>> Male Announcer: This week on "Friends and Neighbors", >> We've been making chocolate bars as kind of a hobby for six, seven years, you know, started and stopped and started and stopped.

And that's one of the beauties of having your dream is that it might be put on the shelf for a little bit, but you can always dust that off and revitalize your dream.

Me and my wife couldn't have done this eight years ago.

>> Woman: Some of the cars that are here are what are considered vintage.

There's a wide variety of generation here and appreciation for the beauty of them, the machinery of them, and the fact that they still can bring back those memories from those decades.

>> Man: There's well over a dozen, one of a kind games here.

We never want to rotate cabinets off of the floor because so many of these games disappeared from gamers for decades, and they kind of put it on the floor and then take it back away.

And that wasn't what we are all about.

>> Man: We work really hard because we know these people they're coming here on vacation and we want them to have a good time.

And we want them to enjoy themselves.

Very fortunate to do what I do every day.

>> Man: So on Thanksgiving day of 1919, the Canton bulldogs of Ohio traveled across Indiana for an exhibition game against the Hammond Pros.

And I don't think anybody realized the significance of that game because 12,000 people paid to get in to see this exhibition game.

>> Dale: Doing as much as you can, as quickly as you can is important to me.

Life is short and the earlier we get started helping our community, the better off our community will be.

>> I have a very strong connection to other students.

Everyone makes an effort to help each other.

I'll remember the feeling of being here.

The feeling that I was a part of a family.

>> Shopping for fruits and vegetables in the Strack & Van Til produce department is a feast for the senses.

With produce picked at the peak of freshness from apples and avocados to pineapples and peppers, treat yourself to the best quality fruits and vegetables.

Find them at your local Strack & Van Til store.

>> Male Announcer: Support for programming of Lakeshore PBS comes in part from a generous bequest of the estate of Marjorie A.

Mills whose remarkable contribution will help us keep viewers like you informed, inspired, and entertained for years to come.

(jazzy music) >> This is a Bowler Man Confections, hidden in the alleyway alongside art space building in Michigan city, Indiana.

I met my wife in pastry school 16 years ago.

Ever since then, it's been a dream to have our own bakery confection shop.

Through the skin of our teeth, we've done that.

We've built it up from our bootstraps and it's everything we wanted it to be.

Confection's usually a small treat.

It doesn't have to be relegated to just chocolate, small cakes or petit fours something like that can fall under the idea of confections.

We're trying to bring that elevated sense of flavors without having to pay for the elevated aspects of an overly designed product.

A little more rustic, but still beautiful.

You can come in once a week and get your favorite turtle or your favorite Bon Bon bar.

Instead of saying, you know what?

Because of the price point, I can only have it for birthdays and Christmas.

So I'm trying to create something that's a little more of an everyday treat.

Initially, you might eat with your eyes, but the moment you eat it, then it becomes the make or break moment.

We can get into conversations about this cocoa bean, that cocoa bean, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It boils down to that one singular moment.

When you take that bite, did it bring you happiness?

Were you happy?

(upbeat music) The best part about having my own place, It's having that true sense of a family bakery, all of us are pulling this together.

I've had two great jobs that paid well and took care of me.

And I've lost both those jobs because of the pandemic.

I figured, you know, I can bring what I've always envisioned, not what somebody else has envisioned and succeed or fail, just as much as they're.

Probably more work that you have to do for your own place, but it's more enjoyable because you're creating something of your own.

Being born and raised here, That's a pride too, is to create something for the community.

It's truly a labor of love in here from me and my wife to create the shop.

I wake up, I want to get to the shop.

I want to start making again, start creating.

When it comes to the creation of the different products, a lot of it has to do in the beginning is to respect the basics.

And over the years, you experiment with different flavors to see how well they go together.

And then you can look at two different things, completely different from each other, but there's a lot of similarities in the flavor profiles that make up the product.

So you can kind of see how they would go together in a way.

Sometimes the opposites of each other do go together because they compliment each other because of the opposites in which they are.

The bar that we create is a chocolate that we blend with olive oil.

And it has a little bit of salt and pepper on it.

And the idea of that was I wanted to create a bar that went well with a charcuterie board.

So this bar here, you could actually take a little chunk of Parmesan cheese and put it on the chocolate bar and eat it, and it would go really well together.

