LINCOLN SQUARE — Welcome to Lincoln Square, where the men all wear lederhosen and troubadours wander the streets.
In case you missed it, CBS-2's mobile unit broadcast from the Square early Monday morning, with reporter Vince Gerasole playing tourist at Merz Apothecary, Himmel's restaurant, Giddings Plaza and the Old Town School of Folk Music.
"The whole little place is so quaint and cute," said anchor Susan Carlson, reacting from the station's downtown anchor desk.
While it's easy to depict Lincoln Square as part Oktoberfest theme park, the segments — four in total — also celebrated the area's growing diversity and modern evolution.
An interview with Rudy Flores, executive director of the Lincoln Square Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce, revealed that the roughly 20-block by 20-block area is home to 300 small businesses. Flores also touted a real estate market that's held its own post-Great Recession and the neighborhood's proximity to public transit.
"The Brown Line runs right through the middle of Lincoln Square," said Gerasole.
Nicholle Dombrowski, executive director of DANK Haus, the German American Cultural Center, was on hand to represent Lincoln Square's German roots. If Germans no longer dominate the community, their influence is still apparent, she said, at places such as the Chopping Block, which carries German cooking tools, and Old Town, which offers accordian lessons.
Concluded Carlson: "If you live in the city and you want to go somewhere quaint like that and you don't have time to drive all the way to, say, St. Charles, it's right there. It's right on the North Side."
