Letter

Walking down 18th Street one night a few years ago with a friend, I happened upon a new bookstore. The window display of Pilsen Community Books had a children’s book my companion recognized. We promised to check this place out sometime and walked on.

Opening a bookstore these days is sort of a perverse proposition. Few people read books, yet more are printed than ever. Online retailers practically throw them in like packing peanuts with higher ticket item. The U.S, Postal Service is often used to mule these pouches and boxes from giant warehouses in undisclosed locations directly to our doorsteps. Who needs to use one’s own legs to walk out into meatspace when everything one can fathom will be plopped on your lap for a price, often within hours?

I went back to Pilsen Community a few weeks. Aaron and Mary, who run it, used to work at Open Books—a place I’ve done work with. Open Books is part of a non-profit dedicated to literacy and this store continues that mission with free book programs for schools. But the look and feel of the store is different. Where Open Books often feels like a warehouse, Pilsen Community is a carefully considered and organized place. In addition to new and used books, they sell beautiful stationary and pencils. The place was put together by people with an eye. 

I got to know Mary and Aaron after a few more visits. They started carrying my books, then asked for some artwork to hang in the store. Now there’s a rotating selection of my Pilsen drawings above the register.

Not content with one store, they recently opened a second. The Dial Bookshop is on the second floor of the Fine Arts Building, accessible exclusively by human-operated elevator. It is a lot like Pilsen Community, but with views of Grant Park and the patter of little ballerinas’ feet added. The Fine Arts Building is a strange relic of a time when artists, musicians, and booksellers were actually important to our society. The Dial Bookshop is named after the magazine of that name started by Margaret Anderson and based in the building. Anderson would move to Paris and took the magazine with her. Today it’s probably best known for serializing James Joyce’s Ulysses and being prosecuted for obscenity by the US government. That’s Anderson and her partner, Jane Heap, in the illustration above.

I paint a portrait of a Chicago writer each month for the Dial. They are turned into postcards with a quote from the subject on the back. The originals are hung in the store. Visiting one time, the door was locked, a sign saying they’d just stepped out for coffee. I sat down and waited in the hall. A picture window opened onto shelves of neatly displayed books. Past them, the light streamed in from the park on Michigan Avenue. I told myself to come back and try painting what I’d seen.

Aaron, Mary, and I talk a lot about the book business. It’s in complete disarray. Some parts function as if the internet never existed, while others are as fly-by-night as three-card-monte hucksters. The bookstores these two have opened are a possible way forward. You need to offer people something attractive and unique enough to inspire them to unglue their asses from the couch. This isn’t easy when you can buy anything you want with a flick of your index finger but I think and hope they’ll succeed. Not just because I work with them but also because I like visiting the stores they’ve created.

When a bunch of little girls in tutus from ballet class down the hall flutter into the Dial to look at books, I’m almost hopeful.

—I wrote a feature article about photojournalist Nancy Abrams’ memoir and photos of West Virginia and a piece about the Ivan Albright show at the Art Institute and a short review of mentalist Mark Toland’s act. 

—I answered some art questions for Voyage Chicago.

Half an hour before showtime the line outside the Music Box stretched a good way down the block. We weren’t the most attractive bunch. A lot of bald spots, beer bellies, and numerous unfixable fashion faux pas. But we were excited. Because we were about to be the first people in town to see Paul Schrader’s new movie and he was going to answer our questions afterward.

The screening of Schrader’s First Reformed was part of the Chicago Film Critics’ Festival, so the high quota of ugly people was a foregone conclusion. There’s a reason film obsessives come alive in darkened rooms, where they themselves can’t be seen. Perhaps having been in more than my share of such rooms I have no room to judge, but I prefer to think what I’m doing is describing what I see. I’m certainly no better looking or more well-adjusted than any of the others in the neighboring seats.

First Reformed concerns a tormented priest, ecological apocalypse, and humankind’s hopeless longing for grace and meaning. Watching the movie I kept thinking of Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest and Schrader’s own Taxi Driver. The grappling with faith is in most of Schrader’s work, but it’s fully out in the open in this new one. I have little use for religion in my everyday life but find that some of my favorite art is consumed with it. I don’t know how to reconcile that but I’m not too bothered by the contradiction. Schrader’s belief feels genuine so I can accept it.

During the Q and A afterwards, Schrader talked about the influence of Bresson and other filmmakers, confirmed that there’s a lot of Taxi Driver in this new one, and expounded at length on many of the hidden symbols he’d embedded in the story. He was a polished and bemused speaker, ready with a quip to defuse every last pedantic audience query.

Outside the theater a guy I know came up and said I was looking biblical. He was talking about the beard I’ve let get out of hand. Maybe I’ve been growing it out to look the part of a pilgrim on Schrader’s spiritual quest. But more likely it is just a symptom of a person who has stopped minding his appearance, preferring to live vicariously through the flickering images on the walls of darkened rooms.

Skylark’s fifteenth anniversary party will be Sunday, May 6th. That’s a few days after I’m writing this and a day or more before you read it. A band will play and there’s supposed to be pizza. The festivities are to begin around 5pm. My regular Sunday shift doesn’t start till 8pm but I’ll get there early, in case the day bartender needs help. I love working at the Skylark but hate parties so I’m looking forward to this Sunday with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

The trouble with parties is that you’re expected to have a good time. I don’t do well with expectations or scheduled mirth. I always looked forward most to clearing the table at every family get-together growing up. There will be plenty of glasses to wash Sunday, that much I know. 

Last Sunday, a guy straight out of a blaxploitation flick walked into the bar. He had tinted shades, a pinky ring, and a wavy, styled head of hair, which may or may not have come from the store. He drank screwdrivers and told stories about his twenty-plus years in the rap game. He gave me his brand-new CD, the eleventh of his career. A lot of the numbers seemed to be about being a pimp, but he mostly wanted to talk about reuniting with his eighteen-year-old son. To hear Natalac tell it, his son’s mother had kept them apart for years. “I tell him he’ll be walking in my shoes, not hers, and he’s listening to me,” he says.

Then, a man who had repeatedly bothered a woman in the neighboring booth refused to leave the bar. He made a nuisance of himself to the point that police had to be called to escort him out. He kept saying he was friends with the owners and had done nothing wrong. The Skylark’s clientele is usually peaceful and well-behaved so this bozo was an anomaly. You’d think that if you were actually friend’s with the owners you’d respect a place enough not to make an ass of yourself and not show up the employees. A half hour after being bumrushed he had the gaul to come back in, claiming he’d forgotten something. When I told him to leave he was no longer arguing like before. He wanted me to apologize to his friend, the owner, for his behavior.

You meet all kinds at this bar. It’s one of the things I like best about the job. I don’t know if any pimps will show up for our anniversary party but hope that cops are not needed to deal with anyone who does.

I’m proud to’ve played a small part in the Skylark’s success and hope to work there for many years to come.