Results tagged “americangirlplace”

If you were a reader of Punk Planet, you might be familiar with the Chicago-based subculture zine’s co-editor Anne Elizabeth Moore. No? Maybe you’ve seen her get “forcibly ejected from retail establishments.” She also wrote a book, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, which you can hear her discuss with the folks of Bad at Sports right here.

Mattel, Inc. has announced that - as of an undisclosed future date - the "Samantha" doll will be moved into the American Girl archives. What, is Samantha not good enough to compete with the Julie doll and her hip hair and roller skates!? Booooo! To appease your sense of loss, run over to the new American Girl Place store and meander past Samantha's display one last time.

The new American Girl Place store opened Wednesday at Watertower Place, positioned to cash in on its proximity to mall traffic. Five store entrances lead shoppers into a space that is 30 percent larger, newly festooned with a doll T-shirt design shop, personal shopping rooms and a “streetscape” of doll service shops (shoppes?) like an ear piercing store and a beauty salon. Already the largest of the retailer’s flagship stores, Chicago’s American Girl Place has generated nearly half the cumulative traffic of the nation’s five retail stores since 1998 – 13 million visits. The move across the street will create 50 new full time positions and 120 part-time holiday positions.

The red carpet is being rolled out tonight at the Loews on Michigan for the Chicago premiere of Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, the first film based on an American Girl doll to be released in theaters. Cutie-pie Abigail Breslin stars as Kit, an American Girl living in 1934 during the Great Depression. Chicago natives Chris O’Donnell and Joan Cusak are also expected to be at the premiere of the film, in which O’Donnell plays Kit’s father and Cusak plays a boarder named Miss Bond.

There's about to be some empty spaces on North Michigan Avenue, the likes of which haven't been seen on the Magnificent Mile for 15 years. Lord & Taylor will soon shutter the doors at its Water Tower Place location, and it will be 2008 before American Girl Place moves from its current spot on Chicago to take over a portion of the space. With CompUSA closing up shop on Chicago as well, retail vacancy for...

We know that our nostalgia over the former FAO Schwarz on Michigan Avenue is probably matched by the tortured remembrances of those we dragged into the store as a chorus of terrifying little voices sang "It's a Small World After All." Even so, we maintain that the American Girl Place is 100 percent more aesthetically upsetting than any other toy store that has ever existed. That's why we have some sick, sick pleasure in hearing...

Because Chicagoist is tired this morning, and because despite what some people think, we can't get up every single morning and just magically bring the funny, we're going to piggyback off this Sun-Times piece about Chicago's "scariest" places so we can whore for comments. We'll give this the old college try and make a brief stab at trying to disguise it as media criticism anyway, because the piece is really no less lazy than what...