born.

This blog entry was contributed by: Julie Horowitz Jackson, happily calling Bucktown her home now for fifteen years. Her store, Virtu, celebrated 11 years in business last month. Her husband owns Color Wheel Studio, another Bucktown business, and their son attends Pulaski International Academy, one of Bucktown’s four neighborhood CPS schools. Go goat or go home!

Bucktown & Wicker Park have long been communities of social responsibility.

From local garden clubs to farmer’s markets, green shops and school programs, you don’t have to look very far to see sustainable practices in place in your own neighborhood.

Three local boutiques embrace this concept to the core.

Most recently on the street, children’s boutique The Red Balloon Co. has moved their Bucktown location to bigger digs just down the block to 1940 N Damen Avenue.  When conceptualizing the store, owner Jennifer Pope devised a series of displays using upcycled items. Take, for example, the walls themselves. Rather than go with a traditional material like slatwall construction, Ms. Pope sourced reclaimed flooring to build her wall displays racks.

The tiny dressing room features vignettes of pages collected from vintage children’s books. Books for sale are housed in the library built from found crates. Simple statements are made with resources found locally and put to new and inventive uses.

Just up the street at 2064 N Damen sits Virtu, my own store, featuring the work of some of the nation’s finest craft artists. September 11th happened the year that we opened our doors and it became very important to me to support handmade in America. Of utmost importance to so many of our artists is where their raw materials come from.

Consider local stationers, Snow & Graham, who print on FSC certified paper that has been manufactured, in many cases, through natural wind power.

Jennifer Dawes, one of our fine jewelers, launched Sustainably Beautiful, her initiative in creating jewelry in a socially and environmentally responsible way. She only uses recycled gold, conflict free diamonds and responsibly mined stones. "I try to leave as small a footprint on this planet as possible."

Heather Hambrecht of h(om)e, our neighbor to the North, provides us with one of a kind handbags stitched together by hand from entirely reclaimed leathers. As a vegan, she doesn’t want to see the leather “dying in a landfill” so she sources hides
 from upholsterers, car manufacturers, boot makers and more. 

Further down the block, you will find Stitch at 1723 N Damen. This longtime local lifestyle boutique features a well-edited selection of signature home accessory lines, including furnishing from Gus*. The Gus* philosophy centers around the inspiration of simple forms and honest materials. Each eco-friendly couch, chair, and side table is made from FSC certified woods, kiln fired in their Canadian headquarters.

For all of the residences on our blocks that painted with low or no VOC paints, installed bamboo flooring and sleek stainless steel appliances, I can think of no greater place to sit my tired tush than Stitch’s Richmond Loft bi-sectional couch from Gus*. 

The next time that you are making a purchase, consider the socially responsible options you have in your own neighborhood. 

Remember that by shopping locally, you have a direct impact on the community in which you live. For every $100 spent in independently local stores, $68 of it returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. In a national chain, only $43 stays here. Spend it online and nothing comes home (as stated by the 3/50 Project website).

Shop small, shop ethically and save the community in which you live. Your neighbors will love you for it!

 

Hot Drinks

For the Do-It-Yourselfer, how about taking a stroll over to Olivia’s Market, 2014 W. Wabansia Ave., and getting some fixin’s together for some hot spiced wine punch (known as Glühwein or Gløgg)?  It’s one of the most popular ways to stay warm in Nordic lands.  

Olivia’s has a great selection of inexpensive wines from independent producers and a very well-thought-out liquor selection to go along with all your grocery needs.

Here are links to some recipes:

1. For the beginner, check out this one.

2. A good recipe that’s more involved, and stronger.

Comfort Food

Dessert

This blog entry was contributed by: Malcolm Logan, a freelance writer and Wicker Park Bucktown resident. Visit his website at www.fillmyemptyblogspace.com. He can be reached at malcolm.logan@rcn.com.

