As Startups Grow Up, More Seem To Hold Their Ground

The leaves have turned, the turkey has been eaten, the parades are over, and the football has been watched—the only thing left to do is to try to hide from increasingly uncomfortable family conversations by going out and shopping for things! It's the holiday tradition that not only makes us feel good, but also (apocryphally) drags the balance sheets of businesses the world over into profitability—hence "Black Friday!" Our partners in the e-commerce side of the business have spent days assembling massive lists for you all to peruse—lists of home deals, and video game deals, and all kinds of other things.

Women’s fashion boutique Aritzia will open its eagerly anticipated two-story flagship location Saturday on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, filling the long-vacant storefront at 555 N. Michigan Ave., former home of The Gap. The Canada-based chain agreed to occupy the nearly 50,000-square-foot building in 2022. It was the most significant retail lease on the Magnificent Mile since 2015 and fueled hopes that the beleaguered shopping district would soon entice other retailers. It’s taken several years, but with popular clothing brand H&M opening last month in the former Apple store at 679 N.

Today’s young adults grew up in a time when their childhoods were documented with smartphone cameras instead of dedicated digital or film cameras. It’s not surprising that, perhaps as a reaction to the ubiquity of the phone, some young creative photographers are leaving their handsets in their pockets in favor of compact point-and-shoot digital cameras—the very type that camera manufacturers are actively discontinuing. Much of the buzz among this creative class has centered around premium, chic models like the Fujifilm X100 and Ricoh GR, or for the self-anointed “digicam girlies” on TikTok, zoom point-and-shoots like the Canon PowerShot G7 and Sony RX100 models, which can be great for selfies. But other shutterbugs are reaching back into the past 20 years or more to add a vintage “Y2K aesthetic” to their work.

"Am I the first person to discover this?" is a tricky question when it comes to classic Macs, some of the most pored-over devices and boards on the planet. But there's a lot to suggest that user paul.gaastra, on the 68kMLA vintage Mac forum, has been right for more than a decade: One of the capacitors on the Apple mid-'90s Mac LC III was installed backward due to faulty silkscreen printing on the board. It seems unlikely that Apple will issue a factory recall for the LC III—or the related LC III+, or Performa models 450, 460, 466, or 467 with the same board design.

Ever since he was a kid with an allowance, Chris Johnson has collected records. By his estimate, he’s now got more than a thousand of them in his basement. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t add a few more to his collection of soundtracks, folk, jazz and music from Africa. Johnson, of Joliet, was just one of the many vinyl fans at a recent Orland Park Record Collectors show at Georgios Banquets.

An Uptown apartment building that was part of Heartland Housing, a nonprofit developer that went belly up after the pandemic cratered rent collections, could go on the auction block next year. The potential auction has raised fears among residents, including many with disabilities, that a for-profit developer will buy the property and transform it into luxury housing. “I’d have to find another place, and I don’t honestly know where,” said Jeff Martin, a 61-year-old who moved into the Leland at 1207 W.