bill kingsley

Found Ektachrome Slide Dated, January 1972, State Street, Chicago, Illinois I pulled this one out of the box and just sat there. Some slides you glance at and put back. This one I couldn’t stop looking at. Christmas time on State Street, Chicago, Illinois Bond’s big red neon is burning on the left. Wieboldt’s is packed, people inside grabbing last minute gifts and staring at the Cinnamon Bear displays. Burton-Miller and Cole’s signs are glowing too. The whole block is alive with shoppers going in and out of the stores that used to make this the greatest shopping street in America. Way down there you can just make out the Chicago Theatre sign. And even farther, those two round towers sitting on the river are Marina City. Bertrand Goldberg designed them in the early sixties. They were still new then, these giant concrete corn cobs with apartments and a parking garage and a marina underneath. Everybody in Chicago knew them. Richard J. Daley was mayor. He had just won his fifth term that spring. The machine was still running strong and downtown was still the place you went at Christmas. The suburban malls were starting to steal customers but on a night like this you wouldn’t have known it. State Street was lit up and full of cars and people. And those cars are all boats. Full size Chevys and Fords and Dodges with chrome bumpers you could land a plane on. Vinyl roofs. Bench seats. That yellow one is a Checker cab. Two lanes of American steel rolling under Christmas lights. This slide is one of the ones that makes the whole collecting hobby worthwhile. This is not AI. This is 55 year old historical authenticity.