The girls arrived in their paisley pants suits and bell-bottom cords and over-the-knee socks and mini-skirts and dark pea jackets and long straight hair hanging over one eye.
The boys were in their poor-boy sweaters and hiphugger stove pipes with four
-inch belts and white Levis and striped shirts with button-down collars hidden
under curling locks.
They came, 1,500 of Evanston's teen-age population, for their first look
Tuesday night at their new $400,000 Sarah and Joseph Levy Student Union.
The grand opening of the first such center in this area exclusively for high
schoolers was billed as a Dance.
But most of the mod-clad crowd thronged around the stage in the expensive
hall to watch the Cryan' Shames belt out "I Wanna Meet You" and "Sugar and
Spice" over their importad Norelco mikes and Fender Dual Showman amplifiers.
Others escaped the deafening din around cozy tables in the Old English-style
coffee shop,sipping Cokes and munching hot dogs-boys eyeing girls and vice-
versa (though sometimes it was hard to tell who was which).
It was a real happening,and amid the swirling mass,chunky Joseph Levy,a
white carnation in the lapel of his blue suit,stood and smiled.
To him,it was better than his son's Bar Mitzvah.
"It's a dream come true" said Levy,who donated $175,000 to the project at
Church,Maple,and Railroad in downtown Evanston.
"It's really the kids who did it all," Levy insisted,referring to the
students from Evanston,St.George,Roycemore and Marywood high schools who
shepherded the idea from it's inception two years ago to Tuesday night's blast.
The center will be open after school hours and on weekends to students at
the four high schools who buy memberships at $5 each.
At other times,it will be available to the Evanston parks and recreation
department since the city donated the land. |