It's a trusting of your instincts to experiment and then not being afraid that if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, it's fine.

You know, if, if I put that Parmesan on the chocolate and I ate it and it tasted horrible, like, okay, it tasted bad.

Next thing, let's try it again.

We've been making the chocolate bars as kind of a hobby for six, seven years, and that's kind of, you know, started and stopped and started and stopped.

And then that's one of the beauties of having your dream is that it might be put on the shelf for a little bit, but you can always dust that off and revitalize your dream.

Me and my wife couldn't have done this eight years ago.

I want them to leave, but just a sense of happiness.

You know, it's really simple that way.

It's not about thinking about high end, low end this or that, it's enjoying that moment.

And if that moment is good enough, then you'll want to come back to that again.

(Classic Rock n' Roll Music) >> This is the cruise site at Wicker park.

It's something that we started in 2017 and we've offered it to all of the communities, not just those of north township.

And we dropped people from all over.

He was saying, we just have a variety of classic and vintage vehicles.

People come here to show off what they have.

They enjoy what they see.

We have veterans that come in and to view all the vehicles and they hang out they eat some good food, listen to some good music and have a good time.

Some of the cars that are here are what are considered vintage.

There's a wide variety of generation here and appreciation for the beauty of them, the machinery of them, and the fact that they still can bring back those memories from those decades.

>> Adrian: These are all their babies.

If you talk to these car-lovers, and some of these car owners they'll tell you, this is my child.

They sit and they take care of these cars like if it were their child.

>> Larry: This is a 1973 Chevrolet Corvette.

It's Elkhart green with a tan interior.

It was judged twice by the National Corvette Restorers Society.

It had gotten to top flight awards, which are high awards.

>> Phillip: This is a 2013 ZR1.

They made 4,600 of them from 2009 to 2013.

This is the 13, it's number 262.

It's Night Race blue.

And it's only made 54 in night race blue in 2013.

>> Mike: This is mine here, I've owned this for 43 years.

It's a 59 MGA.

There's only two of these cars that are running around.

I have one, Joe has one.

>> Larry: Oh, it's a '76 El Dorado.

It's got 28,000 miles on the second owner.

It's original except for the tires, top and water pump.

Well, here's the way it was made.

>> Mark: This is a 2008 911 Porsche Carerra S. Which is for sport >> Woman: They think the people are here that are probably the stars and what make this whole event successful.

If it wasn't for them, but they're enthused about it.

They get excited about seeing cars you know, they bring their own car and then they go around and look at someone else's.

>> Mike: I've been coming here for the last four years, and I've enjoyed every minute of it and it's grown exponentially.

>> Larry: I've been coming here since the first one it's been quite the event over the course of time.

>> Phillip: The atmosphere, the people, it's nice and quiet.

>> Mark: This is my first time coming out to the show and very nice, nice to see the cars, different makes and models, yes, I loved it.

>> Man: We're going to continue the program, it's on the fourth Wednesday of the month.

And we started meeting at a wall wheel in October.

We're anticipating doing this next year and every year following.

(Upbeat music) >> Doc: The Galloping Ghost Arcade is a free play arcade that opened back in 2010.

We currently are the largest arcade in the world with currently 833 games on the arcade floor.

The concept for it initiated when we started looking around the arcade industry for our other company, Galloping Ghost Productions, and we were looking at places and how arcades were doing.

We went to about 80 venues that had arcade games, just traditional arcades and pool halls, bars, laundromats, any place that had arcade games were looking at them.

And so many of them, the machines didn't work right.

Either joysticks not working, or button's not working.

And like in Chicago, we couldn't find a working World Combat machine, was just outrageous for us, is that was, this is Midway's hometown.

So that was kind of the concept was to make an arcade.

That maintenance was a top priority.

Having rare games was a top priority and in 2010, that was when the Galloping Ghost Arcade opened and going on 11 years, we've just keep growing it, added more and more games, doing big events and as always maintenance, being a cornerstone of what we do.

So everything we hope always plays great.

So we open the Galloping Ghost Arcade with 130 arcade machines.

Back six years ago, we started our Monday mystery game, which every Monday at 5:00PM Central for six years, we've added a new game to the arcade floor without fail.

We haven't missed one week in over six years.

So that that's really kind of made the number keep going up and up and up.

