I write this post with nothing but respect and admiration for Karen Lewis. She has proved herself a valiant leader and a powerful voice on behalf of our city’s educators. She is a proven agent of change in a city and in a school district that certainly needs all it can get.

But as I found out Wednesday night on Twitter, she doesn’t know crap about the Incredible Hulk.

You can read the main thread of the exchange, but basically, journalist Scott Smith, who tweets as @ourmaninchicago, posted this at 7:33 p.m.

I’m tired. Can we talk about something dumb for a little while? Half an hour? Superman vs Hulk – who wins? Superman obviously. COME AT ME!

Six minutes later, Karen Lewis, CTU president, came right at him.

@ourmaninchicago Hulk.

This aggression must not stand.

Now, no offense to the Hulk. He’s a great character and a formidable mindless rage monster, but let’s look at the evidence.

Superman is the Hulk but with laser eyes, flight, superspeed, weird stuff like frozen air breath and a capacity to reason that exceeds a 3 year old who does NOT want to go down for his nap. It would go “HULK SMA-oh look, I’m in space.”

(The Hulk then passes out from lack of oxygen, reverts to Banner and is taken gently back to earth by Superman, who works tirelessly with the Justice League to cure the Hulk’s condition.)

That’s Superman’s whole thing: He can’t be beaten. All he does is zoom around, not being beaten and making every foiled mugging an exercise in overkill. I felt it important that the head of the Chicago Teachers Union know this.

At 7:57 p.m., I joined in.

 . @ourmaninchicago @KarenLewisCTU SM can also strategize beyond “SMASH!” and YES I AM IN A TWITTER DEBATE WITH KAREN LEWIS ON SUPES V. HULK!

Then at 8:12 p.m. June 9, 2014, a dagger. A kryptonite dagger in the back of our benevolent tights-wearing alien overlord.

@1001chicago @ourmaninchicago Superman is a tool ofthe ruling class.

Yes, that happened. Let’s take a moment to soak that in.

@1001chicago @ourmaninchicago Superman is a tool ofthe ruling class.

Now, I’m not a man who overreacts to things, but when I noticed this 40 minutes later, it was like getting stomped in the face by Mongol, Darkseid, Doomsday and a bunch of underpaid caddies in golf cleats all at once.

At 8:53 p.m., I responded.

@KarenLewisCTU @ourmaninchicago Bruce Banner literally made bombs for the army. He’s just one big, green military-industrial complex.

And at 8:55 p.m.

@KarenLewisCTU @ourmaninchicago Clark Kent meanwhile has newspapers and a family-owned farm on HIS resume. As ruling class as a street mime.

From her end, silence. Crushing, beautiful silence as she writhed in the grip of reason, her objections and even ability to respond destroyed by my pure, cold Lex Luthorish logic.

Or she had gone to bed.

Either way, the debate now over, Scott Smith eloquently summarized his agreement with my position at 8:57 p.m.

@1001chicago @KarenLewisCTU Yes!

I made a funny Facebook status about this and went to bed feeling like a certain C. Kent after he once again outwitted Mr. Mxylptlk into spelling out “kltplyxm,” which forces Mxy to return to his home dimension for 90 days and… man, the 1950s had some really stupid comic plots.

Either way, we made the Sun-Times.

And NBC 5.

Granted, it’s just their political blogs (NBC 5′s “Ward Room” and the Sun-Times‘ “Early and Often”), so it’s not like we’re getting ink or air here, just pixels. But somewhere in the history of those two organizations, in NBC 5′s 66 years and the Sun-Times’ 170, among tales of crime and corruption, fire-starting cows, Al Capone and hired trucks, there will forever be me taking the teachers’ union president to task about whether the Incredible Hulk could beat Superman in a fight.

Which brings me to the reason for this article: NBC, Sun-Times, print my goddamn response.

Both posts were quick, to the point and catchy, fun, quick-hit things. But both ended with the following two tweets, both from Lewis:

@1001chicago @ourmaninchicago Superman is a tool ofthe ruling class.

