To market, to market

This the grocery store of my heart -- no doubt you've heard me sing its praises before. I have a nearly unnatural love for it, a kind of love that might be illegal in the South.

Sure, they run out of stock from time to time (no couscous today? fine, I'll use grits). And their freezer case has been known to leak. They break out rolls of cheap paper towel rolls and line them up along the bottom to keep the floors dry.

But they're a little-engine-that-could kind of supermarket. An earnest underdog. A beloved cousin with a club foot.

I was recently there for a midweek, early-morning stock-up, and the manager remarked that I wasn't buying so much today. I told him as long as it was still warm, I was getting most of my produce at the farmer's market. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that," he said, smiling."

It's an amazing thing to be in a supermarket where the manager is both the guy who both greets you at the door and the one who worries whether volume is moving. It's not some suit in a corporate office fretting over the bottom line, but an actual guy, who greets you at the door and pitches in to bag your groceries during a rush.

And of course there's my favorite Produce stocker, who always offers a warm smile and a hearty hello -- asks me how I've been, wants to know in broken English if I need any help. It doesn't matter if I'm having the worst day of my life (too frequent these days) or walk in a bedraggled stinking mess after a jog. He makes me feel like my visit to the store matters to him.

Yesterday, when I noticed they were out of the milk I usually buy, I asked him if he expected a delivery later today. Yes, he told me, maybe later in the afternoon. "Ok, I'll come back," I said.

"You better," he said. "It's always a treat to see you."

You too, produce guy. You have no idea.

If this is progress, take me to the wayback machine

Despite a heroic community fight, this unassuming set of storefronts is slated to become an EZ Pawn in early 2012. I didn't agree with all the protesters. Some were in the mix because they don't like what a nearby pawn shop says about their neighborhood. Classic nimbyism. Classic shmucks.

But I did agree with the jewelry shop owner a couple doors down, worried that his business (already displaced once due to land grabs to the east) is now vulnerable. And I agreed that one key piece of the EZ Pawn model -- payday loans -- is a scourge in an area where unemployment and foreclosure are running amok.

But mostly I'm worried about what's happening to my local retail corridor. The longstanding funeral home has already closed. My favorite portrait studio is in the process. We've lost taquerias and Chinese restaurants, independent dollar stores and barber shops. I fear our beloved hardware store is next.

No, this area isn't ripe for the Gaps and Trader Joes of this world, but the T-Mobiles and the Wal-Marts may well be on their way. Before my favorite storefronts are papered over and sanitized, I thought it was worth displaying the good old days of anything goes.

Yeah!

This is the Arts of Life band. It may be a little tough to tell from the photo, but half the members are developmentally disabled. When we went to see them play an outdoor show in the neighborhood some weeks back -- a period it's still tough for me to write about, because it was our earlier and better normal, when Inez was still there to greet us when we came home -- I admit to thinking, "Oh, this will be really sweet," or "Wow, that band leader is doing the work of kings."

On the first count, I was wrong. It was completely badass.

On the second count, also wrong. The guy who assembled this band, who also runs a small gallery one neighborhood over (the same neighborhood where I work, where this guy has taken no small amount of flack for being one of the bellwethers of gentrification) doesn't beam with pride over his singers and drummer. He doesn't slowly say, "1 . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . 3 . . . . ." to make sure they're ready to start. He doesn't demand louder applause for his differently achieving musicians. These are simply his bandmates, and he responds to them as he would any bandmates. By playing the songs.

Those songs may be about a shark attack, a bear eating garbage, or a rap homage to one of the singer's home towns of Brookfield, Illinois. Here's a taste if you can handle the rock.

Inez was here

On Friday we lost our best thing: Our beautiful sweet soul Inez, who showed up on our porch seven years ago and essentially made us a family.

The loss was sudden and unspeakably painful. We had her, and then we didn't. Her absence leaves a terrible emptiness in this house that we're not yet ready to fill with our memories. We know those memories will come. They come already, but they bring with them such piercing heartache that we push them away. Later. Later.

For now we stumble through the hours, challenged to tackle each of those first things: The first morning waking up with her gone, the first step into the kitchen where she took her breakfast, the first entry into the living room where she sneaked onto the sofa strictly forbidden to her. The first time sitting on the family-room couch -- her couch -- and the first time realizing it still smells of her body. The first time clearing away her food bowls and toys. The first sighting of a collection of her hair on the floor, or on a shirt from the last time she slept on our laps. The first time we let ourselves look at her photos. Say her name.

