Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 50

Tempo 2 Section 5 Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, September 1, 1992 The Far Side 182 Universal Pi.m Syndicate To the over-55 crowd, Chicago radio is still the same young story By Dan Kening Radio TT77 xl- i I if -j i. ki TrTT '-v. VS i -) 4 A The Viking longcar was once the scourge of European roadways. Ft recent story by our colleague Rick Kogan I 1 bemoaned the fact that network television I I has virtually turned its back on viewers over 50 in its quest to reach the more id hi advertiser-desirable younger audience. If anything, Chicago radio is worse.

If you scan the dial, you can hear every possible variant of rock, adult contemporary, all-news, talk and Top 40 formats but little specifically aimed at listeners beyond their mid-50s. Yes, WJJD-AM 1160's "adult standards" format and WGN-AM 720's talkentertainment mix draw large numbers of mature listeners but, except for beautiful-music WAIT-AM 850 in Crystal Lake and a smattering of programs on ethnic and suburban stations, it's a vast wasteland out there if you're over 55. A recent letter from reader Margaret Smith in Palos Heights is representative of the feelings of many of Chicago's older radio listeners. "I am a senior citizen who would enjoy radio if anything was offered other than rock music or constant chattering programs," she said. "I would love to hear some great music from the '40s and '50s, but I have to resort to my tapes to hear good music.

We seniors have money and spend it, so if the stations catered to us, we would reciprocate." Denny Farrell, host of Big Band shows on WFXW-AM 1480 in Geneva and WKDC-AM 1530 in Elmhurst and a former program director at WJJD, echoes her comments. "Radio today is basically geared towards the younger listener," Farrell said. "But radio isn't as important to younger listeners, who have everything on tape or on CDs. "The people who grew up with the Big Bands also grew up listening to radio, and it's a habit that is imbedded in them. It's really sad that there isn't much for them to listen to.

That hasn't always been the case. In the late 1970s, stations such as easy-listening WCLR and WLAK, beautiful-music WLOO (FM 100) and Big Band WAIT all targeted older listeners. Both WLAK and WLOO regularly ranked in the Top 10. Now WCLR, WLAK and WLOO are, respectively, adult contemporary WTMX, WLIT and WPNT, while WAIT is all-sports WSCR What happened? "It's a matter of numbers," said Chicago radio veteran Mai Bcllairs, heard on WAIT, a different station from the old WAIT. "In the '70s, advertising agencies decided that the most money was in the 25 to 54 age group and that older people didn't have any spending power." Chicago's No.

1 station with listeners over 55 is WGN, which has been rumored to be trying to lose its older listeners. Not so, says WGN general manager Dan Fabian. "That's just a lot of posturing from our competitors," Fabian said. "We just want people with ears regardless of their age." WJJD has shown that stations that go after the mature audience can be moneymakers. It's ranked as the city's No.

8 station. "Some of these people aren't paying attention to who's buying out there," said WJJDWJMK general manager Harvey Pearlman. "We have one of the most viable audiences in terms of spending power, and many of these people are lio kidding -k Here are some fabulous facts about seven foreign countries: 1. China 50 crimes punishable by death 2. Malaysia top producer of air conditioners 3.

Guinea nine official languages 4. Finland education free through college 5. Poland one-year waiting list for a telephone 6. Albania one may be jailed for wearing a beard 7. Hong Kong most Rolls-Royces per acre World Features Syndicate WJJDWJMK general manager Harvey Pearl-man is going after the mature audience.

'empty nesters' who are in their peak earning years. Those who market intelligently to the older audience will do very well." ElOlQllf said. "Nobody knew where all of this was headed." Sami Sunchild, 67, was opening communes in the Hawaiian Islands when the Haight's streets were filled with the sounds of progressive rock. But her philosophy coincided with their ideals. Sunchild returned to the mainland in 1976 and opened an inn on Haight Street the next year to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Summer of Love.

The inn, the Red Victorian Bed Breakfast, is more than a place to spend the night, Sunchild said. It's also an eco-bazaar, a computer networking center, a gallery of meditative art, a coffeehouse gathering place "and much more." "It's a living experiment in thinking globally and cooperating locally, a practical opportunity to experience yourselves as parts of a real global family," Sunchild said. The inn's rooms evoke the height of the days of flower power: the Flower Child Room has rainbows on the ceilings and '60s posters on the walls. There's a Peace Room and a Summer of Love Room. Even the bathrooms are outfitted for mind trips.