We never want to rotate cabinets off of the floor because so many of these games disappeared from gamers for decades and they kind of put it on the floor and then take it back away.

And that wasn't what we were all about.

So one of the benefits of having Galloping Ghost Productions, where we actually produce arcade games and video games, is we've got so many connections within the industry.

And over the years, a lot of them have helped us build off or reproduce, or even donated to us a lot of, one of one prototypes that people never knew existed.

And you might not know that you're playing a one of a kind piece unless you do a little bit of research or ask somebody here, but there's well over a dozen, one of a kind games here.

(groovy music) I absolutely love arcade cabinets and arcade gaming and the whole community and the culture behind it.

I vividly remember playing Asteroids as the first arcade game that I ever played just in a restaurant one day when I was probably five years old.

And just being out and seeing that super bright monitor, it was so unique to me.

When I was 16, I purchased my first arcade machine for my house.

It was Narc from Williams and playing it so much in the arcades, it came out in 1988 and absolutely loved it.

And it was so crazy to buy one for the house.

I knew I wanted to work in the video game scene.

I knew I wanted to design and create video games.

It wasn't until a chance encounter with Ed Boon from NetherRound that kind of pushed me to open my own business.

And he had said, he's like just being straight out.

It's tough to get into this industry.

And it just seemed like an easier point of entry to me was to learn how to do everything myself, rather than try to go get into this company.

So that was the start of Galloping Ghost Productions.

We have six businesses within Galloping Ghost we've got the Galloping Ghost Garage, Galloping Ghost Arcade, Galloping Ghost Reproductions, Galloping Ghost Productions, Galloping Ghost Pinball, and Galloping Ghost Gamma, which is our gym and martial arts school.

So we have a few other plans in the future for new businesses that you will see on Ogden Avenue and in the hopefully not too distant future.

Everything is within about a six block radius.

I've lived in Brookfield my whole life.

So I'm not one for traveling too far.

I get here to the arcade at about six in the morning, every single day.

So I don't want to spend my time commuting somewhere.

So Brookfield is home to us.

There's so many people thinking that arcades were dying off.

Since we've opened, we've helped 33 arcades open worldwide.

We've really tried to share everything because we just want there to be more arcades out there.

It's crazy how often we hear in younger kids and even adults who it's their first time being in an actual arcade.

And you can see, especially with the younger players, that it doesn't have to be the best of graphics.

And these games really have held up through the test of time to be just fun, good video games.

(Hip music) >> Victor: So we offer a variety of activities, water sports, land-based tours.

Our three most popular would be our water sport rentals, kayaks and wave runners, our Riding with the Ranger tour that we do Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and our sunset tours, which we do seven days a week.

My family we've been coming out to New Buffalo for a long time and all the time we were out there, I kept thinking, man, I don't believe somebody has got tour boats, why don't we have tour boats?

We have this great lake front.

Three years later, I said, that's it.

I'm going to go out, I'm going to find a tour boat.

So I grabbed our first tour boat which was called the Sea Rocket.

And we operated that in New Buffalo, Michigan for about six years, but I always knew I wanted to get back to hospitality and food and beverage.

So I started looking for a bigger boat and I went to New York in the middle of a snow storm, and I found the Emita II that's here.

And so when I bought that, it's 150 passenger vessel.

We needed to move to a bigger port.

And I knew Michigan City has a very rich maritime history.

And so I contacted them and they were all on board and excited and the port authority president at the time, he couldn't have been more helpful.

And we came down to Michigan City and started operating.

The Emita II, it was built by a company called Blount boat builders, and they're still one of the preeminent boat builders in the United States.

And she is 70 feet long, weighs in at about 115 tons.

And the great thing that really attracted me besides the condition of her was I bought it from a great family, the Wilds family and captain Dan and his brothers and his sisters.

They were second generation.

And if you Google the Emita II, it spent its whole time giving tours of the Erie canal.

So it was fresh water, well-maintained, Captain Dan likes to joke around.

I got a lifetime of tech support, his lifetime, not the boat's lifetime.

And it just, I thought it fit into what we needed for this size port down here.

Three times a week on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, we have a tour called Riding with the Ranger that we are so fortunate to be able to host.

It was developed in cooperation with the National Parks.

I mean, they're, they're the keepers of the history and all the information for the park.

The thing that no matter how good my tour guides are, they don't have the backstories, they're not working in the Parks.