Right into…

@ourmaninchicago Next debate: Star Trek v Star Wars.

No repeating of my crushing, Brainiacian reasoning. No evidence that the argument continued beyond Lewis’ last word, with Smith even trying to restart it the next day (where it actually got really interesting).

I was right about Superman winning in a fight against the Incredible Hulk and the mainstream media silenced my important message.

This made me angry. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I get, like, really passive-aggressive.

Readers, tell NBC! Tell the Sun-Times! Also comment on my Facebook page because I end every story by sending people there anyway and we’re coming to the end!

Let them know my tweets should be heard! Let them know the Hulk is a war profiteer! Let them know Superman is NOT the tool of the ruling class (except in “Dark Knight Returns”)! He is a newspaper reporter who can fly and that is awesome.

Also, let NBC know not to call Superman “the Caped Crusader.” That’s Batman. Get it together, NBC.

I write way too much about Superman ¹

Way too much ²

But I also write touching and somewhat sad true stories that reflect on the human condition

I write a few of those

And I also wrote about teachers during the strike

But also about Superman ³

Like, seriously, a lot of Superman ⁴

¹ 1,001 Chicago Afternoons, “#122: Dudes’ Night”
² Huffington Post, “Dear Britain: Give Us Back Superman, or We’re Taking ‘Doctor Who’”
³ Unsubmitted Cracked spec article, “The Four Most Unrealistic Things About Superman (Are Not What You Think)”
⁴ My old content farm, “It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Casting Call!”

A city night looks green to me, as I wait for a storm to start.

My colorblind eyes conflate dark clouds with the reflected glow of signs and streetlamps and the endless blaring orange 4.39⁹ for regular unleaded at the gas station across the street. When dark clouds roll in at night, my brain scrambles the light and darkness and reflective little particulates and processes it into a green-skied world only I see.

It’s a world only I can see. I never want to be fixed.

But on nights like this, I wait for those jagged shreds of light. I want those electric rips, the rips in the sky I process as the color of bleached coral, to tear the sky apart.

I want wind and water. I want cracking rumbles and the howls of terrified dogs. I want rain and hail and ear-splitting thunder. I want shrieks of wind, cracks of branches, spicy chemical droplets rolling across my lips and that sharp and earthy reek of a whipping spring storm. I don’t want weather to be something I see anymore. I want it to be something I hear, feel, smell, taste — senses I know I’m getting right.

I want lightning the color of coral to split green skies.

The storm’s a dud so far. The lightning and thunder I crave roll along to the south. I see buses, joggers, a car pulling in across the street to buy gas at 4.39⁹.  Wind pushes a green cloud on, revealing inky black starless skies behind. I see these things, not hear-touch-taste.

The night is calm. I watch the world and feel disappointed.

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Another spring storm

One in fall

I really don’t like that gas station

Editor’s note: It started coming down like a sumbitch like 20 minutes after I wrote this.

I waited.

“Hello,” I finally said.

“911,” she repeated with the sad, annoyed tone of someone dealing with an idiot at 1:30 a.m. “What is your emergency?”

“Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a 911 or a 311, but I’m at _____ and _____ and there’s a guy smashing the shit out of a car window with a golf club across the street.”

“What color is the car?” she asked, annoyed once more.

“Gray,” I said.

“You got the license plate? Model?”

“It’s across the street.”

“And the person? Black? Hispanic? You’ve got to give me a description here.”

“Black,” I said. “Gray hoodie.”

“OK,” she said, sigh in her voice. “I’ll send someone over. You want to leave a name?”

“Naah,” I said.

“OK,” she finished before hanging up, leaving me standing in the dark, in my underwear, in the living room.

I blame the accordion drag racers for the whole thing.

I try to sleep at night, as is my wont. It’s the wont of others, apparently, to drag race down my street at night while blasting Norteña music. Because noon is made for lunch and 1:15 a.m. is made for revving engines as you crank Mexican polka out a car window, apparently.

