1,001 Chicago Afternoons

In the hot summer sun, among the women walking around wearing rainbows and the occasional completely waxed man wearing nothing but skin-tight boxer briefs and a smile, the old man wore a suit.

My cousin in NOLA is posting pictures of her family at Mardi Gras. That’s real Mardi Gras for real New Orleanians, not the drunken beads and boobs fest of many a college road trip movie. She, the husband and the two little kidlings all in costume (they went as the four elements) wandering the streets, [...]

“You can adjust speed, but you’ll see you can also adjust intensity,” she said, pressing one of the directional buttons on the small wireless controller. The smooth, pinkish-purplish plastic contraption gripping my hand started to pulse in a way I could only assume would be pleasurable if I had the body part it was designed [...]

The wooden carving covering the bar’s mirrored back had a poem about an Irish cop raiding a speakeasy because he didn’t get his cut. The Waits-voice band was jazzy and gruff. The entirety of the Green Mill kept its distinctive Prohibition flair, that time of class, grace and utter adult cool. Save the bald guy [...]

The big man took my $20 bill, set it on the cash register keypad, stared at it for a second, then shook himself alert. “You wanted that wrapped, right?” he said. I said yes. “Sorry,” he said, counting $16 in change. “I’m losing my mind from all these Valentine’s Day orders coming in.”

The little girls paused below the flashing lights of Rothschild Liquors, Minnie Mouse being so bold as to pull on the door handle. Raggedy Ann and the garden-variety princess stood back, watching the older girl pull back and hang off the door in that way little kids have of making everything a game. Their parents [...]

I looked the smiling man in the eye. “Hold on. Let me check,” I said, flicking a 50-cent piece in the air. The coin spun for a just a moment before landing in my hand. It was tails, so I sold my soul to the devil.

It really was a dark and stormy night. The wind tried in vain to whip up leaves that had been tamped and damped by the icy streaks of rain that tore through the sky in brief, flickering bursts. But the leaves lay wetted and dead, slicking the lamplit streets and sidewalks of Chicago, Illinois.

The orange-hatted, slender-jeaned young man with the “I-care-for-nothing” groovy hipster mustache gave a little cheer in spite of himself when the seal made it on the rock.

Along the river where the office buildings make a concerted effort to stink of power, there’s a little bar with a cutesy name that will be funny to lawyers.