From Chicago Gothic (2007), my book about urban wanderings, available now at Amazon Books. Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

A hug from those that came before me

and went to that great somewhere that

is nowhere anymore until

I slide into that coat

that remembers the fold of my arms and

I remember the embrace of

everything we stood for

the thunder and the grace

and the the beautiful face

in the black and the white of

the leather and the night.

The last stand of the timid turns

on their stiffening

a rocket of emotion

a moment of glistening

with backs to the wall

and nobody listening

they hear the last song

that the ransomed were singing.

The coat is an album

full of old pictures

and a vault imbued

with all of my wishes as

I dance through the streets with

wise eyes and dervishes and

thunder and grace.

I remember the embrace of

everything we stood for

and the beautiful face

in the black and the white

of the leather and the night.

-Danny Grosso

The party started early and ended late. Some people are made to be together – though often not in groups as big as this. Like some dusty love song, this crew could not quit each other, regulars on Walton Place, as integral as the kitchen. By 5:30 on Fridays they were over-populating the bar, pushing the conventioneers to the side tables. They ate a bit, drank a bit more, and laughed – my, did they laugh. The uproar made it good to be back out, among people again, and provided a bit of vindication to those whose trust in humanity had not cratered during the crisis. Stepping back from it now, it seems like their lives overlapped into one another, in the ethereal synergies of friendships, and physically, in their manner and dress. A contour drawing of one continuous line, eliciting eye and cheek, hairline and lapel. Friends are friends, one hopes, praying they don’t become something else. After even short periods of solemn absence, the noise of affection summons like a gathering bell, leading some to find their better places among other’s hearts.

–Danny Grosso

Looking around is hard when your eyes are closed, but he muddled through the day anyway. The slits that let in the sights would open up at some point in the day when he wasn’t high, and for that short period before he lit up again the garish world around him was frightening. Too bright, too fast, too loud, man. Still, he liked to walk about everyday, as if taking the bitter to better love the sweet, and each block he passed made him yearn more for the incense of his apartment. He’d learned to wear a jacket above his sleeveless, in case he wandered too far, or ran into another partier, and didn’t turn around toward home until after the cold of night set in. Leather. Big inside pockets to hide your stash. The older guys taught him that when he was just a kid – that and a few other things, like opening the door for the ladies, splitting what’s on you in two so you might keep one package if you get rousted.

He bumped into a street lamp. No problem. The slow burnout gait made obstructions less painful. He heard a giggle. No problem.  He heard giggling in his head all day. What was the difference if someone else was laughing? Let them join in. He was a happy person and to stay that way he knew others had to be happy too. Giggle away, people and laugh out loud, I may be the object of your mirth but I  don’t care because I can’t see you. You are just a bunch of happy sounds to me, the way the world should be. A bunch of happy sounds.

-Danny Grosso

Time was when he was everywhere. Everyone knew Deco Love. Sliding into a jazz club, or shuffling past a beat cop, he’d flash a grin and a wink and leave you with a smile on your own mug. Some said he was a pusher, or a bootlegger, maybe a pimp, but no one ever saw him plying such trades. Maybe he just looked right for those parts, with his long custom dusters and his wide brimmed lids; and that walk, with the little hitch that seemed in sync with every basement playing band he passed on the avenue.

At night he’d arrive with a lady and leave alone, only to show up later at another club, with another lady. He’d drink with the heavies – the club owners who were connected with the powers on both sides, and after-party with the bands after three or four sets amid the sinewy smoke. Some said he played the ivories, and would sit in once in awhile when the joints closed up, with a coronet player or skin banger that needed tuning up. There were tap dancers around who said he’d frequent their hoofers’ clubs, learning musical hooks, rhythms that he’d weave into his speech patterns; Lady, Lady  Love-el-lee Lady…

At night, his long coats would hide every bit of him but his shoes, and they were enough of a sight on their own. He had this thing where he’d kick up a heel at a corner, like a sprinter in a block, then skip off with a little t-Tap against the asphalt, It would send him gliding off, coat tails in the air ever so slightly, so gracefully, vibing to some song bouncing around in his mind.

