During a recent visit to Oak Park, some friends told me a nearby bookstore had a bunch of Studs Terkel books on sale. I went to check it out before heading back to the city, and there they were on a back table: more than half a dozen titles in brand-new condition, at remainder prices. Great–but did this mean that Studs was out of print? And why was that new copy of The Encyclopedia of Chicago selling for more than $20 off the cover price?
Smith, 32, grew up in Hyde Park, the son of a University of Chicago professor. After graduating from high school, he worked a series of jobs in lefty politics on the east and west coasts, including stints with Greenpeace, SANE-Freeze, and an abortion-rights group. But he soon retired from activism. “It’s really, really hard being angry all day long,” he says.
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But People Like Us faltered too. “They made the classic move-to-a-bigger-location mistake,” says Weaver. The new shop, on Belmont near Racine, was “just enough off the beaten track to not be good. A lot of people found us and a lot of people didn’t.” In June 1998, nearly a year after People Like Us closed, she took a job at Transitions, where she and Smith worked night shifts together.
They quit Transitions in late 2002, after settling on Oak Park’s Lake Street commercial strip as a location. The town’s demographics were similar to bookstore-heavy Evanston and Hyde Park, but there was a bigger niche to fill in the near west suburb. It had a proven appetite for discount books: before Crown Books declared bankruptcy in 2001, the chain’s outpost in nearby River Forest, Weaver says, was one of its highest-grossing and most profitable stores. Plus they considered the presence of Borders and Barbara’s just down the street a draw, not a hindrance. “People are already coming to Lake Street to buy books,” she says.
