Latest news with #TwiceAsNice
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Entrepreneurs flock to Freeport for affordable real estate and business perks
FREEPORT, Ill. (WTVO) — If you visit Freeport in the next month, don't be surprised if you see a few new businesses. The Pretzel City is welcoming several new businesses in the coming weeks. Carmela Jackson celebrated the opening of her Twice As Nice consignments store on Friday. 'It's really a good time for business owners. I do see a lot of businesses opening right now, and I just think it's a really good time. People are supporting small businesses more now than ever,' she said. Freeport is seeing an influx of new business, according to Greater Freeport Partnership business engagement director Bill Clow. 'The fact that we're looking at, I think, six or seven scheduled ribbon cuttings in June. We've had several in the last couple of months already. I think that speaks highly of the business climate,' he said. Clow said affordable real estate and ample opportunity has attracted entrepreneurs from Beloit to Chicago, who want to open shops in Freeport. 'Part of it is one of the things that both the city and the Greater Freeport Partnership have been doing is trying to get the word out about the advantages of Freeport and Stephenson County and, you know, affordable real estate, business friendly climate and trying to get, you know, make it easy for businesses to start,' Clow said. One of the new businesses is Pretzel City Barbershop. Owner Jaime Rivas said he has seen the city's growth firsthand. 'I can tell you, since I moved here four years ago, it's been busier. More people are in Freeport, and businesses will come with time, but they are starting to come back to Freeport. You know, I'm excited to see more people come in, and it's just exciting, you know, to see how far we can get,' he said. Other businesses opening soon include a shoe store, credit union, and auto parts seller. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Guardian
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The big picture: the jubilation of clubbing in 90s London
Ewen Spencer took this picture at a Sunday club night called Twice As Nice at The End in London's West Central Street in 1999. He'd been a regular there back in the days when it was held at the Colosseum in Vauxhall, south of the river. The move to the West End signalled that its garage music was becoming more a mainstream part of culture. Spencer, who grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne, had been documenting underground party nights for a decade by then for magazines such as the Face and i-D. He was a soul boy at heart, and saw in garage culture similar attractions: 'It was working-class kids dressing up for a big night out,' he recalls, 'quite different from acid house, for example.' Spencer's picture is included in a new Hayward Gallery touring exhibition After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024. Spencer was influenced by north-east based photographers such as Chris Killip and Graham Smith; he wanted to make authentic pictures that captured 'some of the moves and female-heavy love and jubilation of those nights', he says. On the particular night he took this photograph, he'd arrived with a different kind of energy. 'I'd been set upon by a couple of guys in Essex Road, while waiting for the 73 bus,' he remembers. 'We had a fight in the middle of the street, stopped the traffic. That wasn't that unusual at the time. We were laughing while having a real go at each other and I came out of it all right. I ran and jumped on a bus going the wrong way, and – classic London – no one said a word.' Of all the pictures he took in those years, this is one of his favourites. 'It's so intimate,' he says. 'I'm trying to work out a way to have it blown up really huge and have it on my living-room wall.' After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024 is at Stills, Edinburgh, 21 March to 28 June
