Pekin

Thank you for joining us and welcome to today's story.

Well, on a recent podcast, we told you the story of the Arlington, which is in downtown Pekin on the corner of 5th and Court Street.

Well, we'll move a block to the west at the corner of 4th and Court Street, and that is the story of yesterday's Bar and Grill.

And I'm joined here by the owners, Ryan and Joelle Master, who brought their six-month-old darling little girl, Charlie, who now officially will be my youngest guest.

So we'll...

Get into that, but we can't do an interview about a historic downtown building without talking about a little bit of the history.

Cool thing is, in Pekin, if you want to know the story about anything, you can get online and go from the history room at the Pekin Library.

And a guest on this podcast often is Jared Olar, and you can't bring up a topic with a historic perspective without Jared having some kind of input because that's what he does professionally.

...

when you're walking through a line engaging with the fan base, if you are engaging with, uh, your, your Eastern high school or, uh, w- uh, where did you go, Pekin? Uh, high school fan base and you're going through...

What's Pekin's, uh, uh, mascot?

Musketeer.

All right, if you're going through the musketeer walk, and y- you don't think you can listen to a little music before you get to the musketeer walk and maybe after, before you're out there on the field running around for miles on end?

Let's get started with project updates.

Officials in Tazewell County, Illinois marked the topping out of the county's new 87,000-square-foot Justice Center Annex in downtown Pekin.

Designed by Wold Architects and Engineers and built by P.J. Hoare, the $43.5 million facility will initially include three courtrooms, consolidated county offices, and an underground tunnel for secure transport from the jail.

The annex will separate public, judicial, and in-custody circulation while allowing future courtroom expansion.

The Havana Ducks were frequent visitors to the state finals.

Pekin, another central Illinois town with a strong basketball program, was about an hour away near Peoria.

They played in a different league.

From the high school's founding two years after the Civil War, Pekin's football team had used an offensive nickname rooted in a mistaken association between Pekin, Illinois and Peking, China.

They called themselves, forgive me.

the Pekin Chinks, and their logo was a red dragon.

Student mascots performed at games in stereotypical Chinese attire, and the community seemed perfectly comfortable letting an abominable racial slur represent its young scholars until 1981, when they officially became the Pekin Dragons.

When I started to work on this podcast, I debated adding Joseph Howard Berry Jr., subject of part five of this podcast, as he was far better known as a football player and a track and field star.

You know, like the Arkansas-style J-frame that everybody talks about.

I mean, that should really be called an Illinois-style J-frame because that all came from the P.S. Holt Company in Pekin, Illinois.

Wow.

Now, when would that have been on the map? Early

I guess summer is unofficially over with school back in session and everybody getting ready for their new routine to go forward for the next year or so.

But in Pekin here, our minds are starting to shift towards the most fun event of all, and that's the annual Pekin Marigold Festival, world-renowned.

And when this is being released...

Uh, and the 31st will be the first clue for the even more famous Jimmy John's Marigold medallion hunt.

So this is your festival, Megan, so tell us a little bit about it, a little bit about the theme and the Grand Marshal and those type of things.

So this year's theme is Marigold Roots and Country Boots.

We decided to kind of, you know, work towards going back to, you know, the roots of Pekin and the roots of the Marigold Festival.

And, you know, it's a community-wide festival.

I think Bebo West East, they're going to be okay.

I mean, they got Pekin coming up, Altoff, Edwardsville.

I mean, really, the first half of their schedule is the toughest part of their schedule.

So, you know, we'll see how they surface.

Way out in the stakes past the cemetery, off on a side road that nobody's used for 20, 30 years.

And I'd done all my shopping in Peoria instead of here in Pekin.

And I never went downtown for anything.

So, nobody knew I was here.

Over a board fence, and I could hear the sheriff yelling right behind me.

And the machine was ticking and ticking, and I was wishing it was 8 o'clock, and wondering what had happened when I did come back to 1897, and then...

And I was dodging an automobile in a street in Pekin, Illinois, and 1947.

Yes.

Open Meetings Act is one very important part of it, and there's others.

So I thought to talk about that in a little more detail would be the city attorney for the city of Pekin.

Jim Vasselli is here.

Jim, welcome.

Also, I think transparency is served by following parliamentary procedure.

And we can talk about that if you want to.

Well, I know that oftentimes being a member of the park board here in Pekin for over three decades, there's oftentimes that our attorney keeps us on point because it's natural just in visiting a topic to want to veer off in a different direction.

If it's not publicly posted on the agenda, it's like, guys, you can't go there.