A Saturday in Chicago
Chicago has always been my second favorite city. Second only to Las Vegas, and only because Vegas has far better weather, and is surrounded by the desert, a place that’s magical to me.
Chicago is a blue collar Midwestern city, and it has my favorite American art museum. Have you been to The Art Institute of Chicago? It’s where Nighthawks is, the famous Edward Hopper painting, my favorite painting, and you can see American Gothic there. You should go. Plus, Chicago has far less of the elitist vibes that New York and L.A. give off. I’m not looking down on those cities, I love them, too, in their own ways, but Chicago is full of real people, people like you and me, and while there’s still a lot of wealthy residents, they don’t typically dominate the news like the other two bigger cities. Chicago, like most Midwestern cities, has news dominated by the problems the people in the city are all going through.
But this year in particular, Chicago has been good to me as an artist, and last Saturday, while visiting as a writer, was nothing short of a spectacular whirlwind.
My friend Chrissy and I took off about 8 in the morning for the Windy City. From my camper location in southern Michigan, it’s about a three hour drive. Just like always, since COVID, I was an hour early to my first engagement of the day. I used to be an expert on time zones. I’ve been to 41 states, Puerto Rico, and three other countries in my one wandering lifetime. But something broke during the pandemic and time became an illusion that no longer makes sense to me. I can no longer accurately figure out what time it is anywhere else in the world, let alone what time it’s supposed to be in my own Camper writing space. I live. I sleep. There’s night. There’s day. Why put numbers on any of it? Seriously, being on time for a reading requires far more energy than most would ever guess.
So, I was an hour early to The Bourgeois Pig Cafe in Chicago. I was scheduled to meet my comrade, and fellow writer, Garret Schuelke there. Garret, from Grand Rapids, MI, has a podcast. I’ve been a guest twice before, and he’d been trying to schedule me again to talk about the UAW strike, and my new novel. He just so happened to be in Chicago last Saturday for a Deadmau5 show, so we agreed to meet first thing when we got to the city. Chicago writer, Westley Heine, host of the reading I was to give in the evening, was scheduled to meet up with the two of us, and podcast, too.
We met at The Bourgeois Pig Cafe, and I only discuss names and locations when there’s a reason to. The Cafe is owned by the cousin of one of my best friends in life, Chris. Chris is a fellow Jeeper, and was my back up union steward when I was elected to serve in the UAW. He’s as close as any brother I’ve had, blood or say-so. Chris has been telling me for years that I have to check his cousin’s spot out, so I finally did, and it is certainly worth writing about.
The Bourgeois Pig Cafe is in the Lincoln Park area, a half a block from DePaul University. It features a ton of unique and interesting coffees, although I had my traditional black coffee with some almond milk, and they have two dozen sandwiches, all named after books. I got the East of Eden. It is the great American Novel, after all. The sandwich was nearly as good as the book. The Cafe is designed like a F. Scott Fitzgerald era one, in fact, the seating next door, and its speakeasy, is called The Gatsby. There are thousands of old classic book volumes lining both levels of seating and dining, and there’s now a wine bar, and a Speakeasy that’s built behind the bookshelves upstairs. If you’re a book lover, or fan of coffee, or a late night flapper gal kind of human, or perhaps all three like me, you’re gonna fucking love this place.
Garret and I met upstairs, and he set up his portable microphones and we got to talking for the podcast. Wes showed up about halfway through, and I won’t give away Garret’s podcast episode before it’s released, but it’s a good goddamned episode about being working writers in this capitalist country, and about unions and worker rights. One thing of note, Garret asked me when I thought my old company, Chrysler, would reach a tentative agreement, and I predicted there would be an an announcement that very Saturday. Within 10 minutes news broke that one had been reached. That made me look like far more of an expert than I am on American labor. I just pay attention a lot.
