Scottish Hockey Music: Fight Song Week Day 1

     Well folks, it's time for the first theme week of the year.  I hope you guys enjoy this one!

     It's game time at the Madhouse on Madison.  The Blackhawks are taking the rink against any one of their many rivals in the National Hockey League.  All of a sudden, a player takes a daring shot, and the shot GOES IN.  GOAL!  The crowd goes wild.  The team celebrates.  And reverberating from the sound system is the driving bass of a certain song that should be instantly familiar to all Chicago fans.  Here, take a listen:

     For those of you who still don't know what song this is(maybe you're new in town), it's called Chelsea Dagger, and it was originally released in 2006 by the Scottish band The Fratellis.  The song was reportedly written about the wife of the lead singer of the group, who was an exotic dancer using Chelsea as a stage name.  Add in the fact that the term 'Dagger' is Scottish slang for a woman of loose morals, and I think you can see where this is headed.  The song ended up doing quite well for the band, eventually climbing to #5 on the UK charts. 

     The song found its way to Chicago in the Fall of 2007, when Rocky Wirtz assumed ownership of the team from his late father.  In a bid to attract fans who had abandoned the team in droves during his father's miserly reign, Wirtz started looking for ways to enhance the fan experience.  One of those ways was to add a goal song to every game.  After combing through all the different examples, the team's people settled on this song.  Initially, it didn't catch on, but then by the end of its inaugural season it had become as much a part of Blackhawks hockey as cheering through the National Anthem. 

     For an aside, Chelsea Dagger is not the first song that has been played by the Hawks either. In 1968, the Dick Marx Orchestra and Choir released "Here Come The Hawks!".  And then in 2007, The Ministry & Co-Conspirators released "Keys To The City" as a gift to the Blackhawks organization.

The Dead-End Station

     In the early years of the CTA, there were numerous expansions and additions of stations. One of these new stations came about in 1907, when the South Side Elevated (the first elevated line in the city and the ancestor to today's Green Line) added on a service branch to Normal Park. This area didn't see too much traffic, except for the students of the Chicago Normal School, which was a local college. One of the most interesting things about this station was its design though. The station was the last stop on the line, but whereas with other stations you have the end of the tracks, then some sort of yard facilities for various trains(or in the case of the old Westchester station vast expanses of nothingness), the 69th street station simply dead ended into the street. Just one catch though: this station was elevated, which meant that you had an elevated track ending at the street, like this:

     Suffice it to say that this would not have been a good station to have an asleep-at-the-wheel Blue Line driver pull into.

     Over the years, the station's low ridership became evident, and major changes came in 1949 with the great Service Revision. First off, the station became unstaffed, with conductors collecting all fares onboard trains(because we were still almost 50 years away from farecards).  Also, the station turned into a shuttle operation, with only a 1-car train coming into the station to take passengers back and forth to the mainline.  Finally, the station's time came in January of 1954 when it(as well as the entire Normal Park Line) was closed due to extremely low ridership.

The North Siders, by any other name.

     Since 1876, the National League ball club in Chicago had been known by names such as the Nationals, the Orphans, the Chicagos, the Colts, the Rough Riders, the Silk Stockings, the White Stockings, and even the Rainmakers. But in 1902, that all changed. On March 27 of that year, an insipid reporter for the Chicago Daily News penned an article about how the team was prepping for another season. This team was much younger and unseasoned than previous iterations, and the writer was looking for a way to impart that. He eventually used the line "manager Frank Selee will devote his strongest efforts on the team work of the new Cubs this year".

     At the time that it was written, the moniker "Cubs" was just another nickname, and the team continued to be known under various other names for the next six seasons, such as the Panamas, the Spuds, the Zephyrs, and the Microbes. But when the 1907 World Series rolled around, the team was issued new jackets with the picture of a Cub on it. With that, the North Side team officially adopted the Cubs name. And even though we haven't quite maintained the winning tradition started in 1907, the team does continue to be called the Cubs today, 112 years after the name was first coined.

