1,001 Chicago Afternoons

She was a hefty, slow-moving beast with a staggeringly stunning smile.

She was large, I won’t lie about that. Dramatically large, apparently sampling the wares of work for lunch and dinner most days. A Wendy’s uniform isn’t a flattering thing on the most trim. She was a sea of apron squooshed under a little visor hat.

But then there was that smile. I fell in love a little. » Read the rest of this entry «

Like swallows to Capistrano, like Monarch butterflies to Oaxaca, the boobs have returned to Wicker Park.

» Read the rest of this entry «

I saw her standing shivering in a doorway. Then I saw the pink felt blanket she wore as a shawl.

Then I saw the giant hooded blanket she wore underneath, the one I had once described as “spangled with star-burst mandalas.” That’s when I realized I had written about this woman before. » Read the rest of this entry «

The old woman did a little dance behind the Kmart register.

“I’m almost done!” she yelled as a friend walked by.

She was old and gray, her smile cracking into the deep creases and folds of her skin. I was buying a clothes drying rack and new dress socks. » Read the rest of this entry «

A young man in a long coat and short-brimmed fedora stood on the sunny sidewalk, looking around while writing on a folded sheet of paper he braced with a book. He caught me peering so I made up a lie about being interested in what he was reading. » Read the rest of this entry «

In the window of the gallery, under dangling Christmas ornaments the size of small dodgeballs, the figure sat.

It was a sculpture of a human form, with clocks carved in its head and the base of the Eiffel Tower protruding from its abdomen because Art, that’s why. » Read the rest of this entry «

Two lovers twined bodies in the cold grass behind Wicker Park’s winter-dead fountain. A homeless man paced back and forth smoking while another stood by the chessboard tables, arranging and rearranging his overflowing shopping cart. A rat scrambled by. It stopped for several minutes to dig in the dirt less than two feet behind me.

I was there in the November dark to watch Guy Fawkes fight “Obamney.” » Read the rest of this entry «

“Spiritual hip-hop! Spiritual hip-hop!” the man with the stack of CDs yelled outside the Jewel on a gray August day.

“Movies,” he said, quieter. » Read the rest of this entry «

The two little boys in the matching lion jammies both held up four fingers, but daddy corrected the smaller one.

“No,” he said in that paternal sing-song men bring home from the hospital with the bassinet and baby. “You’re two-and-a-half, aren’t you?”

The little one nodded and offered me a look through his bright yellow binoculars. The one who was actually 4, Braeden or something similar that is now somehow considered a name, looked up at his daddy with pleading eyes. He wanted to get back to painting over the gang tag. » Read the rest of this entry «

Lovely weather makes you move. Or, to be more accurate, it makes you feel you should be moving and should have already been moving for the last several hours. » Read the rest of this entry «