Letter

Last Tuesday was game one of the World Series. Most years that wouldn’t be a big deal in Chicago but this year’s different. Citizens who would never otherwise acknowledge baseball are covered in blue and red gear and baby bear insignia. Storefronts, lampposts, and every other available surface is plastered with sinister blue Ws to the point that some of us are having horrible flashbacks to the Bush years. No, the world isn’t ending. The Cubs have just made it to the Fall Classic for the first time since 1945.

I love baseball but only watch it on TV at this time of year. The game isn’t suited to the small screen. The odd diamond fields don’t ever look quite right within its flat rectangle and the leisurely, stop-start pace doesn’t fit easily with the regular commercial interruptions inherent to the medium. Still, I always try to catch at least a couple of the games, whether I have a rooting interest or not. It’s a fall ritual which means something to me, unlike the procession of holidays which occupy so many of us this time of year.

I decide on the Gold Star, figuring that although it sits in the middle of a strip of Division Street which has basically become one continuous sports bar, it is a relic from an earlier era and might be handling the mania for the North Side team with a modicum of self-respect. The place is sparsely peopled when I arrive halfway through the bottom of the first. I take a seat a couple down from the day bartender who was working a couple weeks ago when I put my paintings up on the walls. He and a few others are cursing at the screen. The Cubs are down 0-2 before I even take a couple sips of my bourbon. They never recover.

An inning or so later, a young woman carrying a heavy-looking, oversized duffel bag walks in and takes the barstool next to mine and orders a can of Blatz. I ask if she cares about baseball and she says she doesn’t.

She tells me she’s packed for a trip to Nashville with a guy she’s been seeing a couple months. They’re supposed to leave early the next morning but he’s not answering his phone. She waited at the Starbucks down the street for two hours, then came in here to drink and worry. He’s never pulled anything like this before. Just yesterday he was telling her about all the things he wanted to do once they got there. He’d booked the AirBnB and car rental. She’d been excited about it too. She tells me she’s from Aurora and I say, “You’re from Wayne’s World,” and she says that everyone says that and rolls her eyes. She’s been couch-surfing since summer while cocktail-waitressing at a Lincoln Park nightclub and apprenticing at a Rogers Park tattoo shop. She shows me her knuckles which spell out D-E-A-D L-O-V-E. She says she did them herself. I tell her that it’s a little fatalistic for a twenty-two-year-old. Then she tells me about the guy she moved down to Tampa to live with. At first, everything was good, but then he started getting jealous, and before long he was knocking her around. She didn’t understand what had changed. Now this new guy, who had seemed so normal, had pulled a disappearing act on her.

She keeps texting her girlfriend to come out and get drunk with her, then goes toward the back of the bar where the pool table is to see if she can get a game in. I buy her a beer and tell her this night will be a funny story one day even if it really sucks right this moment. She’s not sure whether to believe me but it gets her to smile. She has completely distracted me from the game on TV. I sneak looks every now and then but the outcome doesn’t look in doubt. I’m thankful to have a story to listen to rather than feign interest in two teams I don’t much care for.

She finally convinces her friend to come meet her at some other bar, thanks me for listening, says she’s sure she’ll see me around, and leaves. The game is now out of hand with an inning left so I decide to go as well. Home is a train and a bus ride away. For months I’ve been joking that if the Cubs win the World Series, Trump will become king, and the world will end. For this one night at least that particular apocalyptic domino effect is averted and I can get a good night’s sleep.

I’ve been a fan of my good friend Kelly Hogan’s singing a long, long time so when she invited me to make some paintings as her band, the Flat Five, recorded their record, I jumped at the chance. 

The kind of harmony singing the Flat Five traffic in is not normally my cup of tea but for some mysterious reason when they do it, I listen. They’ve even gotten me to appreciate the songs of groups like the Beach Boys, though I usually like their covers better than the originals. 

