From the Chicago Tribune The public and its 16,000 card-carrying members were invited to ``be a part of history`` Friday night when the owner held a wake. Souvenirs included crying towels and pieces of the custom-made blue Spanish tiles that lined one of the three bars. The heyday of disco is long gone, and with it went the atmosphere that let a place like Faces thrive. High rent and a changing neighborhood forced the closing, said the owner, George Shlaes, who bought Faces 12 years ago ``on a lark.`` ``The street is winding down,`` Shlaes said. ``The rents are too high for entertainment business. The restaurants are gone. Only retailers and hotels can afford it.`` When Faces opened, rent was $2,500 a month. Today, it hovers around $14,000. ``Division and Elm Streets today are what Rush Street used to be,`` said Jim Rittenberg, general manager and the tuxedoed emcee for the night. The disco was the brainchild of Rittenberg and three friends who dreamed of having a place to take a date after a nice dinner or a black-tie party. Friday night, the club was festooned with balloons. The strobes worked, so did the closed-circuit televisions. Cigarette smoke hung over the silver dance floor the way fog from the fog machine used to wrap around couples` ankles. To celebrate his 45th birthday and witness the passing of an era, Logan Dugaw, one of the club`s first members, drove in from La Grange. ``I used to come here when I was a bachelor,`` said the father of five children. ``I knew all the dances then. The hustle. The bump. I was pretty good.`` Those were the days when quadrophonic sound was part of the vocabulary, when Joe Cocker`s ``The Letter`` debuted, and singles, sipping Harvey Wallbangers, nestled into the tiers of upholstered booths and banquettes to find the Bo Derek or John Travolta of their dreams. Boredom was next to impossible with video monitors flashing sports highlights, faces or scenes from ``Charlie`s Angels.`` Rubbing elbows with visiting celebrities-Telly Savalas, Sonny Bono, Tom Jones-was not uncommon. ``You can never replace it,`` said Fran Kraus, 54, of Highland Park. She recalled watching two of her children participate in a 60-hour dance marathon for charity. ``My son even danced with Elke Sommer.`` The closed-circuit televisions were going strong Friday night, catching dancers in jeans and turtlenecks sharing the floor with silver-haired executives in double-breasted suits and matrons in designer ensembles.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 22:14:54 +0000
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