Brick storefronts around six corners, and the corner High Fidelity used for the Double Door in 2000.
What Wicker Park looks like
Six corners is the wide junction where Damen, North and Milwaukee Avenues meet, with crosswalks radiating in six directions. holds the point between Milwaukee and Damen, three storeys of red brick narrowing to a blunt prow under a bracketed cornice. Storefronts wrap its ground floor and continue down both avenues, painted signs and awnings still hanging over several of them.
The Blue Line's Damen station rises on steel trusses a block south of , a lit sign marking the entrance at street level. A few blocks north on Damen Avenue, the old firehouse still shows the words Fire Department and Truck House cut into its stone above a sandwich shop.
Off six corners, the side streets carry brick two and three flats and modest worker cottages set close together. holds the largest of the houses, three storeys of brick and stone behind iron fences, with corner turrets and bay windows breaking the roofline. The rest of the blocks run plainer, red brick pairs with stone lintels and small iron fenced yards.
runs east to west a few blocks south of six corners, its storefronts lower and closer to the sidewalk. A block or two west on , a cream terra cotta facade survives from a 1922 bath house, now a restaurant.
Shot in Wicker Park
High Fidelity used three real storefronts around Wicker Park for Rob Gordon's record store world in 2000. Championship Vinyl's exterior was 1500 North Milwaukee Avenue at Honore Street, and the Rainbo Club at 1150 North Damen Avenue at Haddon Avenue was where Rob makes his tentative proposal. Barry's band plays the Double Door, a few feet south of six corners at 1572 North Milwaukee Avenue.
High Fidelity, 2000
The Double Door
Barry's band performs at the Double Door in the film. The storefront in the photograph still reads Double Door Liquors Inc. Street View
Butler Street runs red brick and sandstone storefronts under decorative cornices for block after block, the same commercial grain as Milwaukee Avenue through six corners. Naser's Tavern and the other surviving corner buildings hold the same worker scale storefronts, turn of the century brick above and glass storefronts below. Lawrenceville climbs a hillside grid rather than Chicago's flat blocks, so a wide shot with a rising street in frame gives it away. Try searching brick storefronts under decorative cornices now.
Riverwest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Riverwest's corner taverns and cream city brick two-flats and cottages sit at the same worker housing scale as the streets behind six corners. Humboldt Boulevard holds the larger houses there, the way Hoyne Street does here. Riverwest's brick runs pale cream rather than red, so a wide shot needs to stay off the nearby river to hold the illusion. Try searching cream city brick corner tavern now.
Northeast Minneapolis in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Northeast Minneapolis has the same scale of modest late Victorian houses and worker cottages from the same period, four storey brick apartment buildings mixed in among them. Onion domed Eastern European church towers break up the skyline in a way six corners does not. Keep the church towers out of frame or use them deliberately, since they give the location away in any wide shot. Try searching modest Victorian worker cottages now.
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