- Credibility:
LOGAN SQUARE — A local pumpkin patch run by a family-owned bike shop in Logan Square is a hit among neighborhood families.
Last weekend, Four Star Family Cyclery at 3101 W. Diversey Ave., which sells cargo bikes to families, converted its back lot into a pumpkin patch complete with bales of hay and old hay wagons.
Within a matter of days, the bike shop sold out of pumpkins and had to get another couple of hundred to keep up with demand.
“I think a lot of people are looking for an activity and are looking to get out of the house,” shop owner Elsbeth Cool said.
Four Star’s mechanic gets the pumpkins from a produce auction in Indiana. The pumpkins range in price from $4-20, depending on the size, but most are between $5 and $15, Cool said.
To get a pumpkin or two, neighbors are asked to book an appointment online. Cool said many families are still keeping strict quarantine and she wanted to make sure kids could run around safely.
So far, the pumpkin patch has attracted a number of families looking to have some fall fun. Some buy pumpkins, others just pose for cute family photos, Cool said.
Cool said she plans to keep the pumpkin patch going until Halloween.
“You don’t even have to buy a pumpkin, you can just sit your kids down and take pictures of them and you get to say we did something fun and fall-like,” she said.
Four Star Family Cyclery opened at the Diversey Avenue location just a few weeks before the pandemic hit.
Cool said she never got to throw an opening party and the pumpkin patch is a way to both “meet folks from the neighborhood and get people out of the house.”
“It’s really fun to be able to walk a couple blocks and carry a couple pumpkins home, rather than drive to Target. It’s so much more fun and neighborhoody,” she said.
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods.
Already subscribe? Click here to support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
