Awkward lighting cast deep shadows over a scummy mattress and limp old sad-eyed animal costume attached to the wall, a homemade Cabbage Patch Kid hanging from the ceiling, rows of chewed-up cowboy hats. A tangled beaded curtain framed a dark hallway that led to a short flight of concrete stairs descending out into the darkness. And beyond that: trash-filled muddy moats around large islands of gravel, one of them occupied by an old moving truck, inside of which was a dance party.
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Now, it’s sad to see one alternative space close its doors, but it’s downright alarming to see half a dozen go down at once. Buddy, Diamonds, Foundation Gallery, and Alterspace have all recently either folded or threatened to. The kids at Wicker Park’s Hey Cadets! were evicted after their first event, though they’ve since taken over Diamonds’ old digs. And a few Fridays ago Texas Ballroom was raided by a couple dozen police before their show, advertised as “a multimedia war between good and evil,” had even begun. Police told residents that they’d read about it in the Sun-Times, where Jackie Harvey-like columnist Chris Whitehead wrote about it after being handed a flyer by a “young man” at an el stop: “I haven’t been there, don’t know anything about it, but the young man says he plays bass and dances like Prince and James Brown, which alone ought to be worth the price of admission.”
I let my hair fall over my face and my hips do the talkin’. Some personal space invader behind me was pressing his warm 40 of Cobra between my shoulder blades so hard I thought it might break. Then he reached forward and pressed the cartilage flaps covering my ear canals in and out, making that conch shell/vacuum sound. I didn’t mind because, honestly, that’s one of my favorite ways to listen to music.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Mireya Acierto.