Don't You Forget about Maine North High School

     I was cruising the interwebs(aka: Facebook) today and happened upon this picture right here:

     That is a picture of the establishing shot of The Breakfast Club, and while I will admit that at first I thought this might have been another Back To The Future situation(no matter what anybody tells you Marty McFly does not come back to the future until OCTOBER 21, 2015) but then I went ahead and checked it for myself, and this is 100% true.  Roll tape:

     In the pantheon of films shot in Chicago, The Breakfast Club is a member of the Hall of Fame.  It was one of the John Hughes Brat Pack films, which means that this is about as stereotypically 80s as you can get.  Originally the studio didn't want Hughes to even direct the film, as they didn't feel him experienced enough(even though this was after Sixteen Candles had come out, so go figure.)  Eventually they relented, and the film was shot.  As had become Hughes' trademark, the film was shot in the Northern Suburbs of Chicago.  This time the action took place at "Shermer High School", which was actually the decommissioned Maine North High School over in Des Plaines.

     Built in the middle of a population surge in Maine Township, the school was built in 1970.  After things had leveled off, the school district had too many schools and too few students.  After a furious push by the other high schools in the district to stay open, Maine North was left the odd man out and closed after the 1980-81 school year.  When John Hughes wanted to film his new film there, he was given access to the empty building to do so.  After production on the film wrapped, Hughes came back again 2 years later to film Ferris Buehler's Day Off.  Today the building still stands, and is in use as an office for the Illinois State Police, among other things.

The Year of The Cub

     If you're in Wrigleyville, and you happen to be looking at the vatrious rooftops along Sheffield Avenue, you may notice one in particular.

     This is its story.  The Lakeview Baseball Club has been a Wrigleyville staple since the 1980s.  In the mid-90s, they started hanging a sign out in front of the club(visible from Wrigley Field)  One of the signs reads "Eamus Catuli!", which is an approximate Latin translation of "Let's Go Cubs!"  But then there are also a series of numbers right next to the phrase that have their own significance.  As of now they read AC0568105.  What do they mean?

     First off, AC is an abbreviation for Anno Catuli(yup, more Latin), which means "In the Year of The Cubs".  The first number signify how long since the Cubs have won their division, the second number tells how long since they made it to the World Series, and the third number signifies how long since they've gone all the way.  So, 05 represents the number of years since 2008, our last division title.  68 represents the number of years since 1945, our last world Series berth.  And 105 represents the number of years since 1908, our last...you get the idea.

     So on that glorious night when we finally do win it all, Cubs fans everywhere will be dancing in the street, toasting those players of old, and thanking Chiune Sugihara.  But they will also be milling about the Lakeview Baseball Club, waiting for the glorious moment those numbers read AC000000.

Swimmy Fallon

     In the summer of 2013, somewhere in between Corey Crawford's open-mike spectacular in Hutchinson Field and Neon Trees tearing it up in Butler Field, the city of Chicago held its annual reading program.  At that point, Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried to heat up the competition a little bit and vowed that if the members of the program read more than 2 Million books he would jump into Lake Michigan. At a Polar Plunge. In March(brrrr).  Well, the little kiddies held up their end of the deal, so Rahm had to hold up his end of the deal.

     Fast forward now to February, when Jimmy Fallon takes over the Tonight Show.  Word reaches Mayor Emanuel that Fallon wants him on his new show, and so he got on the horn with Fallon and invited him to plunge alongside him.  Fallon took him up on the offer, and he did.  Yesterday the annual Polar Plunge was held to benefit Special Olympics Chicago.  Fallon was there, Emanuel was there, and so were about 3,000 other brave and hardy souls.  But not just that, there were also throngs of spectators present to try and catch a glimpse of Fallon and Emanuel jumping into the lake.  To start things off, Emanuel took a dip, and this is what he looked like when he came out:

     After that, Jimmy Fallon's turn was up, and he went into the lake in a full suit.  Here he is coming out:

     All told, it was a successful morning, and yet another occasion to put Chicago on the map.

The Leaning Tower of Chicago

     If you were in River North early this morning, you may have noticed this peculiar sight:

     No, that's not some alien spaceship landing.  That is a water tower being taken down from the roof of a building at 409 W. Huron.  It sprung a leak on Friday afternoon, and spilled 18,000 Gallons of water on two neighboring buildings.  The tank was roughly 100 years old and had already failed an inspection, so it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.  Luckily, it was removed before it could cause any more damage.