48 Hours and 4 Book Stores

That's the theme of the past two days. I've been all over the city looking at bookstores of all sorts. Yesterday morning on the way to find Intelligentsia Coffee I stopped by a used bookstore for a moment, and happened upon a first-edition copy of Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency for only eight dollars. I expressed my excitement to the owner, the sort of sagely fellow who spends his days tending to the store collection as the store's sole employee. He's the first bit of familiarity I've seen here outside the apartment where I'm staying. Every city has at least one of these guys.

I hit a couple of comic shops after that; Chicago Comics up toward Wrigley and Graham Cracker's downtown. Two shops in one day and it wasn't even Wednesday. My goal was to find locally produced comics, which I did. Some are cheaply produced photocopy and construction paper jobs with high school level characters and simplistic, often gonzo stories for the author to demonstrate an inflated sense of originality. Many seem to want to be the next Harvey Pekar or R. Crumb, but lack the patience to learn the art craft or stop to appreciate the mundane aspects of the real life humor they attempt. That's my read, anyway. A more well-informed opinion would require slogging through some truly horrendous bargain-bin dreck, so for the sake of time and standards, I choose to remain willfully uneducated. However, I did pick up some locally crafted gems. One, a hand bound history of the inventor of the word "robot" narrated by a small toy robot, is downright charming. I also picked up two issues of "Deterrent Comics," a series modeled loosely after the old golden age comics. Along the way, I bought a few other comics that aren't available outside of major cities.

Friday night I went down to Wrigleyville to the Cubby Bear, a bar and venue hosting a trio of tribute bands with a dead rock star theme. The three bands were versions of Nirvana, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and The Doors. It seemed odd to be seeing this show in a Cubs themed bar, but it occurred to me that the three bands represented hadn't had a hit in over a decade and were all dead before October, so perhaps the venue was fitting. I got there in time to See most of "Nirvana," and I was impressed at the level of authenticity, right down to "Krist Novaselic's" vintage L7 shirt. The lead, "Kurt," had an exuberance that came through between songs, whereas the original was a rather unlikely frontman. Also, to his credit, the drummer had the look and the style of drummer Dave Grohl extremely well. For the next two groups, all that really mattered was that the frontmen got it right. The "Hendrix" was a great guitar player, even in the afro wig and velvet pants. The third act's "Jim Morrison" sort of looked the part, had Morrison been one to get regular healthy meals not consisting of heavy narcotics. He sounded the part, though, as did the band. My only expectation for each band was that they play my favorite works by each respective band, one song each. For the record, they did: Territorial Pissings (Nirvana); The Star-Spangled Banner followed by Purple Haze (Hendrix); and LA Woman (Doors), respectively. The thing about a tribute show like this is that it invites the crowd to sing along. At most concerts this is a faux-pas, as you are there to hear the original auteur. This show was all about the collective appreciation of the bands impersonated. A more pretentious and less tired blogger might even make a comparison to Greek theatre with actors play gods by donning masks and acting in a recognizably deitific manner. "Hendrix" played a solo with his teeth.

Today we all took a walk down to the neighborhood Tower Records to peruse the store-closing sale, part of the wider chain shutdown. I don't mind seeing another overpriced corporate music store close, but I'm not above buying discounted merchandise. I picked up Chulahoma, a short album of blues covers by the Black Keys. Elsewhere, at a local music store I found a few singles by the Black Keys and Pearl Jam, and the UK import Disarm single by the Smashing Pumpkins, the one with a ton of live and rare material- most of which I'd never seen on even the old music pirate networks. This was one of the singles my old roommates used to mention almost reverentially, as if it only existed in rumor.

I ate dinner at a pizza-by-the-slice place and set out to take the el to a stop by Quimby's Bookstore. The bus system is often a better way to travel the city, but I've been operating under the notion that the el is both transportation and a landmark. In the days before pdf maps of the city transit system, during the Roman empire, an easy way to find a city was to find the gigantic aqueduct system and follow it by the downward slope. Here in modern times, all tracks lead to the Loop, so I use the el for nearly everything. Tonight that backfired. There were no southbound trains stopping at my station or the one immediately north. The trains could go by, sure, but not stop on the track near the platform due to some construction. I ended up taking the scenic route to a red line stop that would take me to a blue stop where I could switch to go in the right direction. My goal was to make it to a reading by an author I don't even remember anymore at Quimby's at 7:00. After numerous stops, transfers, and waits, I was on the red line at 8:00 when the train stopped dead in an underground section downtown.

Ah, the red line. I shared my tale of misfortune with Michelle, who then informed me that the red line breaks down all the time and it has the most crazy people. One such nut was sitting near me on the red tonight. When I sat down, she was furiously scribbling in a notebook with about eight lines of letters titled, I believe, "Work (world?) Poems." She muttered to herself and anyone within earshot trying to find the right word, settling on "top-flight." So pleased with this word choice was she, that she began jabbering into a dead cellphone held upside down to the side of her head. She then tired of writing, stuffed her spiral bound notebook into a purse, and began singing the chorus of Michael Jackson's "You are Not Alone," from one of the Free Willy movies. The first line was from the song, the second was probably her own, as Jackson has proven capable of fitting lyrics to music. It was about then that the train slowed and halted in the tunnel. Nothing out of the ordinary- trains pause to wait for the next train to clear the station all the time. Then the train started rolling backwards as if the brakes hadn't engaged. Then the lights went out, save for the lights above the doors. The lady started repeating the song over and over, louder each time, until she stopped and started calling for single men. By either the Grace of God or the collective will of the other passengers, the lights came on and the train moved forward.

By this time, I was irritated at missing the author and determined to find Quimby's, closed or not, even just to touch the door and say I had been there. It was still open, so I went in and bought a few local comics. The store had an assortment of odd books and art on the walls, all the sort of things other stores don't carry. A city this size can support this sort of niche, and while not everything in the store is top-quality merchandise, the city is a better place for having a store like this.

In spite of my ordeal, I managed to drag my weary bones into a coffee shop for a huge slice of dense-as-lead chocolate spice cake. The ride home was pleasant and direct.