- Rah!

Is that like a bear?

I'm trying to do a bear, because we're loaded for bear with great stories, which we'll show you in just a second.

- Well, I do know that you're unbearably irritating today, but you gotta see this.

- Rah!

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) - What is with all the growling?

Are you hungry or something?

- I'm just excited about a story about the black bear, the one at Intuition Coffee and Juice.

- Oh.

- It's a Peoria icon and it recently got a makeover and a new tongue.

- [Julie] A favorite Peoria business has a new look and so does a popular mascot.

Intuition Coffee + Juice change things around at what used to be Thirty-Thirty Coffee.

Meantime, the iconic black bear, well, it's not really a black bear, but we'll get to that in just a minute.

- There's just something about a nine-foot bear I guess that just gets people excited.

- [Julie] Coffee also gets people excited, as Paluska well knows.

In 2011, he was one of the three originators of Thirty-Thirty.

It set up shop in the historic Kickapoo Building along Peoria's Main Street.

- And at the time, we were really the only specialty coffee shop in Peoria, I would say.

And so, we were kind of ahead of the curve and it was really special to be able to bring that to Peoria.

- [Julie] Back then, the menu included specialty coffees plus a few pastries.

The shop was doing well by 2016 when he and his wife, Cammy, decided to leave Peoria with their growing family as Paluska worked in the coffee trade in Idaho and Utah, but they decided to return to Peoria this year after Thirty-Thirty shutdown.

Intuition looks partly the same, but several changes cater to their customers, including a bright greeting.

- You walk right in and we have both the barista and like the hospitality rep right at the front.

So, when you come in, you're gonna be greeted immediately.

The flow is a lot nicer.

People can be welcoming when they come in.

- [Julie] The menu is greatly expanded to include healthy bowls, toasts, and salads.

- We have a lot more food, so big, healthy food options.

- [Julie] But one thing hasn't changed, the black bear.

In Peoria, there are a few business mascots that are bigger in size, recognition, or history.

- It's just kind of a special thing for the community and that's kind of what we're kind of leaning into a little bit.

- [Julie] The bear first came to Peoria in 1970, the year that Jumer's Castle Lodge opened.

It's also the year that owner Jim Jumer bagged a bear in Russia near the Arctic Circle.

But though the bear is black, it's not a black bear, it's a polar bear.

But why is the polar bear black?

At the taxidermist, Jumer had it dyed that color so that the new mascot would be a perfect match for the hotel's bar, known as the Black Bear Lounge.

But the Jumer family got out of the hotel business in 2009 and the bear went into storage.

Two years later, Paluska began the process to rent the Kickapoo Building owned by the Jumers.

As they got things worked out, he had a key question about the old Jumer's Castle Lodge.

- I had asked, "Hey, where's the old bear?

Everyone loves the bear."

And they said, "Well, it's just sitting in the warehouse right now.

We don't really have a home for him."

- [Julie] But Paluska did at Thirty-Thirty.

It soon became a focal point for guests.

The bear got photograph perhaps more than any other two-legged creature in Peoria by longtime locals as well as big name visitors.

- Even small children to adults, you know, it's like, wow, this is a cool, I think most people know that it's got a storied history, so there's something special about it.

But we have pictures of celebrities that would come in on tour and they're getting their picture with the bear.

- [Julie] Just before the grand opening of Intuition, the bear got an overdue makeover.

- During that time, we knew that he needed some work anyway, 'cause he kind of sits in the sun.

People were kind of grabbing his paws and his claws and he just needed a little refresh.

So, found the taxidermist that took him in and patched up some of his fur, put some new claws on him, and they actually added a tongue.

- [Julie] You heard that right?

The bear got a new tongue, but it's a prosthetic.

No actual animal tongues were harmed in the remaking of the Jumer bear.

- He didn't have a tongue for a while and now he's got a tongue in there.

So, he is kind of looks a little more ominous.

- [Julie] Meanwhile, the bear even inspired the Intuition logo.

It depicts the constellation Ursa Major or Great Bear.

- We kind of made the bear part of the logo.

He's such an iconic figure for Peoria.

It's really just kind of part of this whole story.

So, we incorporated him into our logo to kind of, you know, keep him sort of a permanent residence.

- [Julie] Indeed, the bear remains in his special spot, just inside the door, waiting to greet the next visitor.

- He was at Thirty-Thirty for 12 years and you know, now he's here at the Intuition Bear and he'll be here for a long time.

- That does sound yummy, but I wanna show you a place that is a playground where kids can get outside and enjoy the environment.

