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They have names like The Bag I'm In, a leather goods store, Snug, a bar which is, and Little Pleasures, an ice cream and sweets parlor. Soup's On is a restaurant offering a big bowl of the stuff, a hunk of French bread and coffee for a buck, while Chances R and its sister restaurant across the street (called Across the Street) push a ton of hamburger and give away half a ton of peanuts every week.
A browser on Wells can find everything from sandals to a potty screen for discreet cats ($8). Top jazzmen pull their gigs at The Plugged Nickel and, a few doors down, the hippest folksters fill up cavernous Mother Blues. At the end of the street is the famed Second City, the satiric improvisational theater. And in the next three months, some 32 new places are firmly scheduled to add themselves to the present 110 establishments.
During this summer season, the best ever, as many as 20,000 people a night have drifted up and down Wells trying to sort the clip joints from the first-rate, the gaudy from the genuinely giddy. In fact, that is Old Town's only problem: how to keep the gold-rush atmosphere under control. The Wells Street Association frowns on neon and flashing signs and is trying to get rid of barkers and sidewalk displays. One sidewalk guy can stay, though. Wells Street and Old Town would hardly be the same without their genuine mustachioed Italian hurdy-gurdy man.