Gourmet dining and low prices seem like a contradiction in terms. But not at Bangers & Lace where a simple beer and a hot dog are elevated to a whole new level, and the experience of noshing down on them are brought in from the backyard BBQ to the urban dining room.

That’s because Bangers & Lace approaches sausage like fine wine, offering variations like rabbit sausage, veal brats, venison and duck sausage, as well as andouille and Italian style vegetarian sausage. More than ten in all. 

What’s more, the sausages are dressed up in interesting and delectable ways. Take the Slaw Dog. It combines a Vienna beef hotdog with pepper jack cheese, roasted garlic aioli, and winter slaw. Or the Kielbasa Skewers which combine smoked Cleveland kielbasa with Benton’s country bacon and malt vinegar dip. Your taste buds are in for a treat.

Groundbreaking Gastronomy

Even the sides and non-sausage alternatives have a unique and creative flare. If French fries and aioli strike you as edgy, how about fries accompanied with a mild and fruity taleggio cheese dip, or a Bavarian pretzel with a house-made chocolate stout mustard. 

As of this writing everything on the menu is under $10 except for one item that stands out as the house’s signature dish, the quixotic Foie Gras Corn Dog, a Ritz Carlton meets trailer park formulation comprised of French garlic sausage, brioche cornbread, orange marmalade, foie gras mousse and maple butter. 

This kind of gastronomic audacity won’t play in Romeoville, but is perfectly at home in Wicker Park, and one of the many reasons to visit this exciting and vibrant neighborhood.
   

A Beer Connoisseur’s Delight

The name Bangers & Lace refers to the British term for sausage (bangers), and the delicate meshwork of foam left on the inside of a glass after a beer has been drank away (lace). Indeed, sausages are only half the story here. 

B&L offers a beer connoisseur’s selection of 32 rotating drafts that changes every other day – a few added in, a few taken out – with such eclectic choices as Ska Modus Hoperandi, Avery the Beast, and Founder’s Backwoods Bastard. And that’s just the start. In addition, there are 75 beers in bottles, making for more than 100 beers in all. Spirits, cocktails and wine round out the list of libations.

A Fun and Unique Ambiance

The ambiance is backwoods lodge meets swank urban enclave. Plank walls and taxidermy mingle with exposed brick, lace curtains and pressed tin ceilings. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out on 19th century graystones. In the summer, outdoor tables crop up along Division Street.

The clientele is young urban professionals and post-collegiate hipsters, although tucked button downs seem to trump knit-caps with some regularity. The concept is nevertheless intriguing for anyone with a fun and adventurous spirit for dining.

Bangers & Lace elevates a beer and a hot dog to a whole new level. If you are up for something unique and creative at a reasonable price, give them a try. You’ll be glad you did.

Bangers & Lace

1670 W Division St.
(between Paulina & Marshfield)
Chicago, IL 60622
(773) 252-6499
www.bangersandlacechicago.com

If you are going to do it, then YOU are going to have to do it. Social Media is not easy. It is very demanding. You have to be a very regimented person to maintain it and make it work. This almost always has to actually be done by the small business owner. It can be monitored and managed by others, but the content and decision making has to come from the one who knows. 

This does not mean that you have to sit at your desk every moment of the day pumping information. What it means is that you have to set aside time every day to interact online with your customers. You have to create a timeline/schedule of promotions and events. The more organized you are the less time it will take. A great deal of this communication can be automated. Then all that is left on a daily basis is the occasional meme (check it out - a cool new internet word) and your direct customer responses.

Have an outsource company do all of your heavy lifting. Have them design and set up your complete social network – blog, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Have them install the right tools so that you can input all of your promotional information in one weekly sitting.  

This way the marketing engine keeps running. It is key that you do not over-market and it is key that you do not burn yourself out. If you are able to develop a balance and then time your communications properly your prospect base (facebook friends/likes) will both grow as well as become aware. 

And for a small business, the key to marketing is developing (brand) awareness.