- Speaking of the environment, though it's wintertime, the Peoria Ag Lab is working on a new way to repel mosquitoes.

We'll take you into Ag Lab to show you what they're doing.

Also, 8-Track Time Machine will take you to some of the strangest places where rock all-stars have recorded some of the most classic albums of all time.

- But first, let's sit and sip and take you out to a winery that's literally kind of in the middle of nowhere, but it's getting national recognition.

- [Phil] Brad and Sarah Beam make wine, and they also make friends.

Both pursuits are vital at Spoon River Junction Winery.

Though just three years old, the mom and pop business won prestigious awards at a recent high-profile competition in California's wine making country.

The Beams are happy about that, but they're even happier about meeting new people and sharing a glass of wine, especially in a rural area, not historically known for wine making.

- What we're trying to do is help people connect with us and the lot worst thing in the world you could do is try to make yourself this big intimidating presence when really we just want people to come in and try new things.

- [Phil] The Beams grew up in Fulton County, he in Cuba, she in Canton.

They married 14 years ago and lived in Peoria where Sarah worked as a physician's assistant.

Meantime, Brad was on the road a lot as a representative for the Illinois Grape Growers and Vintner's Association, helping wineries start new ventures.

A few years back, the couple got the hankering to start their own winery, perhaps in their old stomping grounds.

- We thought this might be a good way to actually come back and reconnect with our roots.

- [Phil] They especially were drawn back to the rural intersection of Route 9 and 97.

A key crossroads that long has hosted a landmark building.

- It was called Teddy Bear Junction when I was growing up and it was the place you'd come for cheap coffee and pancakes, you know, and before that it was a mechanic's garage, very no frills.

- From my childhood, I would come here with my dad and he would meet with farmers.

He taught ag locally and so it just had more of a nostalgic appeal to me.

I thought it was kind of crazy, but I thought it might just be the perfect place.

- [Phil] The location seemed solid, but the building looked bleak.

- Yeah, it wasn't really run down so much.

It was just kind of been vacant for so long.

It didn't have a lot of TLC in it, you know.

- [Phil] With plenty of sweat equity, they stripped off layers of old paint and polished up the place.

- So, most of the work we had to do to renovate it was just taking it back to its bones and starting fresh.

- [Phil] It looked like a throwback mechanic shop.

- This rack up here, I think they held like belts.

I think that was a belt rack from the old auto garage.

More like, just like most of Fulton County, hard work and knows the grindstone kind of folks.

And so, to me that represents very clearly what we're all about.

And so, why mess with it too much?

- [Phil] They tried the same low-key approach with wine.

- For us, I don't care if you've been, you know, if you're a sommelier from Chicago or if you're a corn and bean farmer from around the way, it's important that you love it on your own terms.

So, we're trying to make things that I think require a little extra level of adventure.

- [Phil] Sales keep growing as do friendships.

- Wanna keep this as a place that people love coming to and coming back to.

Most of our customers are not just customers anymore, they're friends and a lot of family.

You know, we're very close.

- [Phil] The inventory includes a steady rotation of about 10 wines plus occasional experimentations.

One is the Forgottonia white vermouth.

It's named after the wink wink nickname of the region, which is often an afterthought in politics and economics.

- So, this area from Fulton County to McDonough County has a really rich history of the Forgottonia region.

So, we knew that we wanted to make something that was special and we had an opportunity to do that with some local grapes.

So, we made a small batch sweet vermouth.

- [Phil] In cocktails, it does much more than standard white vermouth known mostly for its role in martinis.

- We knew early on that it was gonna be special.

It's very honeyed, it's very silky.

It has this beautiful, almost luscious mouth feel to it.

- [Phil] Beyond cocktails, and remarkably for a vermouth, it stands up well on its own.

- We drink it straight, we love it chilled, we love it over ice.

- [Phil] It was also loved at the prestigious 2023 International Eastern Wine Competition, which honored no other Illinois winery, but Forgottonia white vermouth was named Best of Show and Best of Class for vermouths.

- I believe they called it the stunning and beautiful.

Those two may have been together, it may have been stunningly beautiful.

- [Phil] News of the award has sparked newcomers to visit Spoon River Junction Winery, a welcome development for Brown and the Beams.

- And we've made so many friends along the way and have built true, meaningful friendships here.

And it's special, it's local, we're all local.

We believe in what we're doing.

- [Phil] Mix that all together and they feel it's a winning recipe for continued growth and success.

- As long as we can keep that sense of community together, it's hard to say where we'll go really.

- [Lisa] Cheers.

