In a warehouse off a road off Chicago Avenue, in a moonlit stretch of Humboldt Park that’s not great even by that neighborhood’s standards, in a room past the loading dock, past a shower of clear industrial PVC curtains smeared and stained where the forklifts plowed through, past pallets stacked to the ceiling, past a workshop area where men grind metal, there’s a little room off to one slow corner where there’s a desk, a mirror, a calendar and some Serbian tits. » Read the rest of this entry «
#182: Sweep
June 26th, 2013 § permalink
An old man sweeps a store.
The store is closed; no getting in for paletas, helado and the other frozen treats whose taped-up pictures line the edge of the storefront window. The door is locked. The neon above it with “Open” in cursive glass isn’t glowing.
And an old man sweeps inside. He sweeps around carts. » Read the rest of this entry «
#181: Seoul Video Fishing
June 24th, 2013 § permalink
Mexican restaurants, Korean newspaper boxes, a storefront for an office decorated with medals and other trinkets from some Eastern European country.
Signs in Korean, Spanish, English, Arabic and whatever that Eastern European language is.
Travel agencies devoted to getting people back to visit family they left behind. A canvas supply store. They still have Internet cafés here.
A red curtain billows out the window, then gets sucked in as the pressure changes. It breathes in and out as the front moves in.
The signs for a glasses store are all in Korean. The models in the photos are all white.
And there’s Seoul Video Fishing. » Read the rest of this entry «
#180: Red Allowed
June 21st, 2013 § permalink
I found a spot with a view of the Jewelers’ Building. I liked the way the pinkish carved curls and swoops across the river were flanked from my perspective by the glass and steel up-ness of the Trump and some Miesian fiasco I can’t be bothered to learn the name of. » Read the rest of this entry «
#179: Bianchi Green
June 19th, 2013 § permalink
The leg moved the pedals round, a thin metal band strapping the ankle in place.
The ankle bent in the proper places, the plastic and metal giving and moving along the pedals’ arc. Circles within circles as the ankle connected up to a plastic calf nearly tortoiseshell in its brindled browns and green. It moved the pedal moving the gear moving the chain in perfect precision with the woman’s other leg, the one still made of muscle and bone. Circle. Circle. I was reminded of automata. » Read the rest of this entry «
#178: The Comic Book Beat
June 17th, 2013 § permalink
“They have weddings annually at the jail, the county jail,” Darryl Holliday said as he sipped a canned craft beer handed him by a tattooed pixie at a Logan Square bar. “The inmates get married to their signif- to their SOs at the jail, at the courthouse.”
“They’re basically waiting in line to do this and it’s like people trying to get their license at the DMV,” Erik Rodriguez said. » Read the rest of this entry «
#177: The 7-Eleven Bookshop
June 14th, 2013 § permalink
As I walk past with my Chandler and Adams, a workbooted Sout’ Sider stood in the aisle in jeans that had seen a lot of labor, a baseball cap cocked to the sky and a cup of coffee in his hands.
He was eying either “Madame Bovary” or “Lord Jim” if I was following his eyes correctly. He was eying them in a bookstore in Beverly stuck next to a 7-Eleven. For 24 years.
#176: Drink of Water
June 12th, 2013 § permalink
A fire hydrant shakes when you crank it open. It shakes and shivers and sometimes blasts the cap off into the street. » Read the rest of this entry «
#175: A Waltz on the Roof
June 10th, 2013 § permalink
A white van marked Metra stopped suddenly by a Family Dollar on the stretch of South Side 71st named after Emmett Till.
The driver leaned out the window by the intersection with Patton and stared.
A tow truck driver stopped in the middle of the street, not even waiting for the intersection. He stopped by the train tracks that split the east- and westbound lanes of “Honorary Emmett Till Road.” He stared too.
They both drove off as a tall, muscular bald man crossed the tracks south so he can turn and look too. He stood by two women who had gotten out of a car by the Family Dollar to gape. One of the women pulled out a phone to catch it all on video. The Metra van returned, cruising slowly from the direction it left toward before circling around to stop by an empty lot to stare again.
The six women in orange continued to dance on the roof. » Read the rest of this entry «
#174: On Proximity, or “Fuck you, Danielle”
June 7th, 2013 § permalink
The window was open because I like the cold. I was on the couch because I was reading a sad black-and-white comic book.
And all I know of these people is that one was mad at Danielle. » Read the rest of this entry «