So I was wide awake for the smashes.

I walked up to the front window to see what the noises were, those repetitive smash smash sounds I first thought might be my imagination. But unless my imagination was a glint of five-iron wielded under the lights of a gas station parking area, nighttime had become more realistic than I cared for.

After calling 911, I watched as police SUVs pulled by, swarming, circling the block, weaving in and out and shining lights at various cars as I murmured “It’s the gray one. It’s the graaaay one” to myself.

Eventually one of the SUVs spotted the car in the gas station parking area. It, and soon three more SUVs, pulled up.

A few cops got out to wander the area. Three of them — a hefty older officer, a young man and a woman — gathered to chat by the effed-up car.

The young man started laughing and walked over to one of the pumps. My view was blocked by the fourth SUV, but he gestured down repeatedly, cackling so I could hear it across the street.

“It’s a crime scene!” I heard him yell to the laughter of his friends. “Better tape it off!”

As the young man walked over to the hefty one, the woman walked over to her SUV. She opened the trunk and pulled out some police tape. It fluttered behind her as she walked to the pump. The two men pointed to her and conversed when they noticed what she was doing.

Silently, she walked to the pump. She looped the tape around the pole, holding both ends of the tap and taking several steps back to extend the marked area. She then took the two ends and wrapped them around her butt like it was a hula hoop or those 1950s workout machines that jiggled the fat off ladies. The two men lost it.

A fifth SUV pulled up.

“You got a homicide?” someone in the fifth SUV joked out the window.

“We found the club!” the young man called back.

I heard a laugh from the fifth SUV before it pulled off.

I found the whole scene really touching, in an angering way. Here they were. Our police. Protecting and serving and being just as much jackasses as we are. It was like me and my friends were responding to a 1:30 a.m. call to action. The same jokes covering the same smug, exhausted attitude.

Does that make it worse because they’re not living a higher standard? Or does that make it better because they’re just schlubs like us except I would never charge into a gunfight to save a stranger?

It’s 2 a.m. now. I wrote for a bit, then walked to my window to see the status. All the cops were gone, leaving nothing but a gas station pump, a flutter of police tape and an abandoned car with the windows smashed out.

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A different side of police

I passed a couple drinking wine on their porch as they watched the game of bags too.

I passed a barbecue. A couple of them.

I passed a hot dog stand, a bunch of dog walkers and Fred from work, a surprise for both of us. He was out with friends.

As the wispy wind blew warmth on us, we talked about our day.

On Sunday, I passed couples, so many couples. Out holding hands, enjoying the warm, flirting and laughing and casting shy smiles each others way.

I passed workmen sitting on the curb, one squirting a ketchup packet onto his McDonald’s dinner.

I passed stores closed and open, ex-restaurants with city notices taped in the windows. I passed Verizon stores and bars with the windows thrown open, an apartment building where two young guys in colored polos sipped beer on their balcony.

I started passing more people, art galleries, chain coffee shops and other signs I was getting to the thick of an urban cluster.

Closer to the action, I passed an old man in a shining white suit. He stood on the six corners and cackled at the traffic. I turned away and when I looked back, he was gone.

“Yeah, he sort of disappeared,” a guy with long dreadlocks said to me in surprise.

Then he spotted the man in the suit, who had stepped into a store’s entrance way. The man with the dreadlocks went to talk to the man in the shining white suit. He said nice things to the old man. I walked on.

After months of being locked in, by freeze and rain and days just bleh, we’ve been set free in Chicago. Let loose to turn on each other. Time again to look at faces. Time again to watch passersby. Time again to wander and count doorways, see how many barbecues there are, amble down a street heading both toward and away from nothing in particular.

It’s time to stroll through the city again, seeing the worlds out there that our not our own. Some say life can pass you by. Nuts to that, at least for today. Today’s the day to walk and see. Today it’s time to pass by life.

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I usually try to link to topically related stories here, but screw that. Read about a woman who used to be a fake prostitute.

