Surprising Stuff

The awful danger presented by the “Walgreens Corner” highway exchange.
Whoever designed the interchange at the intersection of Highway 50 and Edwards Boulevard was not an idiot. Moron is just above idiot, so that might be the better descriptor. That corner is a safety hazard to anyone using it, and the exits and entrances to Walgreens and the Mobil station across the street are even more dangerous and potentially even fatal. Those driveways to both places, coming off Edwards north and south just north of the interchange signal, should be exit only. There should be no entrance allowed back onto the boulevard. Not there. The back of Walgreens has a perfectly safe and acceptable return route back to the boulevard, but nobody really knows about it or uses it.

 

The second, more ominous Walgreens problem.
To go in and experience the “Walgreens Waltz” is something available to anyone visiting the big box store located at the corner of Edwards Boulevard and Highway 50. There is no requirement that one is a local in order to be so maltreated, and pay huge amounts for the privilege. This ugly corner store is phenomenally successful at the same time as being one of the most punishing retail experiences around. You go back to the pharmacy part of the pharmacy (most of the store displays and sells tons of other non-related junk) and you wait. They have a drop off window there, but the sign in that window directs you to the cash register window, where there’s a big line, always a big line. You wait to drop off a prescription and then wait to go through that line again when its ready. The price of drugs is in the stratosphere, but the service is down inside a bathroom implement made out of porcelain. This store on the corner of Edwards and 50 is rumored to be the third most successful in the state.

Defining success as the flow of money inside and drugs outside. It is no place at all to go for a good time, reasonable time, decent time or any lower variation of that that does not involve anger, misery or even rage. Waiting at the Walgreens is a bad experience. The pharmacists are ethereal distant characters who are adequate as human personalities. The counter people mean well. That the store is not big enough to serve its customer base is the fault of capitalism mixed in with a monopoly. Some other great drugstore needs to come to Lake Geneva and relieve Walgreens of the necessity of being such a hotshot success commercially and allow it to go back to being a warm and friendly socially comfortable business, not constantly reminding its customers about what downtown Chicago pharmacy business must be like.

If you have been a partner in the “Walgreens Waltz” then write a letter and tell the GSR about your story. Walgreens will not change unless you demand that it change.

 

Carvetti’s was a mystery and the anticipation of its reopening faded.
Carvetti’s is now NorthSider’s, not that means anything yet, since they are not open. Memorial day weekend of 2018 was the goal for Carvetti’s to be renamed and reopened. Changes started at Carvetti’s with a new manager, remodeling and updating, and a new name and sign were in the works. Memorial Day came and went and nothing happened. Work has started again and the new sign is up NorthSiders at 642 West Main Street may just open by Memorial Day 2019.

Northsiders Opening Soon?

Northsiders Lake Geneva

Carvetti’s on Main Street in now Northsiders! With any luck, it will be open this year!

 

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