After we finished podcasting, Garret took off to get checked into his hostel for the night, and Wes gave my friend Chrissy and I a driving tour of some local legendary blues clubs, him being a local bluesman himself, although he’s like me, in that he wants to be known as a writer first, no matter the artistic chaos we find ourselves chasing. We stopped in at an indie bookstore to inquire about getting my new book on the shelves there, something I try to do now in every city I visit. And then we had the traditional big city adventure of finding a public restroom.
In big cities, and even in mid sized ones you’ll find this, in Toledo it’s the downtown and inner city area for us, but in places where there’s an abundance of homeless people, you’ll always have a hard time finding a public restroom. I understand why. We all do. But as a former homeless American, it also pisses me off. My closest friends have heard me joke about it, but I can pop a squat anywhere. That’s a thing homeless people have to learn to do in America, and once you learn that, it never goes away. I’ll write an article about public restrooms and homelessness someday, but on this Saturday we were lucky. We found a Mexican themed bar that let us in to use their facilities as they transitioned from late brunch to evening party.
It was time to head to the big evening poetry reading, so we did. It was at The Gallery Cabaret in the Wicker Park area.
The Gallery Cabaret is a true community art’s haven. It serves as an art venue, rotating art exhibits and featured artists monthly, and has live comedy, music and poetry seven nights a week. These venues are my favorite. The ones with the DIY local art flavor. The ones that serve as true community for local art.
My friend, the Chicago writer, Westley Heine, has been hosting a monthly open mic there for nearly half a year. He’s hustled it like good hosts do, by showing up at every Chicago poetry and music scene event he can get to, and announcing his open mic. As a result, Wes has cultivated a fun, and diverse Saturday evening poetry event, that’s well attended and often by some of the most respected living Chicago poets. On this overcast and cold, pre Halloween Saturday night, we had about 35 folks there, half of them in costumes.
I was the first ever featured reader at The Open Mic at the Gallery Cabaret, an honor that I’ll always count amongst my finest personal trophies. Wes’ theory is that there should only be a feature if someone has a new book, or is a traveling through artist, a theory I highly respect. He said I qualified on both accounts, and I got a 20 minute time slot. I read three poems, and five brief selections from my new novel. There’s a video of it on YouTube. I hope you’ll take the time to go watch it. The link is on my Facebook page. I’ll try to add it here, too, if I can figure out how.
I sold a few books, and as is often the case for so many traveling artists that are just trying to make it in the world. Just trying to get their work out there, I lost about $150 on gas, grub and parking fees, after you figure in the book sales. Lucky for me, I’m an artist and not a businessman. Because I also count the indie bookstore contact as a positive. I count the invitation to come back and feature at another Chicago reading in a few months, that’s a positive. I count the invitation to come back and be a guest on a Chicago radio show as another positive.
Somehow I know that all this hustling and networking is going to pay off in dollars, but I still have no idea how. I’m just going to get up everyday, keep writing. Keep going. Keep getting to every reading that I can get to. The two best ways I’ve found to meet new fans of my work, is to get them to open one of my books, or read them my books and poems live. Every time I give a poetry reading, I meet new friends. My writing is the best of what I have to offer the world. I’m so fortunate that I get to keep doing it.
Later, after the reading, Chrissy and I drove home in the dark October rain, and made it back to the Scrapes of Wrath at about 1am. Not bad for a 17 hour jaunt to our nation’s third largest city.
A thousand thank yous to Westley Heine for inviting me to feature, giving us a tour, putting up with us for the day, and for buying lunch. I owe ya, Wes. We get you to Toledo, dinner and tour on me.
photo of me in front of the speakeasy door at The Bourgeois Pig Cafe
Garret Sheulke, Westley Heine and me recording an episode of The Garret Scheulke Podcast at The Bourgeois Pig Cafe
photo of me in front of a John Lee Hooker Mural
Host Westley Heine kicking off The Open mic at the Gallery Cabaret. Guitar Mike in the background, provided music behind the poetry all night.
Photo of me reading at The Gallery Cabaret in Chicago.
I am loving this slice of life from a writer who is slugging it out full time. Much respect.