A Fresh Start

January 20th, 2008 at 11:09pm Jonathan Bradley

I’ll first start with an update. I learned last Thursday that Gloria Jeans is in fact closing. The irony here is I that was also the day that my article imploring the coffee shop to stick around. My fiance and I went in to Gloria Jeans to order a White Chocolate Carmel Cookie Chiller only to be told of the news by the manager. We were stunned, if not surprised, to hear the news. I stayed around longer than usual and talked shop with the manager and in doing so got all the details behind the decision. The semantics aside the grim truth of this matter is that Gloria Jeans will no longer have a presence in Rockford. I have moved on since that day and am willing to look for more issues to concern myself with. The newest issue that I’ve found, ironically, was at the mall. It may, at first, seem peculiar that I have some type of fascination of sorts with the mall but when you take a closer look at it, however, it becomes clear that I have several relevant attachments to it. I’ll explain. In the mall’s heyday I was a mall rat. This was back when the movie theatre, Corn Dog on a Stick, Sam’s Pretzels, and Aladdin’s Castle were prominently present. I served on the short lived CherryVale Mall Youth Advisory Board. My mother was the Property Accounts Manager for CBL (owner’s of the mall). My fiance has been a store manager for two clothing outlets in the mall. Finally, my band, “There’s Always Wednesday”, performed in and won a 97zok sponsored Rockford Battle of the Bands against Magnum Opus and The Felix Culpa in the Mall parking lot.Now you know a smidge more about me. But back to the issue. Wet Seal. This is the name of a new clothing store in CherryVale that I would otherwise not have recognized if not for the youth of my workplace clamoring on about it’s greatness. Keep in mind that these same people swear on their lives that, “Meet the Spartans”, will be the funniest movie of the year. But still it makes me wonder…what kind of damage will this Wet Seal do?

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