I moved past quietly, so as not to startle him. He cocked his head at me for a moment as I passed.

I smiled. Spring is here. I have seen the first pedicab driver.

As I went by the bike-rickshaw driver with the fluffed and waxed hipster mustache, I smiled. It was spring, finally, finally spring.

The signs of spring are different in an urban environment. No flaxen fields full of butterflies here. Instead, the turning of the seasons are marked by the return of pedicabs, smokers lingering outside buildings and dog walkers not cursing their pets for keeping them outside so long.

Unhealthy looking joggers are a sign of spring. These aren’t the lean and toned freakshows who get handsome by going all winter long. These are the fair weather joggers. The tubby and panting.

These are the people who let their legs lay fallow all winter in favor of cars, cabs and marathon cable television programming. Now they come, huffing and puffing, out of shape and out of practice wheezing down the road because it is spring, spring, spring.

Spring in Chicago is the shunk, shunk, shunk noise of the folks down the block playing bags as a little charcoal grill burns to readiness. It’s the daylight happy wanderers and the evening outdoor drunken breakdowns of who said what to who and I can’t believe she said that what a bitch.

The rat scurrying down a darkened alley is a sign of spring too.

It’s spring in a beautiful, ugly town. It’s spring in a place where we’ve forgotten what spring is. The endless winter ended. Now we step into the sun, taggers and yuppies, homeless and hipsters, wanderers, workers and all the rest that make up this odd Chicago and say, “Oh yeah. This is why we live here.”

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“When I was a little girl growing up in Michigan, we used to hear the farmers singing to the crops. They would stand at the edge of the field and they would sing to the crops to help them grow. So this next song is called a corn holler,” the woman said before she, the fiddler and the puppet started to sing.

None of this is true.

There is a song, yes. And an older woman. And a puppet of the type on a local kids show from 1982. Dan MacDonald made the puppet himself.

But there’s no corn holler, no more than there’s a old chain gang spiritual Dan MacDonald hired Craigslist actors to sing. There was no Indiana University Folk Festival in 1963 where old folkies were recorded on 8mm singing that same fake folk corn holler.

“I need it to be so believable that there’s no way some 25-year-old kid pulled this off,” Dan MacDonald said. “That’s the goal here. That nobody can trace me back to this.”

Dan MacDonald, 25, wrote a fake folk song. And he’s recording the 20 to 30 videos of what would have been the fake history of his fake song, from the 1950s documentary crew recording the spiritual to the 1970s cable access version with the Irishmen to the 1990s Ken Burns pan-and-scan to the 1960s Disney animated “Sword in the Stone”-style musical.

And he needs a Scottish woman.

Dan MacDonald, sitting in his East Ukie apartment in velveteen Renaissance gear, fresh from a day of teaching drinkers how to paint, relaxing with friends as Union Jack darts fall from a board set up on a blank white wall, is working on the world’s first interactive album. It will be a thing that exists in no physical space, just the ebb and flow and touch-tap-slide iPad world of a series of historical versions of a fake fake song he wrote himself.

“It’s the first one, so it has to stand or it’s just going to look like some novelty. I don’t want it to be a novelty,” Dan MacDonald said. “Since this is the first one, I can’t have any seams showing. I can’t have any holes in it.”

Think “House of the Rising Sun” as recorded by 1940s doc crews, by Leadbelly, by The Animals, by Dylan and the Stones and “Free to Be… You and Me.”

And he needs a Scottish woman.

On the same MacBook screen where he showed the puppet show and the fake ’60s folk festival, Dan MacDonald pop pop popped the screen to four old black men re-creating the song for a 1950s TV Ed Sullivan-style special.

“99 planks for to carry this train,” the singers started. “Oh, I walk it to the ground.”

“Who are these guys?” I asked.

“Craigslist,” he said.

“Really?” I asked. “Are they like a band on their own?”

“Naah,” he said. “They’re all separate.”

We listened to them sing as one slapped a plank for percussion. That’s not something people did in our reality.

