Continuing the expeditions of Jeff MacNelly, James Kilpatrick, and Eugene McCarthy, with apologies.

The Radical

The fast moving Radical keeps to the perimeters of the bestiary, leaving a trail of newspaper clippings and insects blowing from its ratty mane. Radicals cling to one side of the edge, or the opposite other, depending on political affiliation, but never travel to the center of the bestiary, except in retirement from public life when they take positions with lobbying firms on K Street. Some time thereafter, in their dotage, Radicals pale and soften and recede into an amoebic final life stage that ends in an quiet evaporation and subsequent assimilation into the beltway atmosphere. During the prime of life, however, the Radical is anything but unnoticed, it is reddened and vituperative, flashy and coarse, a motorcycle in an echo chamber, constantly striving to amplify its resonance. Proceed with caution, but not fear, while interacting with this creature. Often the radical’s ideas are of interest, even if the creature itself is repulsive.

–Danny Grosso

From Chicago Gothic (2007). Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

Even the construction barriers were built to resemble pagodas down there. The growing Asian population before the closing of the borders had changed the aesthetic priorities of the city and its partner developers. It became a tradition to appropriate artistic culture for banal commercial purposes, and, even now, as the disinfected structures are rehabilitated for the appropriate uses of the new age, the barriers and scaffolds have a Kyoto flavor. Like the rest of the city, most everything else has changed, especially the density. As residents were urged to live separately, the streets were cleared for foot traffic, allowing for a sense of openness that people once had to seek out in a desert. Groups of four can linger on a corner, separated but together, without fear of obstructing the once great army of pedestrians on their way to fast food lunches or commuter trains.

There is a certain charm to an empty city. The long afternoon shadows and the gravity of history comport with the echo of noises past; music from a time when the percussion of an unbridled society propelled all those poor souls toward an unexpected future.

 

-Danny Grosso

The Traveler first appeared in The Loyola Phoenix under the title D.C.. Many of the original strips were damaged in the layout and printing process, so the author reworked them in 1990-91.

 

–Danny Grosso

The place thumped as they made their way through the gauntlet guard of bouncers, coat check girls, and waitresses in the small foyer. No cover to pay – they were regulars. No coats to check- they had parked close enough to leave their coats in the car and run to the door in the cold. No drinks yet – they hadn’t worked up a thirst.

Johnny Angel was pulled aside by one of the older guys whose dad was an alderman. Angel’s eyes narrowed as the guy asked if he and Duke could paint the ward office for him tomorrow, cash job, off the books. Angel was hearing this inquiry in one ear, and a song he really liked in the other. “You gonna be here for a while?” he yelled to the alder-son. “I’ll be back in a bit…” he followed up without waiting for an answer. He was backing onto the dance floor and as he hit the linoleum he spun into the middle of a foursome of girls, regulars. “Just in time!” one of them, a blonde, screamed over the music, which was building under their feet. It as a heavy bass riff, and the soles of Angel’s feet felt like rubber. the effect was catching, he looked over his shoulder and saw the Duke bouncing over to him like Sid Vicious, mid-pogo. Angel’s muscles were loosening now, and the first beads of sweat sparkled his brow. the DJ was looking at him, and Angel held the DJ’s eyes as well while the latter reached for the volume knob. Angel was bouncing in rhythm with an ocean’s wave of sound, already ceding his body to the music. Eyes still on each other, the two waited for the right moment, then Angel nodded.

The knob turned, and the tuned became impossibly louder. The joyous screams on the dance floor went seen but not heard, as the music welled up further and seemed to crash through the bones of those lucky enough to be on the floor in that place at that moment in time.

Angel’s and the DJ’s eyes had not left each other. The only change in the telekinetic dynamic was that both parties were now smiling widely.

-Danny Grosso

Near the lakefront you would see them trudging from the beach in summer, bottles and buckets in hand, using the alleys to avoid the sun’s further caress of sunburned shoulders. Lovers and sun worshipers, mothers cackling at unruly boys, fathers holding their daughters’ hands. Voices carry differently in alleys, they are the city’s accessible canyons, and the children loved to make their attempts at bouncing echoes. A strangeness in urbanity: yodeling in the long shadows of summer afternoons.

 

-Danny Grosso

Snow was bright and glittery when the disco black lights hit her. An ice queen melting on the dance floor; sometimes she’d start partying too early in the day and wilt into your arms by midnight. Carrying her out of a club, you couldn’t help noticing how classically beautiful she was, like a figure on an ancient urn, straight nose, monochrome, unblemished. The hard nightlife hadn’t yet extracted its tax on her looks. Her demeanor was resilient as well, more fiercely bubbly than champagne, her laugh more a guffaw than a giggle.

She lasted a long time in that state, in that life, before the reckoning tumbled in with the winds of changing weather. All those heartbreaks; the overdoses and other episodes of violence, the AIDS and other scourges that she somehow escaped but sat sat witness to, like an empath, as was just – her whole life was that life, those people, her crowd, now falling apart, unlike her.

I saw her soul hollowing, and didn’t want to see her ever again. I dreaded the thought of time changing her. I remain with the memory of Snow, undrifted.

 

-Danny Grosso

There was once a restaurant here that was open for a hundred years, and a cantilevered sign on the corner that predicted the weather. Across the street, the sloping building with the Chagall mosaic on the outlot still attracts those worshiping a certain aesthetic deity. Sometimes people pray there.  A generations-old tale tells of a little girl who called the sloping structure “The Skateboard Building”, after musing about the feasibility of gliding down its curves on those little wheels. Over time, with the discard of several generic corporate re-namings, the nostalgia of the tale took hold, and now everyone uses the little girl’s name for the place. It used to be a big bank with thousands of people working inside, milling about with customers, sipping coffee in the interior promenade, and reading newspapers in the atrium. Such a quaint notion in these times of remoteness.  Banks are still around but they no longer need to employ so many people, certainly not for person to person servicing.

Before buildings became fortresses against outside threats of violence or contagion, they were open, even welcome meeting places with their own personalities and charms. If they were thought of as shelter, it was from the from the elements only, and, indeed, in inclement weather, workers would commute though a series of building lobbies to their destinations, thereby limiting exposure to the wind, rain, cold, or snow. Building security personnel did not carry weapons and did not turn away the uninvited. They were instructed to greet the public with kindness. It is said that nobody thought twice about freedom of movement back then, before the great walling off,  before the eyes in the skies, the surveillance web, and the personal chip that connects to all that. Apparently, they had no such infringements back then to clutter their minds.

 

-Danny Grosso

From Chicago Gothic (2007). Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

The Traveler first appeared in The Loyola Phoenix in 1982 under the title D.C.. Many of the original strips were damaged in the layout and printing process, so the author reworked them in 1990-91.

 

–Danny Grosso