Reader Jim Reaches Out to Native Foods

Apologies to Jim on just cutting and pasting a friendly and neighborly email thread. We promise there will be more on this in the next pipeline (26th), we just have a lot of other ground to cover before 8AM- or rather 7:45 if I am to shower before work- and wanted to make sure we included this uber-cool email exchange between a reader, Jim, and an up and coming space. We feel like we've heard from Jim before, but can't remember in relation to which story. In any case, readers like Jim make me feel like the pipeline is worth continuing. There's a large and extended community of people who care about the neighborhood, and many are already tapped into the pipeline and help us out by sending in news like this, below.

Alisa-

See below. Nice to know that Native Foods will correctly identify their new Wicker Park store.

The Levis store is identified on their site as Bucktown, as are a number of other WP businesses... [left out for privacy]

As always, thanks for all your hard work on Pipeline.

Jim O'Brien



-----Original Message-----
From: Online Support
To: Jim O.
Sent: Wed, Apr 13, 2011 7:05 am
Subject: Re: New Chicago Location

thanks for writing.

Yes, we know!!!! the old website has it wrong, but the new website that goes live any day has it correct. Given that we were about to launch a new webiste, we just never fixed the old one. when we were first looking for locations in that area we were looking in both areas, but obviously decided on the Wicker Park locations. The website person just never fixed it.

we have lived in Chicago for almost 20 years and we are excited to be opening here. We hope to see you in the restaurants!!!!

thanks again for writing

eat peace

On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 7:51 AM, Jim XXX wrote:

I live a block from your new Chicago location being built at the corner of Milwaukee Avenue & Honore Street. Your website shows the new location as "Bucktown," but your actual location is in the heart of the Wicker Park neighborhood.

Wicker Park and Bucktown are sister neighborhoods and are often spoken of together as Wicker Park/Bucktown (there are separate Facebook pages for Wicker Park and Bucktown and a combined Wicker Park / Bucktown page). Bucktown is the more upscale of the two, and several retailers on the Milwaukee Avenue shopping strip in Wicker Park (including Levis, just up the block from your new store) have taken to calling their locations Bucktown, obviously hoping to attract a more monied clientele.

Ok, so my nose is a little out of joint, but if you're locating your first Windy City store in Wicker Park, shouldn't you call it that? (Side note: you can see the actual Wicker Park itself from the Honore Street side of your store.)

Either way, welcome to Chicago. This is a vibrant neighborhood and I wish you every success here.

Jim XXX

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Town,_Chicago#Wicker_Park