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“I knew it would work because none of these old chain gang songs are very clean and I knew a band would do it way too perfect,” MacDonald said. “I just sent them the lyrics, really, and maybe me singing the tune. But I was like, ‘I can’t afford to pay you guys to practice this,’ so people just showed up, I had the lyrics on, like, big cue cards and we just went for it.”

And he needs a Scottish woman.

There’s an order he’s suggesting, but not enforcing. Maybe it’s an old Celtic song praying to the corn. Or maybe it’s an old spiritual moved from the plantation to the chain gang to the 1970s local puppet show where Sue claims she heard it in Michigan.

The viewer, at the end, will pick and poke at a path, swiping a trail on iSomething to create the history of a song that never existed in an album that doesn’t exist anywhere but online.

And MacDonald has been collecting singers to do his fake folk in different forms, eras, styles.

“I don’t even say ‘song,’” he said. “I keep it as simple as possible. So I just kind of feed them a little bit at a time just so that they eventually say yes. ‘Cause this is a bit of a daunting thing to just drop on somebody all at once. They get confused if I try and throw the whole project idea out in front of them, so I have to do little bits at a time. Say ‘It’s a video shoot.’ ‘Oh, it’s a video shoot about folk music.’ ‘Actually, it’s my next album.’ ‘Actually, it’s the first interactive, digital, touchable, multi-video album.’ That’s kind of how it goes.”

There have been Kickstarters and personal funding and migration from Portland to Chicago. NY might have been best, but Chicago was as good for acts, but much cheaper.

“Any extra dollar I get, I’m putting toward this project,” MacDonald said. “Any extra hour I tuck away, it goes directly into this.”

“It’s just such a great fuck you to any record label dream that anybody’s had,” he said. “I can completely circumvent them and get this in front of everybody and this is my album. I made the whole thing.”

And he needs a Scottish woman.

The woman will sing a version of the song in a fair and true brogue. She’ll sing Dan MacDonald’s fake song in a crisp, clear Celtic voice.

She’ll sing it beautifully, as Scots do. She’ll sing it nice and kind and sexy snark. She’ll add a layer to the song that the old spiritual singers did and the 1970s Irishmen and the folkie revivalists and the ’80s puppets did.

Dan MacDonald is looking for a Scot.

If you’re interested, I’ll let him know.

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It’s been a big week in 1,001-land…

Hear me interviewed by Your Chicago Podcast

Read me interview Arden and Stefania of Your Chicago Podcast

Read the article about tomorrow’s Chi Lit reading in the Chicago Reader

Go to Chi Lit: Tales of the Neighborhoods to benefit Open Books

With a broad smile, he walked up to me and lightning rattled facts on “The Power of Your Subconscious Mind,” the book in his hand. Over the next 40 seconds, he told me about unconscious reasoning, subliminal messages, the placebo effect, a British magician, the functions of the human brain and his own personal system he had developed to capitalize on all these features.

I caught a peek at his sheet of paper. It was filled with lines of font-like handwriting. The top line said “How will this make money?”

I made a polite excuse and moved on — I had a story to find.

It was Friday afternoon and I was due to post the 100th of the 1,001 Chicago Afternoons stories on Monday. Running my usual late, I had decided to hit the streets in search of some story, any story to tell.

I walked the half block to a bakery where I knew I could buy a cup of coffee. While I waited for a young hipstery type to check if there were any for-here mugs, a woman in an apron slowly walked out of the back carrying a log on a plate. She set the plate on a counter, then raised the camera that was hanging from her neck.

The log, a perfect chunk of wood from a mossy area of the forest floor, was made of chocolate cake. It was a traditional bûche de Noël, the woman told me. A Christmas yule log of pastry, dappled with mushrooms of meringue. The bakery is famous for its cakes designed to look like dragons, Tim Burton monsters, hamburgers, R2-D2s, Cats in Hats and other non-cake magic. The display window was filled with pitch-perfect cake replicas of the cast of the 1960s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” stop-motion Christmas special.

