(06-04-2019 09:25 AM)Dog Fan Wrote:  When I was a student at NIU, the downtown was much more vibrant. There were restaurants, pharmacies, variety stores, bars, and clothing stores (women's and men's). It's an easy walk from the dorms on a nice day. Several of us used to walk to downtown on a Saturday and shop, eat, or drink (or all three).
There were no cell phones or computers with internet to keep us glued to our dorm rooms. Cell phones and the internet have turned us into the "inside generation", where, as a whole, we no longer go out shopping or even to sporting events. Look at all the brick-and-mortar business closures (especially department stores). Stay inside, and the world comes to you.

DogFan, was reading your post and agreeing with everything you said and then got to the last line, forced me to mention this change as well --- it amazes me how many places I still go with friends and see the constant coming and going of food delivery people. You can be at Portillo's, Fatty's, Eduardo's, hell, even McDonald's, and folks from an outfit called "Eat Street" (probably some other names as well) come and go like clockwork.
Hopefully, people will at least make an appearance at Tavern on Lincoln to get a menu and they can stay in business long afterward. I've got nothing against these folks trying to make money doing food delivery, but it now goes way beyond pizza delivery.
If you live in this town, aside from death, taxes, and Huskie football success, you can expect that for the first month a new place is open, you can barely get near it, and then the patrons appear to drop off a cliff. Hell I even remember cars backed up on Lincoln Highway around the corner on Annie Glidden forming a line to turn into Popeye's; now on a bad day you might be the third or fourth car at the drive-thru. Fingers crossed this place will last.