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Thursday, January 26, 2006

"Careful and prudent"

A little additional tidbit about the Bremen Bank (that Michael posted a photo of earlier): THEY HAVE A WEBSITE.

I guess it's not too surprising for a bank to have a website, but I've Googled a number of North Broadway businesses in recent days, and most of them don't have websites, let alone ones that actually show a basic amount of design skill. The Near North Riverfront neighborhood itself has a website that has not been updated since 1996. So much of the North Broadway and Near North Riverfront area seems somehow deserted--not empty in the way of an area with a high abandonment rate feels, exactly, but more like the area's inhabited yet no one is ever around. It's particularly strange at night, when even the sparse daytime activity of trucks and loaders and workers is lacking. Everything is humming, yellow and orange and white dawn-to-dusk lights are blaring, here and there is the odd plume of steam rising from a factory, but where did everybody go? I hear a train, but where are all the people? ...so, yeah, finding this website coming out of that place struck me as a little strange.

One of these days, I will have to actually go into Bremen Bank, so I can stop mythologizing the little place and satisfy my curiousity. Maybe then it will seem like the kind of place that should have a website? Perhaps?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bremen a number of branches, so I doubt that the website is really because of the North Broadway branch.

Claire Nowak-Boyd said...

True--they do have quite a few branches, as I learned from the website.

Seeing as how the North Broadway branch is in the part of town historically considered Bremen, I'm guessing it's the original branch--where it all began for them.

It's amazing to me that anything that's around from the old days of Bremen (besides the Mallinckrodt plant!) is still in existence, let alone on the web!