I grabbed my coffee and went to the seating area to fret over finding something interesting to write about.

I had an errand to run downtown so I walked Ashland past the cell phone place with the three-foot-tall, multicolored statue of Death to wait for the bus near the U-Haul store that also hosts ping pong tournaments. As the bus headed in the direction of the shop full of French cognac ads and the woman next to me with the purse made out of an old Janis Joplin LP texted, a group of teenagers got on board.

Two girls cooed over a boy of 14 or 15, teasing him and ruffling his afro. One of them sat in his lap to mess with him further.

“He’s such a man now because he’s had his first kiss,” the girl in his lap said to their gathered friends before turning to the bus as a whole. “Everybody! Rupert has had his first kiss! It was two weeks ago!”

I grumbled and looked out the window. How’s a guy supposed to come up with a story about touching universal themes with this loud crap going on?

It was dark by the time my errand was done, that 5 p.m. black that marks a Chicago winter. I was heading out to the suburbs to meet old friends for a night of poker and the affectionate bullshit reporters tell each other. I headed south past the seminary that only trains Polish immigrants and the cathedral with the pink statue of a human foot outside.

I walked past hotels and Starbucks and more goddamn Starbucks, past a hunched old man sitting on a bench outside Pizzeria Due eating a bag of frozen peas with a plastic spoon, past the Trib, past the Goat, past the docks that marked my first Chicago job.

I passed beggars and shoppers and fancy-pants commuters, walked over a bridge where a lone child’s glove decked in pink hearts waited on the wooden crosswalk. I walked past places I’ve fallen in love, past places I’ve fallen out of love, past the building where I interviewed a bullfighting divorce attorney.

I walked through this city of rich, of poor, of heaven and hell slammed together, a city that tucks itself in to dream at night of what it never was. This madcap playground. This comforting home. This swirl where three river branches meet to form a new calm chaos. I walked through this Chicago.

Now what in the hell am I supposed to write about?

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Check out the previous 99 1/2 tales of Chicago

They’re the ones where the boarded window says they offer “merchandise,” no explanation what that merchandise is. Some just list a $1 or $1.99 price limit.

They have names like “Jerusalem” or “Mecca,” sometimes names in Spanish or general business terms. They line Chicago Avenue where East Ukie Village meets just general West Town.

At Mecca, a chubby man with a shaved head poked through an outdoor rack until he found some sleeveless basketball jerseys he liked. Racks of shirts and shorts always clog the entranceways to these stores — that’s a universal.

“How much are those?” he asked a woman with a tattoo on her left breast.

“A dollar ninety-nine,” the woman replied.

The man called to his girlfriend, who had been browsing shorts on the other side of the entrance.

“Boo! Boo! A dollar ninety-nine!”

I was there to buy some shorts that would feed the clown monster.

Physically, I blend. I’m neither tall nor short, thin nor fat, ugly nor super-hot. I walk into a room and people forget I’m there, which is a great trait for a reporter. I look like I belong anywhere.

But as a man, I sometimes like to stand out a bit, to peacock a little and show the ladies what they’re missing. Then out comes the clown monster.

A lime-green button-up with jagged, symptomatic triangles. A patterned Thai shirt the same color scheme as a 1970s Burger King. Pinstriped jams. I don’t blend then. The clown monster doesn’t stop until he hurts someone’s eyes.

Looking through the purple and orange plaid shorts on the outdoor racks, realizing they came so low they would basically be pants on me and seeing the bright bright red of a pair I could make a survival tent out of, I realized I was outdone. The clown monster had met his match and had run off to get chinos and a Lacoste. A monochrome one.

I eventually settled on a rather fetching orange plaid pair from the $1.99 rack where the chubby man and his boo checked out jerseys. Unlike the hip-hop tents of the $9.99 rack, this orange plaid was cheap, chic, went to a reasonable length and looked like it would fit my ass and personality to a T.

“Those are women’s, sweetie,” the woman with a tattoo on her breast said.

