They are everywhere, and if you don`t own one yet, you will. Someone, a well-intentioned niece or nephew, will think you inconsolably square, a know- nothing bumpkin, if you don`t have something, anything, with the Hard Rock logo on it. A Hard Rock monocle, a Hard Rock walker. There is no escape. You`re next. Don`t fight it. Join us, join us, join us. . . .
This ”Invasion of the Body Snatchers” scenario is brought to you by Ontario Street, which has turned into a mecca for everyone eager to prove that they or somebody they know has been to the City of Big Shoulders and has gotten out alive, laden with booty, even. Between the Hard Rock and Ed Debevic`s and Ditka`s, there are enough wearable metropolitan souvenirs to outfit the Red Army, if only they would wise up and get into some capitalist fashion, and who`s to say they won`t?
Besides, some of these joints can be found on more than one continent. There`s already an Ed`s in Osaka, Japan. ”Other than the language,” says Ed`s operations veep Steve Ottman, ”you wouldn`t know the difference.”
Our crack researchers found that Ed Debevic`s and Rich Melman, the mastermind of parent company Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, are to blame for inciting millions of suburban teenagers and their minions to descend on our beloved city like the plague. They come from the frozen wastes of Crystal Lake, the tropic splendor of Homewood and the far-flung Isles of Langerhans to cavort up and down Ontario Street like it was the Yellow Brick Road.
That bit of history is from Ottman, who notes that ”when we opened in 1984, we had this one T-shirt that was turquoise and all it said was `Eat at Ed`s.` And we kind of had it as a joke because we though they were pretty unattractive. We put `em on our cooks and thought no one would ever buy them. ”We put a couple of T-shirts at the host stand. And it turned out that people went crazy over `em. Maybe because they`re so simple. And a little ugly.”
Little did the simple folk at Ed`s know that thousands of miles away in London, Hard Rock field marshal Peter Morton was preparing his own high-concept invasion of Chicago.
”We started merchandising from Day One,” says Hard Rock owner Morton, who opened his first cafe in London in 1971 before bringing a Hard Rock here in 1985. ”The T-shirt was first. Then the sweatshirt. And so on. Now we sell about 3 or 4 million T-shirts a year.” Which, he notes, means ”the Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt is the most famous and largest selling restaurant T-shirt in the world.”
Morton had been struck by a blinding insight: Why not put the Hard Rock logo on anything that`s not a mammal, and then sell it? There is, after all, a customer born every minute.
Now you`ve got your Hard Rock pin for a fin all the way up to your black leather bomber jacket for $190. What makes this jacket so distinctive? The logo, you cretin.
Dozens of items, including beach towels, Zippo lighters, watches, hats-whatever doesn`t have a heartbeat and hair-is splashed with the famous name and sold in every Hard Rock location from London to Los Angeles, San Diego to Sydney.
”I`ve already decided on a few new items for `89,” Morton said, refusing to divulge what they are. ”We can`t really discuss it yet. We want to make sure we`re the first with what we do.”
Morton has an entire merchandising department utilizing marketing analyses and other esoteric sciences to figure out what people will buy next. One thing`s for sure: The line at the souvenir window at the Chicago Hard Rock is at least as long as that for a table. Hey, how about selling food?
Down at Debevic`s, things were proceeding at a less cut-throat corporate pace, according to Ottman. ”The T-shirts took off,” he said, and where they came down is anybody`s guess. ”From there we started to add different things: sweatshirts, Ed`s sunglasses.
”The newest is a letterman`s jacket with leather sleeves. It`s not moving that quickly, but I think it`s the price.” Oh, really? ”It`s a little expensive-$175. It kills us to sell something like that, especially at Ed`s, but our markup is actually very small. We do little better than break even, but we had a lot of requests from our staff.”
According to another employee, though, he`s lying about what the latest product is. The newest item is really a Whoopee cushion, which the employee insisted on demonstrating, over and over again. It works really good.
Ed`s and its mastermind, Melman, go about adding to their splendiferous array of witty Whoopee cushions and T-shirts that say ”Buurp!” on them by a rather more democratic method. Said Ottman, ”There`s a lot of people who just ask for something that we might not have, plus we get feedback from our employees as to what they`re hearing from their customers.”
Hence the Whoopee cushion.
And while Ottman toted up annual T-shirt sales in Chicago of a paltry 25,000 a year, some of these newer items have a kind of demented flair, in keeping with the fast and loose atmosphere. Some of the things you can ”Get in Here,” as the sign outside has it, include the newest T-shirt, with a comely rendering of a bouffanted waitress with sunglasses-presumably Ed`s-barking out, ”Be nice . . . or get out of here!” Sentiments certainly in keeping with the elegant and gracious service you might expect from a multimillion-dollar international greasy spoon.
Ed`s has its own $2 yo-yo, which oddly enough says ”Ed`s” on it. There are some swell bowling shirts, pins and buttons for a dollar.
By the time Bears coach Mike Ditka got into the act with his eponymous restaurant in 1986, the writing on the wall looked something like a thoroughly graffitied New York subway car, and it said: Merchandise or Die.
In true Grabowski fashion, Ditka went for it and almost got both. He merchandised, sold pork chops, did endorsements, found time to make the playoffs three years in a row and even brought on a heart attack. Now that`s living.
This can only lead to speculation that the latest Ditka stuff will include Ditka`s Pacemakers, Ditka`s hospital gowns, Ditka`s Oat Bran and Fish Oil Breakfast Snacks.
Well, we can dream, can`t we? As it stands, you can get a Ditka`s rhinestone pin for $25; Ditka`s autobiography for $20; videos by Ditka, including something called ”Coach Talk,” which, we presume, contains language unsuitable for a family newspaper, the sort of gruff patter that makes 300-pound linemen flinch and weep on the sidelines and wish they were loading bricks for a living. There`s the ”Iron Mike” video. Down the road 20 years or so, perhaps we`ll see the ”Iron Lung” video. Go for it.
Oh, there are plenty of T-shirts and sweatshirts and caps at Ditka`s, not to mention outdated, pre-coronary buttons that say ”Ditka`s Pork Chops
(Number) 1.”
We were going to end our souvenir tour of Ontario Street by including stuff from the Limelight, but the festive, pretentious playground of the stars recently went under, the victim of its own unutterable coolness. Something called ”Peggy Sue`s Boutique” was supposed to be opening at the Ontario Street McDonald`s, but things went mysteriously awry and there`s nothing you can buy there, save food.
So for now, apart from every corner beer-joint that sells its own T-shirt, the road to Oz passes through the domains of Ditka, Morton and Melman. Go for it. Get in here. Get in line.
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Ed Debevic`s is at 640 N. Wells St. (on the corner of Ontario); 664-1707. The Hard Rock Cafe is at 63 W. Ontario St.; 943-2252. You can find Ditka`s at 223 W. Ontario St.; 280-1790.