So you get a ranger that's been working at the park for a number of years.

They have all these cool backstories that we don't have.

And it's different hearing it from people firsthand.

And somebody was just relaying somebody else's story.

So they come on board every Friday and Saturday on the 10:00 AM hour, and on Sundays, they come at the two o'clock tour and there they have visually aids.

The kids can earn a little junior ranger badge to give them an activity guide.

They have spot this, spot that, and they do this just unbelievable 90 minute tour.

And they're taught, like I said, they're hitting on the dunes, how the state park originally came, how it morphed into a national park.

We're talking about the history of the lake, the shipwrecks, all the plant vegetation, species of animals that are in the park.

If you're a history person, it is the most incredible thing you ever want to see.

I would put it right up there with any of the architectural tours that they do in Chicago.

I count myself as one of the luckiest people.

Every single day, I get to spend my days for the most part in the sunshine.

And I'm giving people, you know, memories.

My whole staff, we work really hard because we know these people are coming here on vacation.

Like this might be the only trip they take this year.

They already saved for it all year, not just to come to see us, but to visit our area.

And we take that really, really seriously.

And we want them to have a good time and we want them to enjoy themselves.

And we want to make sure that the information that we're putting out and the experience they have is indicative of a company that really cares about them.

And we do.

I value all of my customers so highly because I'm very fortunate to do what I do every day.

(country music) >> Wes: What was happening during the day is that there were pockets of semi-pro football leagues, primarily around the Midwest.

The Hammond Pros was by and large a semi-pro barnstorming team.

So players came and players went.

The players who competed for the Hammond Pros had jobs, day jobs like most everybody else back in the day.

And so football was a hobby.

It was something that they had passion about, and they enjoyed playing and they would do that on the weekends.

And they played most of their games at what was called Cubs Park, which we now know as Wrigley Field in Chicago.

So on Thanksgiving day of 1919, the Canton Bulldogs of Ohio traveled across Indiana for an exhibition game against the Hammond Pros.

And I don't think anybody realized the significance of that game because 12,000 people paid to get in to see this exhibition game.

And so during that game of 1919, one of the players for the Hammond Pros was a guy by the name of George Halas.

George Halas of course went on to own the Chicago Bears.

And after the game, he wrote a letter to the owner of the Canton Bulldogs saying, you know, we may have something here.

Maybe the time is right to sit down with those owners and see if there would be some interest in formulating a professional football league.

The American Professional Football Association was established and they began their first season, in a matter of weeks, began playing that fall of 1920.

There were 14 charter teams of which the Hammond Pros was one of them.

George Halas when he played for the Pros in 1919, actually left the Pros after that season and became the head of what would be called the Decatur Staleys.

You had Halas's Decatur Staleys, you had Jim Thorpe playing with the Canton Bulldogs, And then you had a gentleman by the name of Fritz Pollard and Fritz played for Akron.

He was an African-American player.

He came from Brown University, grew up not far from here in Chicago.

The fact that he was African American, made him a target on and off the football field, but he was a premier player.

He became the first African American head coach in National Football League history.

And then his career, you know, moved around.

He went to different stops, and come 1925, he found his way to Hammond and actually set up something that was pretty impressive as far as Hammond is concerned, because one of the primary claims to fame is the team's inclusiveness.

Of the nine or 10 African-American players who played, six of them played for the Hammond Pros.

You know, I think it's a significant mark in the sense that the Pros played a part that is ultimately significant in both the business dealings and in the athleticism of what has become the National Football League.

>> Doing as much as you can, as quickly as you can is important to me.

Life is short and the earlier we get started helping our community, the better off our community will be.

>> Almost every single professor I've had, I'm on a first name basis.

By building that relationship with faculty, I was able to get involved with research.

It's one thing to read about an idea in a book versus physically doing it and seeing results >> Strack & Van Til is your wedding planning partner.

Choose handcrafted designs by the trained floral designers in our floral department, Plan a memorable meal for your reception from our delicious catering menu and let our bakery artisans design the wedding cake of your dreams.

Visit strackandvantil.com for details.

>> Did you know that you can find all of your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

Visit video.LakeshorePBS.org You can stream a large selection of shows, including Eye on the Arts, In Studio, and Friends and Neighbors.

Miss the last night's episode?

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(upbeat music)