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Wendell Hutson Cholie’s Pizza, 1601 E. 53rd St., has been a staple in Hyde Park ever since Soledad Madriqal and her husband opened it in in 1995. COVID through a small-biz lens Wendell Hutson It wasn’t long ago that Wesley’s Shoe Corral snagged top honors as the No. 1 independent retail shoe store in Illinois for customer service. The store, 1506 E. 55th St., received the award at the 2019 Gold Medal Service Awards sponsored by trade magazine Footwear Insight. (It came in 13th nationally.)  That was before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. Now sales are down 24 percent and the only thing...

No business, and especially no Black-owned business on the South Side of Chicago, makes it 50 years without an interesting history behind it. Wesley's Shoes, 1506 E. 55th St., one of the city's premier independent footwear sellers, owned and operated by native South Sider Bruce Wesley, is no exception. His father, Alvin Wesley, founded the store in Roseland after moving to Chicago from Donaldsonville, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. "He'd always tell the story that he had no shoes when he was young," Wesley said. Not content to work in sugarcane ...