My co-workers stared at me, eyes wide open, jaws agape. "What do you mean?" one shouted. "You've never seen 'The Blues Brothers?' "

OK, apparently this movie is required watching if you live in Chicago or the suburbs. The next day, one of the co-workers lent me her copy. I watched the movie. I laughed during funny parts and enjoyed the surprise cameos.

But my favorite thing was that it showed Chicago during a different era. It got me to thinking about how the city landscape has changed just in my three decades of living here.

As a kid, going downtown meant spending the day in my Dad's office, entertaining myself by drawing on the white dry erase board and waiting anxiously to see where we would go to lunch. His office building was practically next to Sears Tower and my favorite place for lunch was Mrs. O'Leary's Deli inside the tower. Of course that was back in the day before I knew about Mrs. O'Leary and her famous cow. All I knew was she made a delicious apple pie.

I went to all the usual kid places - The Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, Lincoln Park Zoo - but I had a few other favorites that didn't last long in the big city.

Before Navy Pier was the big tourist attraction, there was North Pier. It was a middle schooler's dream. Not only did it have an indoor mini golf course and a state-of-the-art (at least by '90s standards) arcade - it had a hologram shop.

You had to wait in line to get into the store, which featured images on its walls that seemed to pop out at you. This blew our minds at the age of 13.

The restaurants on the pier included Dick's Last Resort, which was always too crowded to get into, and A-1 Beanery, where I always had a burger and a root beer. A few years after North Pier opened, all the tourists moved to Navy Pier, which had the whole "breathtaking views of the lake and skyline" thing going for it. But I still remember the "other" pier.

In the mid 1990s, a new attraction opened starring Al Capone. In high school, I visited the place housed in what it is now Rainforest Cafe on Cicero Avenue. Capone's Chicago had historical artifacts, like Al Capone's hat, but the main attraction was a theater in the round featuring animatronic characters including Al himself. At the end of the show, they would all sing a version of "My Kind of Town" - even the dead guys.

I can't imagine why this place didn't make it, though I've heard Mayor Daley didn't like a tourist attraction touting the city's gangster days.

I'm sure a new city adventure is in my future, but for this weekend, I'll probably just get my Chicago fix by popping "The Blues Brothers" back into the DVD player.

The opinions are solely those of the writer.