It's a little like stepping into a very cold ocean. You go in to your ankles -- so cold -- so you step back out again. Then you resolutely go back, stand in the icy undulating water for a few moments so your skin can get used to the temperature. When you're ready, you go to the knees, stand, and adapt. Then to the waist -- this may be the hardest stage, when you can start to feel that tingling on your back, and you resist, stretching taller and holding your elbows out, tempted to think this is all I can bear. But you wait, settling in as your skin gets adjusted. Ready to go a little further. Up to the middle back, the shoulders, the neck. And finally, boldly, you duck your head under the water until you're brave enough to open your eyes, then swim.

Right now we're in to our baby toes. Maybe today or tomorrow, we'll wade.

We miss you, little girl. Thank you for finding us.

Versed

We popped into the new poetry space around the corner last week. The performances happen in the front room, essentially a dressed-down apartment living room, with exposed brick along an entire wall and some interesting original art displayed. In the back room (the kitchen), you could grab a Schlitz in a bottle for a $2 donation. Not a bad little operation, and the place was packed.

Packed mainly with 20-somethings smoking cigarettes, squeezing themselves thigh to thigh on small couches, flirting a little, drinking their beer down to just a small pool at the bottom of the bottle, then using that same bottle as an ashtray. They listened to not incompetent poetry delivered by not overly earnest poets. As scenes go, it was a reasonable one.

The evening filled me with some guarded nostalgia over a period of life when an average Wednesday night for me might feel much the same.

That said, despite my dents and dings and wear and tear, I'm very happy not to be a 20-something chainsmoker anymore, reciting poetry in non-ventilated rooms, hoping I might get a kiss by the end of the night.

O Wall, O sweet, O lovely Wall . . .

What you may see here is a plain brick wall. Actually, given the light, you -- like me -- probably see much more, but I'll get to that in a minute.

This wall tells a story, but one without a real denouement. A blank brick canvas is a bit of a midsummer night's dream to gangs working to (re)establish their territory. In the days prior to this photo being taken, one of the largest tags I've ever seen broadcast itself prominently across the building. I actually went out that morning to photograph the tag, but I was relieved to see that our city Graffiti Blasters had beaten me to the punch.

Chicago is strapped for cash these days, and graffiti-removal efforts, like streetcleaning teams, have seen deep cuts. This results in tags lasting longer than they once did, which means the gangs in question get to claim that corner for longer than they used to. Even a few extra days can mean a lot, and trust me, as a neighbor, you feel it.

But the missing tag reminded me that down isn't out, and the city still responds to 311 requests, even if it takes a little longer. It's important, in these trying days, to remember that every problem has a solution, even if that solution requires some extra work on residents' parts.

And yet the ghost of the paint still lingers. You can see it in the proper light, and you know it's never really over. That phantom reminds us that it's a matter of a drug sale on the wrong corner, a girlfriend looked at the wrong way, an Explorer cruising with intent down the wrong block -- and on a larger scale, the job market failing to improve, public education remaining anemic, and cycles of poverty repeating themselves -- and the tag will be back, the tension right along with it.

It's hard to imagine those masons, laying every brick, applying every single layer of mortar, with any sense whatsoever that this would be the legacy of their work.

Rewriting the Story

I sent a confrontational note to my alderman yesterday. This honestly isn't my style, but sometimes you have to say enough is enough. And between the gunfire the other night, a rash of new gang tags, the illegal tires continuing to pile up outside the auto-body shop down the block, and the pawn shop/payday loan operation being secreted through Zoning to open around the corner, I guess I've reached a tipping point.

My familiars seem better about letting this stuff roll off their backs than I am. I used to be better about it too. It's clear I need to detox. Not the blissful but temporary decompression that came with my trip to Maine last week, but something more longstanding. A giant intake of air that lasts a month or more would be nice.

But life doesn't show any sign of letting up, so I'm taking a DIY approach. Seeking out the small painkillers that present themselves from time to time in the neighborhood.

To that end, I'd like to send a thank-you note to this guy, who's rehabbing a house on one of the busiest, most treeless, perhaps least invested blocks in the neighborhood. More interesting to me than the actual house on the property, though, is this smaller blue dwelling, which already houses his flock of chickens.

To you, sir, I say Welcome to the neighborhood . . . homesteader, urban farmer, pedaler, inspired stranger, calmer of jittery hearts.