West Loop morphed from Skid Row to O

November 22, 2009|By Mary Schmich


That line from an old Michelle Shocked song was humming in my head Friday as I drove to Harpo Studios in Chicago's West Loop. Oprah Winfrey had just shared the news that she's going.

"This show has been my life," she'd tearfully told a live TV audience Friday morning. "And I love it enough to know when it's time to say goodbye. Twenty-five years feels right in my bones, and it feels right in my spirit. It's the perfect number, the exact right time."

Timing is the secret to almost everything. Cooks, comedians and drummers know it. It helps in parking, too, and it wasn't helping me Friday.

I circled and circled, east on Washington toward the skyline, west on Randolph, past old brick warehouses turned to condos, lofts and restaurants, past middle-aged Oprah girlfriends snapping photos, past TV trucks lined up to report Oprah's news.

If you never saw this neighborhood back when it was Chicago's Skid Row, even after Oprah arrived, you'd have trouble believing it once had plenty of parking and not much else.

Joel Nickson remembers, though, and once I found a spot, I found him inside the Wishbone Restaurant, where since 1991 he and his brother Guy have served "Southern Reconstruction cooking."

"This neighborhood was rough," Nickson said, sitting at the counter. "The cops and people in the area told us, 'What, are you guys crazy? There's no yuppies around here.'"

In those days, this urban island occupied by Oprah and the Wishbone was a destination for Chicagoans who wanted to feel cutting edge while eating well and cheaply.

When the Nicksons applied for a liquor license, they were told they'd have to notify the neighbors. They said: What neighbors?

If you didn't count Oprah's staff and a graphic arts company, the neighbors were mostly men who slept at the homeless shelter or in the flophouses.

But where Oprah goes, money follows. And from inside the big open dining room, the brothers watched the neighborhood change. It would have changed eventually anyway, but Oprah accelerated the metamorphosis, made it more exciting.

"She's electricity on the street," said Guy Nickson, who had ambled over. He pointed out the window. "You see women clutching their bags of books and having that glow about them, photographing a street sign just because she walked past."

Oprah came to the restaurant, filmed there, talked about it on air. The news of her leaving makes Joel Nickson think.

In the early days, his rent was $8 a square foot. Now it's $28. Parking, if you can find it, can cost more than breakfast.

Business is still brisk and I'd bet the dining room is still the most diverse in town, filled with trade unionists, cops, politicians, celebrities, Loop workers, tourists, and from time to time the mayor.

But the Wishbone's lease comes due in 2011, the year Oprah's show will end. Even if business stays good, the buzz will be gone.

"If Oprah goes," Joel Nickson mused, "we may go."

It's hard to walk away from something that you love, that's brought you meaning and pleasure. But Oprah's smart to light out now for new frontiers, while her old show has enough juice that it will be missed.

And a lot of us will miss having the show in Chicago. Even if she never seemed like a true resident -- she always seemed to float above it -- Oprah changed Chicago. Her leaving will change it, too.



Oprah on the Mag Mile: A quick view of stage production of Oprah's Michigan Avenue event at chicagotribune.com/oprahfast