The Western Avenue and Vicinity Art Gallery: Food
Food is an unfailing source of inspiration for roadside artists. The attrition of local cuisine in the face of national
franchises bodes ill for the art.

Peggy's was on Californa Avenue near Pershing Road. Rita's was on 18th Street near Ashland Avenue.

The bucolic city: Campesino was on Broadway near Berwyn, and the farm scene is from a Pilsen grocery. La Fe was on Lawrence.
La Sierra was on Montrose and Gelatinas Pepito on Blue Island Avenue. Tastee Dog was on Lawrence. TV and movie producers persist in showing New York-style street carts purveying hot dogs in Chicago, but this kind of basic hut is far more typical of Chicago's entry-level hot dog market.
The rather minimal Tes's was on Clark Street at Greenleaf. The Oakwood is on the Montrose strip near Western, as was Gara. The not-quite-iconic WIC family fit quite nicely with the leering pig and meat-eating shark at Soto's, on 18th Street near Ashland Avenue.

The painter of the Taqueria Tayahua sign not only came up with an elegant solution to the ventilation problem, but also did great executions of mural-size entrees. The chef at Broadway Pizzeria seemed oddly distressed, while the Jackie-like diner at Diane's Truck Stop seemed obsessively perky.

Plastic shop signs usually are blandly executed, if not mass-produced. But Grisel and Junior on Armitage Avenue featured this nice, but enigmatic, pair, Grisel and Junior (one supposes). Savvy breakfasters at Huck Finn's, a South Side mini-chain, order the Becky Thatcher Breakfast and leave the connection between Huck Finn and donuts alone -- forget about the royal burger. Pekin House was a longtime fixture in the Indian neighborhood on Devon near Western.

On the South Side: a lineup of isolated food items adorned a barren brick building, and another lineup at Zebony 2, where they apparently accepted nothing. The Zebony artist applied admirable, if clumsy, detail. The Jimmy cow dreamed of pigmeat, while the gyros spun back on 51st Street.

Click here for
the Western Avenue gyros lineup.
The cannibal gyros is from California Avenue on the Southwest Side.