- Isn't that interesting?

- Yes.

- Do you know what those are called?

- Bulbs.

- Bulbs.

- So you can take the bulb and that would plant like a whole new one of them.

- [Mark] On this windy morning in normal fourth graders at Colene Hoose Elementary are digging up Canna lily bulbs to replant in the spring.

It's not unusual to find plant boxes at central Illinois schools, but this area is just a small part of a newer concept not seen anywhere in our area.

This is a 16-acre natural playground surrounding Colene Hoose.

Charlie Jobson seen here digging with kids at the grand opening in October donated more than $5 million to make his dream a reality.

- If everyone remembers Colene Hoose, the space around us was open.

And so, his love of Colene Hoose and knowing his mom's love of Colene Hoose, this wasn't a space that he knew that he could build something like this.

- [Mark] There are things to climb and swing on that you would expect to see at a typical playground, but that's where the similarities end.

Exploring and learning about the environment is what kids do while also getting exercise and blowing off steam.

- I think it gives them a more, a deeper understanding of the world around us.

I feel like it's super important for them to apply things that we learned in the classroom outside of the classroom.

And so, the playground in general has been wonderful for that.

And so we've come out here a couple of times and we made leaf structures.

So, they had to come out and pick a bunch of leaves and make them into certain animals and use their imagination to kind of figure out, you know, what animal they might see with the leaves that they pick up.

And so, we've done a couple things like that, which has been fun for them.

- [Mark] There are also plenty of places for kids to gather and socialize like this amphitheater or the alphabet labyrinth where they can explore.

The Beaver Lodge is a favorite for kids to play on, and the natural instruments are hard to pass up.

(upbeat tribal music) (upbeat tribal music) Some students even got the chance to leave a lasting legacy as part of the mosaic river.

- You can find fish of different designs and students actually got to design those.

So, in art class, they were able to draw that design and then they took those drawings and used it to develop those mosaic tiles.

So, it's really neat to see students find their fish that they designed and see it there in real life.

- [Mark] As part of the Jobson Family Foundation gift Unit 5 hired a horticulturist to take care of the playground.

That includes more than 1,000 trees, shrubs, plants, and prairie grass native to our area.

- The little kids just go crazy when they're out here like touching and feeling plants and digging in the soil, digging in the paths and pulling at grass, and you know, things we did when we were kids.

But it's interesting on weekends I see like junior high and high school kids come out here and it's fun to watch them like put their phone away and like go play.

So, like they just kind of forget about that world that they're so engaged in and like actually look at things.

(uplifting music) - [Julie] Welcome to a room full of killers.

Here you'll find mosquitoes.

In America, they're mostly a warm weather nuisance, but globally, they're lethal, responsible for more deaths than any other creature.

And the toll is rising.

And here meet Dr. Will Hay and Dr. Lina Weiler.

They're scientists with the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, commonly known as The Ag Lab.

They're trying to kill mosquitoes and they enjoy their work.

- This excites me and Will actually, because it is very interesting.

- [Julie] The Ag Lab is one of just four research labs under the US Department of Agriculture.

At the Peoria location, about 200 scientists work to improve farm production, food safety, and public health.

Dr. Hay looks for new uses for common plants.

He was especially intrigued by plants in the mustard family.

- And they contain plant defense compounds that when the plant is damaged, then they'll be released to try to prevent the insect or pathogen from further damaging the plant.

- [Julie] Those compounds can be found as byproducts of mustard family plants processed for other uses.

For instance, there's pennycress, a common cover crop in Illinois whose oil is used for biofuel.

- And we can utilize that byproduct or waste product to actually target pests and utilize the natural defenses of the plant against human diseases or problems.

- [Julie] At least that was Hay's working theory, but there had almost been no prior research to that in any place on the planet.

So, he got together with Dr. Weiler, who studies insects, especially safe insecticides.

- We do collaborations a lot.

And since my research, my focus, is utilizing natural products that they call as eco-friendly to the environment.

- [Julie] They decided to study four members of the mustard family, white mustard, brown mustard, pennycress, and garden cress.

The latter of which you will find in many salads.

Each showed to be effective in killing mosquito larvae.

Garden cress was the most lethal, killing 95% of larvae within 24 hours and 100% in 48 hours.

That's bad news mosquitoes, but good news for the rest of us.

- The biggest problem with mosquitoes is that they are expanding in their geographic territory, even here in the US.

- [Julie] There are two reasons for the mosquito surge.

One, is climate change and it has expanded their territory as warmer weather means more places for them to thrive.

