Thanks a lot for this. I worked downtown in 69 and 70 and this brought back some good memories. 90% of the places in this video aren't there anymore. This is a treasure!
My family would make a day of it with shopping, a matinee movie, followed by a steak dinner at Tad’s Steakhouse: T-bone steak, mashed or baked potatoes, peas and carrots, dinner rolls, and a soft drink. Cost $1.59. I miss the 70s. I was in 8th grade in 1971. Food was unprocessed and abundant, life was uncomplicated, and overall people behaved and respected authority.
Tad's Steakhouse. Obviously not solely a New York thing (there were quite a few in Manhattan back in the day, one on 34th Street across from Macy's, another along Times Square . . . ).
At 9:10 I saw a glimpse of the "Stop & Shop" sign, which was a place my grandparents brought me to to purchase mixed nuts in a pink and brown rectangular box, and had chocolate covered orange peels. All luxuries. I loved seeing all those shift dresses and still the preponderance of bouffant hairdos. I so remember that pace and it looks like the summer!
"Cotton Comes to Harlem" was released in 1970, as was "Soldier Blue". Imaginative, nicely framed, captures the Loop probably at noon hour in the summer of 1970. I worked in the Loop from 1965-70 and walked many miles on my lunch hour.
The (mostly) clean, colorful, respectable appearance and attitude of people and the atmosphere are great examples that people decided to discard. We have a bad habit of leaving the good things of yesterday behind.
I wasnt even born just yet and I would love to go back to these days. People were happy and relaxed. Now the city has daily riots vandalism attacks on police! Downtown back then was safe, now its a warzone!
These were depressing times for a young man, I was in college, too, and the 2S draft determent was the prime reason. College wasn't a way of dodging the draft, just delaying it for a few years. I thank the Almighty that today's kids don't have to worry about a draft anymore.
I was at the U of I Circle Campus 1967 - 1971 and Tad's was too much $$$ for me. I existed on $2 a day and that was only $1 for lunch so a hot dog and a small soda was my usual.
Painting a vivid picture of a very small portion of Chi- town via my memories: The film stirred up some old memories of me as a youth going to Wrigley Field by train with my old grammar school girlfriend, her brother and other pals. It was that long portion of the train ride through the inner-city which showed the backsides of the row houses and tenement buildings with those clothes lines which is etched in my mind. Unpainted light brown dingy wood porches with old couches and automobile backseats, crooked stairs, black tar, and roofing tiles. Also, backyards, weeds, vacant lots, & parking lots, all loaded with old metal junk, like washers, dryers, railroad ties, and stripped down wrecked cars.
THANKU RU-vid AMAZING FOOTAGE how many times I took the subway to the CHICAGO STADIUM to see LED ZEPPELIN though out the 70s and the movies SHAFT & SUPERFLY now in my 60s it was a great time ✌️☮️🎸😎
Wow look at all that crowed foot traffic! These days the sidwalks downtown are pretty vacant. I miss those old news stands too. And the old Chicago Northwestern Train terminal sadly demolished in 1984!!!
This was probably 28 August 1970, which was a Friday. The headlines in the newspapers refer to a tear gas grenade attack that the Jewish Defense League (JDL) carried out in Chicago's Civic Opera House on the evening of 27 August to protest the performance of a Soviet dance troop there that night. Interesting to see the cars, buses, store fronts, and clothing styles. This is the Chicago I remember as a kid.
6:15 a lot of sizzling going on at Ronnie's steak house. This is the 70s when xxx movies took over half the Loop's movie houses. And the Loop after dark was a mini Babylon.
This film of Chicago in the Summer (?) months of 1970 are great...the famous and infamous downtown scenes with "real people" who had (and still does) have human life stories that would be incredible. Good, steady filming. Thanks for presenting a good era of filming life in its places and everyday people.
I wasnt even born just yet and I would love to go back to these days. People were happy and relaxed. Now the city has daily riots vandalism attacks on police! Downtown back then was safe, now its a warzone!
We’ll never have a downtown like that again. Most of those small businesses on State St are gone. My first trip to Chicago was on a layover on an Amtrak train going west in June of 1974. I remember there was a Montgomery Wards and two Woolworths’ on State St.
@@dg1006 You are right. ANd yes Sate street had Fields, Wards, two Woolworths, Sears, Weiboltz, Goldblatsz, Caron Piere Scott, Many theaters, etc. Now nothing
In 1970 I was a kid. I do remember the grey hound station in 1981 I worked at the Burger King there. Chicago was really grimmy back then but safer than it is today 2023 so many adult movie theaters some of our ancestors were freaky. I remember the shoppers corner at Randolph & State they had so many gadgets. Downtown is nothing like this today. The excitement and upbeat of the 70’s & 80’s is long gone.
Sometimes I search for vintage footage to see how life was like before I was born-This is before my time- I was born 13 years later (1983) but it seems like life look simpler and easier going compared to nowadays.... No smart phones or social media--people were interacting with each other instead of looking at phones.
Looks like the city was very comfortably integrated back then. Everyone was very polite to others. I am from NYC but have always wanted to see Chicago. This looks very much like midtown Manhattan
Please give credit to Vivian Maier for this footage. She shot many photograph stills and motion picture film footage of Chicago in the 1960s-70s. It was the era of miniskirts and baby doll style dresses. Seeing people holding newspapers instead of smart phones was the norm. Downtown Chicago was an active, thriving place to be back then.
wow times have changed, I didn't see a single mexican person in that video, everyone was either black, white and a few chinese maybe, chinese was the only Asian ethnicity back then, I also didn't see any panhandlers in that video, because Americans actually hired their own back then.
It has been predicted that by 2044 there will more Hispanics in the United States than white people. Also, Europe is basically dying. People aren't producing enough children, and the Euro populations are getting smaller. Sadly, in many European cities Muslims will be the highest population in 25 years or so.
My latino family was there, they had worked hard and came in the early 60s, moving to what used to be the polish area off of Ogden. They became a part of close-knit community. There were also some Mexicans who had been there since the 30s; they remember these colorful, clean days quite fondly. Unfortunately, rioting happened in the late 60s, which is when they say the city took a turn for the worse.
Oh later there is one that is rated X, but that it when X meant adult only. The porn industry in the 70's turned X into explicit sex. Today there is a rarely used NC-17 rating to replace the X of the 60's.
My thoughts EXACTLY and whoever took this was definitely GIRL watching. Notice all the girls filmed with the view scanning down to their legs. lol. GREAT REMEMBRANCES regardless.
Tad's now named Ronnie's since at least the 80's is still there. It was there in 2013 when I moved away from Chicago and haven't heard anything about it closing.
Back when Chicago was still somewhat a decent city before the democrats ran it into the ground! I was born and raised there and I ain't never goin back!
@@Diogenes-ty9yy I have friends in Florida who want me to move there and get out of this democratic crap hole. I just HATE hot weather though and need my winters. or I would move there like everyone else is in two minutes!