I’ve heard some of this stuff in the past and been completely unmoved. In others’ hands these songs can come off as easy or sentimental but somehow these five voices make the feelings real. How one person can sing the same thing as another and come out with completely opposite reactions in a listener is one of the great magical mysteries of music. 

Their record, which was just released and you should buy multiple copies of, is a collection of songs by Chris Ligon. Chris is the older brother of Scott, who plays keyboards and guitar in the band. It was a great honor to be a fly on the wall as these amazing musicians did their thing. 

—A reedited and slightly expanded version of the thriftstore Rembrandt story I shared with you a couple months back has been published by the Chicago Reader, And a review of Melanie Finn’s vivid ghost story of a novel, The Gloaming, is up at Vol.1 Brooklyn.

I never spent much time at the Gold Star. When I lived in Wicker Park over a decade ago the Rainbo was my bar. But when my coworker Brian suggested I call up Mary Ann, the Gold Star’s owner, to put up paintings there I didn’t hesitate. To say that neighborhood has changed would be an epic understatement. The Gold Star is one of the few holdouts keeping Division Street from total sports bar/strollerville apocalypse. We talked on the phone a couple months ago and she didn’t give me a firm date, but last Wednesday, a couple days after I’d taken down my show at Rootstock, she called again. So I rented a Zipcar and schlepped a bunch of paintings north. I took only oil paintings knowing that the lighting there isn’t exactly ideal; if people can’t make out color, at least they’d get texture. The oldest one is from my art school days and the newest is from last year. It’s sort of a hodgepodge but it doesn’t look half bad in there. They should be up for a few months so you have plenty of time to check ’em out. Just beware of the yuppies, they’ve completely overrun the surrounding streets.

Friday, after dropping off a price list and postcards at the Gold Star I headed back south to Pilsen for my friend Steve’s art show. Steve owns Bernice’s Tavern, the bar around the corner from my place. He’s been drawing for decades but this was his first proper show. Bar scenes alternate with dreamscapes and nightmares in his drawings. Many were done after long shifts pouring drinks and not being able to sleep. The room in which they hung contributed to the bent nature of some of the imagery; the walls and ceiling narrowed as you moved inward in exaggerated forced perspective. It was a little like being in Alice’s Wonderland. I recognized many of Steve’s regulars from the bar and the whole scene had the kind of welcoming vibe rarely present at art openings.

Afterwards, I went downtown for the 30th anniversary screening of my friend John’s movie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer at the Chicago Film Festival. I first saw Henry back in Brookline in the late ’80s when it showed at the movie theater I worked at. Back then it seemed like one of the scariest things I’d ever seen on screen, not because of the gore or violence but because of the way it made the viewer feel complicit in Henry’s and Otis’s crimes. By watching we were like accomplices. A year or two later, when I went off to art school, I was given a Henry t-shirt as a going away present from the movie theater. That t-shirt was stolen during a trip to New York. Me and my first girlfriend stayed one night at the Chelsea Hotel and one night at the Y. The shirt disappeared in one of those places.

Waiting in line at the AMC River East to get into the screening, I spotted Rick Paul, who art directed the clips John shot with me for the Chicago Hack TV show. He had worked on Henry as well. Then Michael Rooker showed up and everyone’s smartphones pointed his way. He leaned into the crowd and had them pose for a selfie with him. John was there too, wearing a coat and tie. When I asked him about it he said the last time he wore a tie was at a funeral. During the Q & A after the film John talked about how there was never any laughter during screenings back in the ’80s but that they had all laughed while making the movie. Tonight there was plenty of laughter. Have the times caught up with Henry?

It’s a good thing to see friends’ work celebrated. I’m a lot more comfortable at their openings and galas than at my own. Maybe that’s why I like putting up paintings in bars. There the focus is not on my artwork but on drinking and talking. Every once in a while someone will look up from their glass or their date and look at one of the pictures. If it sticks with them, they might even call about buying it. When that happens that’s all the celebrating I need to keep going.