“Oh, thanks,” I replied, putting the shorts back. “I wondered what 11 meant.”

Inside the store, a man told me where I could try on a $9.99 light cotton pair with an excessive amount of elastic bands. I walked past racks of $69 and $89 suits with matching hats, walls of $200 suits of the type where the coat goes to your knees.

The fitting room was covered in posters for the Steve Harvey collection. The same picture of the dapper comedian was Photoshopped into different locations on each poster. On one, someone had poked out Harvey’s left eye.

The shorts did fit. They are currently the lightest, breeziest, most comfortable thing I own. I have no doubt they will disintegrate into elastic bands and a khaki-colored foam with the first wash.

“You’re getting a good deal on them,” the man told me when I walked back out.

These are the stores with faded, gaudy signs advertising permanent 60-percent-off sales. They’re where people shop to look swank for less than a twenty. They’re where folks who otherwise can’t afford it get dapper like Harvey. It’s the only spot yet to scare off the clown monster.

I’m totally going back.

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Read about another discount storefront

“Maggots?”

“Maggots. Another time he came in and said, ‘Am I in New York?’”

“Was he messing with you, or-”

“No, there was something wrong with him,” she cut in, giving the universal swirl-finger for crazy. “He was the most interesting one this month.”

My conversation partner was an artist. A woman in maybe her late 40s or early 50s, she had wild curly hair pulled back over a tank top and cargo pants. She moved quickly but gestured slowly as she pointed out everything in her Division Avenue art shop. The walls were lined with her works.

She had spotted me that evening as I walked outside. I stopped to look at the Cornell boxes in the window. She hopped out happy and flushed, gestured slowly at them, told me about the friend who did them and invited me in to talk art as she packed.

She didn’t do much packing.

“There was this one guy who got aggressive. He came in and was like, ‘Yo, yo, yo. How much to paint my family?’” she said, punching the air with each yo. “He was testing me. ‘Yo, yo.’”

She walked up to a painting that was entirely black but for a person in the foreground and a pair of women’s eyes floating in the background.

“I said it depends a lot on the size, how fast he wants it done,” she said. “But he started looking around. This painting originally I had as that woman. I decided to keep her eyes. I just liked them. And she was originally holding sort of an ornate cross- Oh! You can still see it!”

She brushed her hand over where, under the black paint, you could in fact still make out the raised outline of a Knights Templar cross.

“I went with it. He was looking around the place and said, ‘Yo, do you have any paintings of, like, crosses?’”

She had a big smile here. She ran her hand over the black painting as if she were a Price is Right model.

“And I said, ‘Like this one?’ That quieted him down. He had tattoos and his wife and a 3 year old with him.”

She was moving. Not by choice. The building was sold, so she planned to move to a spot on Ashland for the art she showed and the lessons she taught. That’s why she was there so late on a Thursday evening. She was packing to go.

“Yeah, a lot of people come in here,” she said. “They get a glass of wine and come in here. Talk with me for a while. Say ‘How much for a painting?’”

She trailed off.

“How’s the new place going to be?” I asked.

“It’ll be nice,” she said.

We talk about the new spot. It’ll be farther from the bars and restaurants of the Division Street strip. Closer to a few Mexican restaurants. Closer to her house, too.

I promise to come and visit her new location — it’s closer to my house as well. She makes me take a business card. She’s trying to get rid of them. The address is going to be obsolete.

I walk out into the bars and restaurants. Hip apartment buildings. A few scary Polish bars still fighting the good fight. And Division Street 2012 gets a little less weird. One fewer little art shop where the owner punches the air each time she says “yo” and where men ask for maggots. One less place where slightly tipsy people wander in to ask about paintings they have no intention of buying.

I can’t really be mad on this. I’m a gentrifier here too. So, probably, was the little art shop. But I guess I can let myself be irked that whatever the next step in this neighborhood’s growth, it’s a little less me.

And a little less Layne Jackson.

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Read about one of the shop’s future neighbors

Visit the shop