Wild Chicago, no. 409

Wild Chicago Episode #409. Host Ben Hollis visits a replica of King Tut's tomb, a store that sells cookie jars, "Dave's Down to Earth Rock Shop," and a model train mogul.

00:11Copy video clip URL Production credits displayed.

00:37Copy video clip URL Ad for the Illinois Lottery, a corporate sponsor of the program.

01:15Copy video clip URL Clips of the episode’s subjects shown over carnivalesque music. A narrator briefly gives depictions of each.

01:58Copy video clip URL Opening to Wild Chicago, montage of Ben Hollis’s introduction and fragmented clips of eclectic scenes across the Chicagoland area.

02:41Copy video clip URL “Money Honey.” The North Shore business “Money Honey” crafts gifts and ornamental items from genuine legal tender, primarily United States currency one dollar bills. The store legally buys sheets of dollar bills sent from the U.S. mint before they have been cut for circulation. The sheets are four dollar bills wide by eight dollar bills long.

05:48Copy video clip URL “Stan’s Basement.” In the basement of his Skokie home, Stan Frishman has designed and built an elaborate model train set. Frishman has worked on the set construction for the past 22 years along with his friend Rusty Waters, an expert in electrition. The set includes around 150 electric switches, 3,000 hand painted figures, and 445 building structures.

09:00Copy video clip URL “Songwriter’s Night.” “At the Tracks” bar (formerly 325 N Jefferson St.) hosts an original songwriters open mic night. The bar invites amateur musicians to the stage to perform songs and other original material written by the musicians. 

13:20Copy video clip URL “Tut’s Tomb.” Off I-94 in Gurnee, IL, on the same grounds as the Gold Pyramid House (a five-story single family home encased in 24 karat gold), is a stylized recreation of King Tut’s tomb. The exhibit attempts to create a facsimile of the tomb located in Luxor, Egypt. A replica of King Tut’s sarcophagus is on display and is tilted open to exposes the recreation of Tut’s mummified body. 

17:07Copy video clip URL “Cookie Jar Joint.” Jazze Junque (formerly 3831 and 3419 N Lincoln Ave.) sells an eclectic range of cookie jars. The store has collected over 350 cookie jars.

20:11Copy video clip URL “Dave’s Rockshop.” At “Dave’s Down to Earth Rock Shop” and basement museum, a family-run store, that sells geological treasures like fossils, crystals, and other rocks and minerals. The family of owners claims to dig up many of the fossils themselves. Some objects range from 60 million to 600 million years old, according to estimates by one of the store’s owners. Hollis also visits their “Prehistoric Life Museum” in the store’s basement. The museum’s youngest fossil is a complete skeleton of the extinct European Cave Bear, about 250,000 years old.

24:35Copy video clip URL “Spray Paint Artist.” A graffiti artist sells his spray paint and graffiti artistry at a store named Figs (formerly 1420 N Milwaukee Ave.). The artist has converted his passion for spray paint stenciling and free form graffiti into designs for clothing and jackets, where customers can even paint their names on the floor.

28:14Copy video clip URL Scenes from the next Wild Chicago episode shown.

28:56Copy video clip URL Ad spot for “Wild Wear.” A short commercial by Hollis for viewers to buy official Wild Chicago merchandise.

29:30Copy video clip URL Main credits shown.

29:50Copy video clip URL Wild Chicago closing graphics.

30:03Copy video clip URL Illinois Lottery advertisement.