For instance, Dengue Fever once purely a tropical disease, has now moved into Florida.

And last summer, malaria was reported in Florida, Texas and Maryland plus mosquitoes have evolved to elude traditional insecticides.

- We are looking on what natural products that are considered eco-friendly that we could use for against mosquitoes to control.

- [Julie] Eventually, private companies could use the Ag Lab research to develop new insecticides and repellents.

That would be a boon to Illinois farmers.

Their mustard family byproducts would no longer be worthless.

- Right, it's something that doesn't have a secondary use currently or it has minimal value to the farmer.

This way we can get a value added to the farmer and an additional utility for that waste or byproduct.

- [Julie] It's exciting stuff, especially finding a new way to fight the world's deadliest killer.

But that's the legacy of The Ag Lab, which saved the world in World War II by finding a way to mass produce penicillin.

So, why not save the world again with safely killing mosquitoes?

It's enough to make a couple of buttoned down scientists get excited.

- When it works, yes, of course, we are so happy.

Oh, it works, because it's kind of like a trial and error.

There are times, and then if it doesn't work, why it doesn't work, there should be something.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to offbeat Worth Township, Illinois in my garage for another edition of 8-Track Time Machine where we delve into the songs and the stories of the greatest era of pop music, the 8-track era.

Now, why did I call it offbeat?

'Cause today it's offbeat, 'cause we're gonna talk about offbeat places where albums have been recorded.

Now, what am I talking about?

Most albums, of course, are recorded in studio, and sometimes artists do live albums, but then there are other places that for whatever reason, maybe good, maybe bad, that for artists have chosen to record their albums.

So today, 8-Track Time Machine presents the strangest places where albums have been recorded.

(gentle music) Boston's first album was recorded almost entirely in Foxglove Studios in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Now, if that sounds impressive, here's what that really was.

That was the basement for the rental house of guitarist Tom Sholtz.

And it was jammed in next to a furnace behind the the ratty paneling.

It wasn't exactly a premier studio, but here's the thing, Sholtz, he was MIT-trained as an engineer, and he was a perfectionist when it came to putting music together.

So, although this place was really cramped and dank and stinky and janky, he really knew how to pull the best sounds out of the recordings.

So, with all that going on, what came out of that for on this debut album were so many hits.

It was almost a perfect album.

There was "Smoking", there was "Long Time", and there was this song.

♪ Walking away (upbeat music) - And to today, that album has sold more than 17 million copies, which ain't bad for a shabby basement.

(gentle music) You've heard of yacht rock, right?

Well, this is kind of a yacht rocky approach to an album.

When Wings put out 1978s "London Town".

Paul McCartney realized his band was falling apart.

So he is like, how do I keep together those folks who are still with Wings?

So, he got 'em all together on a boat in the Virgin Islands, and that's where they recorded.

Now, that's an odd place to record an album on a boat, right?

But it kind of worked.

It gave kind of this laid back relaxed vibe and everything went together really, really well.

They all got along and things sounded pretty good.

Now, there was only one hit on the album.

I think you'll know this one.

♪ With a little luck, we can help it out ♪ ♪ We can make this whole damn thing work out ♪ - But even though it didn't have a lot of hits, it sold a lot, went to number two on the US charts, and to this day, it's known as a pretty solid album.

All aboard is coming aboard for an interesting recording experiment.

(upbeat music) So, Brian Wilson's eccentricities have always been well known in the recording industry, right?

But even by his standards, things got a lot weirder for "Good Vibrations".

And after it was done, critics were raving.

Like this is a revolutionary album.

The layering of this and the sound of that.

And they were just gaga about what it sounded like.

So, how did Wilson achieve all these revolutionary sounds?

Well, he just kind of made things up.

Like he used a swimming pool for an echo chamber.

Hmm?

And he also used a shower stall as a recording studio.

He just had the guys pile in there and sing.

And fans loved it too.

It shot up to number one really quick, and it was the first Beach Boys single to hit 1 million in sales.

Think about that the next time you're singing in the shower.

(upbeat music) - It is barely possible to have a better episode than that one.

I don't think it's possible.

- We'll give it a try next time.

Tongues and all on.

- "You Gotta See This".

(upbeat music) (beep) - Ah!

- Three, two, and one.

(Julie laughing) I don't know why I did that weird.

(beep) - Rah!

- Rah!

- Look at my shadow.

Rah!

- So scary.

(beep) - Yum.

(beep) Three, two, one.

That sounds yummy.

- But fun.

- Yeah, ugh, gross.

No, we're not doing that.

Three, two, and one.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)