I got off the Dan Ryan at an exit where 20 pairs of tube socks sell for five bucks and you don’t even have to leave your car, passed two jumping Polish stands, and parked in a dark, near-empty lot surrounded by rusty barbed wire, facing a decrepit old church with faint bluish light flickering through its glass block windows. There was a hand-scrawled sign asking me to PLEASE KNOCK on the warped wooden door. Inside the tiny, fluorescent-lit, squeaky-floored foyer were two imposing doors decorated with cracked cross-shaped windows. Peeking through one of them at what used to be the church’s sanctuary, I caught sight of a ten-foot-tall blue neon Jesus hanging inside a huge neon cross suspended by chains from the ceiling. A red neon tube spanned his arms like a ribbon of blood. Above the cross was written, in neon, JESUS IS THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. If anything were ever to convert me, this would be it.
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Alas, I would’ve been the only convert. I had shown up a little after 9 PM–a good hour after the time on the invite–for an open house at South Union Arts, a new space in the old Maxwell Street area. Once it’s up and running, SUA will host weekly openings, occasionally with live performances; the building, a converted Baptist church, will also house private art studios and offices. The only other people there were the organizers, a couple of their friends, and Reader photographer Andrea Bauer and her boyfriend.
Through one of the building’s many sagging wooden doors there was another roomful of posters, and it smelled like corn–they’d been selling ears the night before for 50 cents apiece. Mixed in with all the goods was a cheesy, faded inspirational poster with distant gulls in a moody lavender sky above a mauve shore.
Except they weren’t. The designated protest area, across the street from the hotel, held a crowd of about 250 people, 300 max, just kind of hanging out, holding signs (WAR ISN’T WORKING, IMPEACHMENT: IT’S NOT JUST FOR BLOW-JOBS ANYMORE, and the pithy GRRRR!). All the regulars were there: the anarchist drum circle kids in black, who chalked on the sidewalk [Anarchy] + [Peace] = [Smiley Face]; the annoying socialists hawking papers they wish they could charge a buck for but can’t give away for free; the gay rights brigade; the World Can’t Wait people taking donations for whistles that would supposedly “drown out Bush’s lies.” The local chapter of Code Pink–“a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement” according to the group’s site–showed up as well. But where was everyone else?
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Andrea Bauer.
