12th
Sears Sadness
The Sears Tower is about to become the Willis Tower. As when Macy’s took over Marshall Field’s, this isn’t just a name change for me. (By the way: they saw sales decline upwards of 10% after that and even more at the historic State Street store. We’re a proud people, Chicagoans. Don’t fuck with our history.)
No, this is Chicago-born, Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck and Co. going away and “London-based insurance broker” Willis Group Holdings taking over one of my hometown’s most treasured landmarks. They’re colonizing my mental landscape. They’re colonizing my memories.
I think growing up in the suburbs made me value the Sears Tower just a little bit more. It’s the first thing you see driving up the Stevenson, its massive tree-trunk antennae and topmost lego-like rectangle poking through the clouds, and before long the entire skyline is visible, and then it’s just a few curves and you’re past McCormick Place and onto Lake Shore with the water and the city before you and you’re in Chicago and you feel a rush of excitement and wonder and it’s the best place in the world. Now when I see that first glimmer of Chicago poking through the clouds, I’ll know something is different. It will be Chicago, but it won’t be the same Chicago.
That will be a sad sight.
