Does anyone know of a good place to shop in Chicago besides downtown?

Question

Are there any good areas or streets that have little shops?

Answer 1

There are several places scattered throughout the city that have good boutique shopping.

One of the best areas is around the intersection of Armitage Avenue and Halsted Street in Lincoln Park. There's a few blocks of Armitage that have terrific shops, including Art Effect, Cynthia Rowley, designer consignment stores, some great bath & beauty shops like LUSH and Soapstone, plus Vosges Haut Chocolat and Ethel's Chocolate Lounge, two of Chicago's best gourmet chocolatiers. And more, of course. You can take the Brown Line to Armitage and spend a few hours just browsing around. Lots of good cafes and restaurants, there, too, including Minnie's, Argo Tea and Sai Cafe. Once you finish on Armitage, there's plenty more shops on Halsted Street, just north of Armitage. This is also close to the boutiques on Webster Street, but Webster has a lot fewer shops than Armitage & Halsted.

Bucktown/Wicker Park has some terrific boutiques, too. Take the Blue Line to the Damen station and walk around on North Avenue, Damen and Milwaukee, where there's tons of great restaurants and shops, most of them clustered between North Avenue and Armitage on Damen.

In Lakeview, Southport between Belmont and Irving Park is loaded with terrific boutiques and Chicao's oldest independent theater, the Music Box, which showcases independent films. Julius Meinl Cafe is THE place for a rest stop -- their pastries are amazing! Sensational Bites is a great place for for homey pastries.

Lakeview is also home to other great shopping areas like Boystown, where the best shopping is concentrated on Halsted and Broadway, mostly between Belmont and Addison. Take the Red or Brown Lines to Belmont and walk in a loop: east to Halsted, north on Halsted to Addison, east on Addison to Broadway and south on Broadway back to Belmont.

Lincoln Square is a great neighborhood that has some nice shopping options, too. Take the Brown Line to Western and walk to the nearby pedestrian mall, then south on Lincoln Avenue to Sunnyside. Plenty of good bars and restaurants near here, too.

Andersonville is another option, but I think there's probably slightly less going on in Andersonville than there is in the other neighborhoods. It's also not near the train lines, so it's more time-consuming to get there. The Clark Street bus runs right through the neighborhood.

Answer 2

OK, it's not exactly IN Chicago, but try Evanston. It's easy to get to on the train. Just take the Red Line north all the way to the end of the line, then take the Purple line. Evanston's downtown area is at the Davis street stop. There are a TON of small shops in the downtown area (music stores, indie clothing stores, art supply shops, camping supply shops,book stores, etc.) as well as some chain storesr (Borders, Gap, etc.). In addition, you can try a couple areas south of downtown that have small unique shops as well. The stops at Main and Dempster have small shops like Ten Thousand Villages, a store that specilizes in clothing, jewelery, knicknacks from around the world (they give a portion of the profits back to the places that made them, sort of like a co-op), The Mexican Shop (it sells mostly women's clothing and a few cool trinkets, like cigarette cases with pictures from 50s pulp fiction novels on them - don't know why they call it The Mexican shop, though). There's a store that sells rocks for rock collectors (its like going to a geological museum), a cool pet shop, a non-chain toy store that doesn't sell that corporate Elmo crap, a store that sells old movie posters and magazines, a famous magazine stand that sells periodicals from around the world...you name it. It's an underrated and pretty much undiscovered area. It's about an hour-plus on the train from downtown.

Answer 3

On Halsted between Belden & Armitage, then go West on Armitage - it's a great walk with cute little independent stores.

Also, the 5100 block of N. Clark St. - Andersonville area. Start near there and go up & down for a few blocks.

Skip any & all malls as you will miss the flavor of Chicago.

Answer 4

Each of the neighborhhods have their own little shopping strip. Bucktown, Oldtown, Roscoe Village, there are too many to name.

Answer 5

there are many malls near chicago as well. oak park, evanston, skokie, schaumburg, vernon hills, spring grove just to name a few.