Flush the toilet in the Aquarium bathroom and the fish tank appears to lose its water, leaving the fish seemingly suspended in air. "We are seeing beyond into the future, which is peaceful and loving," Sunchild said. "Haight-Ashbury is no longer just Haight-Ashbury. The flower children went out into the world and had children of their own. "If you just focus on the business of the street, you're very shallow.

It's something that happened in the heart and mind. It's my charge to fan the fire. To keep the best of it alive." how good or bad it is. There were dangerous times, but there were also good times. It's years later, when you look back.

We've felt it's like a privilege to be here." The start of it all Those who were there still recall with awe the sense of a renaissance brewing, with music at its center. Bill Graham's weekly concerts brought together some of the best rock bands to ever play under the same roof: Hendrix, Joplin, Santana, the Dead, Jefferson Airplane. "Now, when you look back you say, 'My It takes your breath away," said Morgan Moore, a movie publicist who interviewed the acts as a college student working on a history of progressive rock. "Back then it was all new. A lot of it was word of mouth," Moore Ss- I I if -gj 7 A' 4 A street sign at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco.

A new commercial reality has overtaken the strip. AT Continued from page 1 hungry world. For several hot months, life became a costume party staged in a wonderland setting of brightly painted Victorian buildings. The neighborhood became a swirl of colors as flower children painted storefronts, sidewalks, posters, cars, vans, even each other. The days and nights were filled with sex and drugs, with music provided by the likes of Jimi Hen-drix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead all of them living in neighborhood pads.

The idealism floating in the pot-laced air the talk of love and peace and the dawning of Aquarius would spread across the nation and, eventually, the world. "It really was a magical moment in time," said Mark Gordon, whose Frisco Tours offers a one-mile "Love 'N Haight" walk. "A lot of it has been incorporated into the culture." Commercialism moves in Many of the trends that flourished during the Summer of Love have become a permanent part of the New Age movement, including organic foods and Eastern philosophy. Tie-dyed T-shirts are back in style, peace signs hang once again from necks and ears, and Grateful Dead tours are still the acid-laced events of old. But as Gordon, who lived here in the late 1960s, walks down Haight Street on a gloomy summer morning, his nostalgic memories fail to match a new commercial reality that has overtaken the strip where hippies once fended off tour buses by holding up mirrors to reflect the tourists' gawking faces.

The old Psychedelic Shop, which hawked concert tickets and rolling papers, is now a pizza parlor. Diggers, a street theater commune, is now an organic food cafe. And a Gap clothing store sits at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets. At the neighborhood's edge, Joplin's pad an elegant, 1878 Edwardian has been fully rehab-bed and placed on the market for $895,000, a pricey catch for the yuppies who have moved into the area. "The vibes aren't very good," said Gordon, who recalls the old days "when you got up in the morning and didn't know who you were going to be by the end of the day." "In the '60s, people put energy into this place," he said.

"People come here now to take energy out." Nowadays, the Haight thrives by cashing in on its anti-capitalist, rebellious past, a time when food and clothing were handed out and home was a free spot on the floor of a friend's crash pad. In those days, the true entrepreneurs were the drug dealers who often used head shops and record stores as fronts for their trade. Today, the Haight has gone legit. Trendy storefront boutiques sell T-shirts with "Summer of Love" printed on them, "Haight-Ashbury" underwear, tic-died T-shirts, psychedelic gift wrap, incense and water Dices to curious visi- FALL STARTS IN THE FALL. It's not too late to start college this fall, but it's getting close.

CLASSES BEGIN SEPTEMBER 16. CALL THE OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS TODAY AT (312) 362-8300 TO FIND OUT ABOUT WALK-IN ADVISING AND REGISTRATION AT THE LOOP CAMPUS 25 E. Jackson Blvd. COUNSELING APPOINTMENTS AT THE LINCOLN PARK, LOOP, OAK BROOK AND 0'HARE CAMPUSES Day and Evening undergraduate classes -for degree and non-degree students -in business, liberal arts, computer science and education at the Lincoln Park and Loop campuses. An evening and weekend accelerated bachelor's degree exclusively for adults at the Loop, Oak Brook, and O'Hare campuses.

