The Container Store, the home-organization retailer that has anchored the edge of Lincoln Park for roughly twenty-five years, is contracting amid a broader restructuring and has taken on the Bed Bath & Beyond name. The two brands — both well past their peaks — are now joined under one roof. To mark the pairing, they have launched a joint promotion: a “Legendary Coupon Hunt and Sweepstakes” dangling a $100,000 “Everything Home Refresh,” running June 22 through July 13 at participating Kirkland’s, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Container Store locations.
For the North Side, the combination lands with some irony. Bed Bath & Beyond’s own Lincoln Park store closed years ago, it stood on Marcey Street, in the development that once held the Goose Island Brewery, on the block carrying the honorary designation Fred Rosen Way. The Container Store, by contrast, has outlasted nearly every big-box neighbor of its era.
The Society has bought enough boxes, baskets, and drawer dividers from the Container Store to take an interest in its future. Several Members plan to visit together, each carrying measurements she is certain are correct.
What the Society mourns — what it has gone on quietly mourning for years — is Sam’s Wine. Every Trixie in the village was married on champagne from Sam’s; this is not a flourish but very nearly a bylaw. The Society declines to recognize whatever the establishment has since been renamed, and maintains, to this hour, its accounts there. Each member of standing keeps a tab, and the Society holds the faithful upkeep of one’s liquor tab to be among the truest measures of character it possesses.
The shopping party will leave time for wine afterward.