Iconic Kitsch Shop ‘Yesterday’ Being Replaced by Three-Flat Tomorrow (Not Quite, but Soon)

You can almost see it in my Twitter header image, a ramshackle building sticking out like a jaundiced sore thumb along Addison Street just down from Wrigley Field. The windows are plastered with posters gone nearly as yellow as the facade’s paint, beyond which is a collection of kitsch that looks like something out of Hoarders. Even if you never patronized the place, it was impossible not to recognize Yesterday as an iconic holdover from a previous chapter of Wrigleyville’s history.

But just as the lawn chairs and coolers on the roofs along Waveland and Sheffield have long since past, Yesterday’s tomorrows are running out. As reported by Chicago Cityscape, the building is being razed to make way for a three-flat. If we’re being honest, the only thing even remotely surprising here is that it didn’t happen years ago.

YESTERDAY is being replaced by a three-flat. https://t.co/KhVsLgpk5f pic.twitter.com/ewfw4Q4NOm

— Chicago Cityscape (@ChiBuildings) May 14, 2020

“We’re getting to that area now where we are in our closing stages,” the late Tom Boyle, Yesterdays’ former owner, told DNA Info in 2017. “Of course, a lot of people want the property. They’d knock this down in 10 minutes, and another high-rise would go up.”

Boyle passed away this past December and it was only a matter of time before his yellow labor of love was painted a new color: green. Again, that’s not unexpected on any level and it’s something anyone who’d ever walked past the place was sure should have already happened. That doesn’t mean it’s not a little disappointing all the same.