Pardon me, I am a U of I grad. My wife and I came into town during the holiday's for a basketball game a few years ago, walked up the road looking for drinks and came across the Chocolate Shop. I had never heard of it (sorry). A girl was sweeping some kind of "junk" out the front door and it didn't look open. She said "come on in" and we did. I could tell we entered a well established venue for activity. Apparently we were the first ones in, being many hours before gametime. A few beers later, the place started to fill up, so it was clear we walked into a prized place. Cool servers and cool people hanging out. They even sort of tolerated the heinous orange (as they called it) we were wearing, chatting and giving some hell to each other. Then Mel McCants came in.....my wife thought I was an idiot to be starstruck but I am a serious IL HS fan since I could walk, and Melvin is a legend to me. Said hi to him, he was cool and chatted briefly. Anyway, the initial impact was very cool and luckily the IL@PU game has been scheduled during the holidays a few times now....including this coming Jan 2.

We make a point to come down to West Lafayette for these games and to Chocolate Shop comes before and after the game. It's like eating dessert twice. My wife still asks if we are going to go to the "Chocolate Store" and I correct her. I recognize coolness and tradition and look forward to coming back. Kudos to Harry's and the all the Purdue folks. See you shortly.