Hronopoulos stands behind a counter filled with trinkets, hash pipes, jewelry and watches as several Japanese and German tourists mill about the store, checking out the psychedelic video playing on a TV screen overhead and the nude wedding pictures of John Lennon and Yoko Ono pinned to a back wall. The merchandise evokes a time before Hronopoulos was born, but she has heard about "all the killer stuff' from her 44-year-old boyfriend, who lived those now-mythical days. "It was like a really heavy political turmoil going on and really intense sociological things happening," she said. "People were doing their own thing. Music and living for the moment were big things.

"There's a select number of people, young and old, that don't want to revive the '60s, but they believe in the gist of what was happening." Trickle-down effect At The Booksmith down the street, the hot-selling items are books that chronicle that past. "It's not older people reading the books nostalgically, but teenagers and people in their 20s," said Thomas Gladysz, 31, who works at the store. "It trickles down from the rock culture." Kids continue to come to the Haight, many of them homeless runaways. But unlike the '60s, when the music carried a message, the rock culture has splintered and there is no war to hold a movement together. Instead of bright psychedelic colors, the new look is sullen and dark.

"There's a lot of alternative kids that dress in black and leather and have long hair and cowboy boots, and they all kind of have a sullen look," said Michelle Harnold, 28, who works at Reckless Records on Haight Street. Harnold, a former Deadhead, or follower of the Grateful Dead, said she was once enamored of '60s culture. "I wore jeans and tie-dyed shirts, and I was following the Dead around," she said. "Then I heard the Dead Kennedys. They were saying what I thought was really going on look around and i change things.

"In the '60s, it kind of degenerated into drugs and fun and partying," she said. "Now to me it's like, 'OK, give it up. It happened. Now there are a lot of vital things going For some older folks who watched the hippie invasion, there is nothing to be nostalgic about. "Half of them were sp stoned they couldn't even see," said Gene Nikula, 71, as he cleaned a blender behind the bar at The Gold Cane, its walls lined with pictures from the 1940s.

Nikula lived up the road from the Haight during the Summer of Love. "There wasn't a thing nice about it," he said. Some fond memories But other old-timers, such as Curly A. Reed, 75, recall the time with fondness. There were so many hippies crowding onto Haight Street that buses had to reroute to Reed's street one block away.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Reed, a retired city worker who has lived in the Haight since 1960. "The people in those days, in the '60s, they were different than people now. "Some would walk barefoot. They hung buckets out the windows so you would drop money or bread in them. They never bothered anybody.

They were just good people. It was nice, nice, very nice." It took some time before the years added a sheen of nostalgia for Bernie Romano, who has owned the Pacific Pharmacy on Haight Street since 1960. His wife, Maria, still reminds him of how they had tried to move out, but real estate prices had dropped so much they couldn't afford to sell. "There was a lot of freedom, you did anything out on the street," Maria Romano said. "For them there were no rules.

We thought about moving many times, but who would buy the business?" But Bernie Romano chooses to play down the hard times, clinging to the fond memories that have become a brief, intimate brush with history. It's like surviving boot camp. "When you're going through basic training, it's pretty rough, but after you pass the ordeal, you always forget the bad times, and you only remember the good times. "There's something special about this place that is unique. There's a certain amount of creativity, expression.

Over the years, I've tried to explain it, but I can't put it into words." Romano recalls Joplin coming in to "buy her medication, usually over-the-counter drugs." He recalls how his sister would lend the Grateful Dead her car so they could drive to gigs across the bay. The car would always come back with an empty gas tank. "It's a funny thing. When things are happening, you don't know t. For information about future terms, mail to DePaul University, Office of Admissions, 25 E.

Jackson Chicago, IL 60604. Or call 312362-8300. Name SS Birth date Phnnc(Day) (Eve) Home Address City State Zijg Bachelor's degree Non-degree Other Academic Interest TB31 I am Interested in beginning Winter 1003 Spring 1003 Other term -v tors searching for a whitewashed past. "This store is kind of nostalgic i and trying to keep whatever it was said Anna Hronopoulos, 18, an employee at the Watch Your ripd store on HaighL street..