Tony, for my 2000 road compilation “Ticket to Everywhere.” He titled the book.
In early 1992, I took a road trip with artist-writer-friend Tony Fitzpatrick to Kansas City, Mo.
The weekend was covered by a grainy mist, but it did not compromise the light we discovered. Tony was making birch wood baseball cards .I wanted him to meet Buck O’Neil, the Negro League legend who in 1962 became the first on-field Black coach in MLB history when he was hired by the Cubs.
One evening, Tony and I went out for dinner in the Westport neighborhood. I knew of a good dive bar, but Tony did not drink. [...]
The author at Dark Angel Towing 1/24/24. (Portrait by Nick Kam.)
I’ve spent a lot of time on America’s highways.
There was a 1991 Chicago to Santa Monica, CA. trip on Route 66. There have been a few memorable jaunts from Chicago through Memphis and Natchez, MS. to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, including getting caught in a tornado near Kingsland, AR. The Mississippi River Road. I’ve put 68,000 miles on my 2015 Ford Transit camper van featuring excursions that I turned into a book. I’ve never had a roadside calamity.
Until now.
And where did it happen?
On the Eisenhower Expressway [...]
Date Night at the Get Me High (Courtesy of Butchie Dakuras.)
The Get Me High Lounge was completely down to earth.
The tiny storefront jazz club was nestled at 1758 N. Honore near some train tracks in Chicago’s Wicker Park. The Get Me High flourished in the mid-1980s when gob-smacked noir nightlife was all over Wicker Park like a street hustler.
Neighborhood folks could check out the original Artful Dodger punk club on North Milwaukee Avenue and the Double Door when it was a workingman’s bar lined with commemorative Elvis decanters and Webb Pierce on the jukebox. I lived in a graffiti-laden Wicker [...]
Lee’s Barber Shop is in a tiny strip mall on the near north side of Naperville, Ill. A seasonal Dairy Queen sits south of the barbershop and a shuttered dry cleaner is on the north end of what is known as Modern Way Center. Lee’s has as much in common with the Las Vegas Strip as hair on Bruce Willis.
The new master barber at Lee’s is Noe Hernandez, Jr.
Hernandez grew up in the Naperville area, about 40 miles west of Chicago, before embarking on a career that took him to the Palmer House in Chicago, H.R.H. Truefitt, and Hill Barbers in London (the oldest barbershop in the world) and most recently master barber at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
