 | |
| Industry | carpet cleaning |
|---|---|
| Defunct | 2001 |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
Key people | Wilbur Gage |
Magikist was an American rug cleaner manufacturer and cleaning company. After the parent company went out of business in 2001, the name was sold and is currently used by a Canadian manufacturer of pressure wash equipment. The original company was notable for its large, flashing advertising signs, which were a part of pop culture in the Chicago area.
Magikist was founded in the 1940s by Wilbur "Bill" Gage, who changed the name of his Austin Rug Cleaners to Magikist, melding the words "magic" and "kissed." [1] His wife at the time, Doris Greenwood, suggested the "sweetest name in rug cleaning" slogan and came up with the company logo, a pair of red lips. Gage operated Magikist in the Chicago area south of Howard Street and Lionel and Shirley Gelfand operated Magikist in the area north of Howard Street.
In the Chicago area, the Magikist Lips (in the form of huge signs on the Edens Expressway, Dan Ryan Expressway, Kennedy Expressway, [2] and Eisenhower Expressway which lit up and flashed) were well-known landmarks. Chicago journalist Eric Zorn wrote a piece about the Edens sign (the last existing) after it was torn down in 2004. [3] The signs were 75 feet wide and 40 feet high at the pucker. Travelers from the early 1960s through the late 1990s tended to use them as landmarks to figure out how much longer it would take to arrive at their destination. [3]
Chicago musician/artist Wesley Willis frequently mentioned Magikist in his song lyrics, [4] although he used the word as a term of high praise, akin to "magician".
The Willis Tower is a 108-story, 1,450-foot (442.1 m) skyscraper in Chicago. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. At completion in 1974, it surpassed the World Trade Center in New York City to become the tallest building in the world, a title that it held for nearly 25 years. It was also the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere for 41 years, until the One World Trade Center surpassed it in 2013, and had the highest occupiable floor until surpassed by the Central Park Tower in 2022.
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A vacuum cleaner, also known simply as a vacuum or a hoover, is a device that causes suction in order to remove dirt from floors, upholstery, draperies, and other surfaces. It is generally electrically driven.
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Wesley Lawrence Willis was an American singer-songwriter and visual artist. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989, Willis began a career as an underground singer-songwriter in the outsider music tradition. Willis' songs are typically partially spoken in an MC style, and partially sung in a nasal and out-of-tune manner reminiscent of punk rock vocals. They feature bizarre, humorous and sometimes obscene or absurd lyrics sung over melodies created by using the auto accompaniment feature on his Technics KN keyboard. His songs cover a wide variety of topics, with mental illness and consumerism being the most prominent themes.
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