Crain’s has had an odd number of articles on neighborhood retail in recent months, capped (it would seem) by a feature by Sandra Jones on the chain invasion now in progress:

The foray has already begun, with lesser-known chain stores opening on Milwaukee Avenue. Urban Outfitters, the 73-store clothing chain aimed at twentysomething metropolitan hipsters, plans to set up shop on Milwaukee this summer � just down the street from American Apparel, the rapidly expanding Los Angeles-based fashionable T-shirt chain that bowed in November. Dutch jeans boutique G-Star Denim and New York’s funky apparel store Scoop, both small but growing chains, also plan to open stores on Milwaukee later this year…

Urban Outfitters has been looking for a site in Wicker Park and Bucktown for the past four years, says Tedford Marlow, president of the Philadelphia chain, whose parent also owns Anthropologie.

Well, there goes the neighborhood. (Again.) I’m a bit surprised about Gap or J. Crew, since they’re both serving the neighborhood just fine from locations just across the river. Gap even closed two locations in Lincoln Park (Armitage/Halsted and Clark/Fullerton) to shift over to North/Sheffield.

Update 2 May: stumbled across Scoop in the Meatpacking District last week and, well, ugh: it’s like Barney’s Co-op, down to the holier-than-thou staff, lack of inventory, and $300 sun dresses.

Also, the best line from “Prairie Home Companion” yesterday:
“I suffer from an addiction to cheese, as a result of which I must maintain a cheese-free home and avoid any contact with those who have eaten cheese in the past three weeks. This has made for a lonely life…”