The echoes of the life we lead are with us while we are here and with others after we are gone.

-Danny Grosso

For more, follow on Instagram @artipolitics and @altoegovintage

Back then, when the tree sellers closed their businesses for the season on Christmas Eve, they would abandon their unsold inventory on the otherwise vacant lots. The hawkers of balsam and fir had no use for their wares after December 24, so the trees stood alone in the dark, like pilgrims queuing up for a shrine. In our neighborhood, late at night on that twinkling holiday, a liberator would appear, dancing through the snowy and quieted lots. The legend has it that he would take the forsaken tannenbaums, throw them into the back of his drop-top sled, and deliver them to shut-ins, leaving the evergreens on front porches for Christmas morning discoveries. The recipients were easily chosen, for in that era, most neighbors commiserated with one another, and one might easily determine which of them were unable, due to illness, poverty, or other misfortune, to venture out and deck the halls.

This was much spoken about for some time, and the mystery surrounding the identity of the benevolent phantom was never convincingly solved. Over time, as often happens, people turned to speculating about other, newly discovered intrigues, and interest in the phantom waned. Yet, even now, we are greeted each winter, in one or two pieces of holiday correspondence from the old neighborhood, with news of Christmas trees being left anonymously on porches.

All legends die hard, especially those grounded in the time of willing hearts and kind intentions.

Welcome Yuletide.

–Danny Grosso

Instagram@artispolitics

When the tailor came out for the first fitting, the customer was sometimes barefoot. In summertime, as the 70’s fell out into the 80’s. men would wear light-colored loafers, without socks, as they went about on Saturdays. If they stopped into a clothier on a whim, and were cajoled into a purchase, they’d sometimes emerge from the fitting room barefoot, as if tailoring a trouser leg was too formal an event for loafers. Barefoot, however; somehow more appropriate.

The tailor, responding to a salesman’s buzzer signal discretely triggered from behind a mirror, would stride out as if to martial music, and slow the march upon the sight of toes wiggling under the un-hemmed pant legs. With a grunt, he’d point to the offending nakedness, and the salesman would be compelled to inquire of the gentleman as to what kind of heel he might be wearing with the ensemble. Now, the 70’s had passed and taken platform shoes with them. So, the tailor could, in expert approximation of median heel height, tailor a pair of paints for a barefoot customer. However, this entire vignette was yet another unspoken signal to the salesman to skip over to the shoe department and bring a pair back that might ease the tailoring process and wrap up another sale.

Salesmen quickly learned to approximate a customer’s suit size upon first sight. Shoe size, though? Much more difficult. Further complicating matters, one couldn’t propose the purchase of an ill-fitting, pinching shoe. Nor would one wish to keep a busy tailor waiting as a customer tried to wedge his foot into a too-small monk. The result was that all of the size 11 and 12 shoes were stacked on top of the piled shoebox displays for easy gathering. The customer could slide right in, and if the salesman chose right, and the customer liked the way the shoe looked with the suit, he could fit the pair after the tailor had left the sales floor. If this little bit of theater resulted in extra commission for the salesman, the tailor would get his lunch for free that day.

One might surmise that all of this salescraft and subterfuge soured everyone to the whole enterprise of visiting the haberdasher, but for all that was shadowplay, there was a real elegance to the ritual. Some regulars were rich dandies but many of the customers visited rarely, only in special times of celebration or need. A wedding suit or tux, or maybe one to wear to a son’s graduation – something very nice because he’s the first in the family to go to college. Standing in that grand three-way mirror for a fitting prefigured the pomp and circumstance of matrimony or commencement, and added an extra day of harmless indulgence to the event. The sales staff kept a bottle of single malt and shot glasses in the stockroom to share with customers like these.

Of course, the most dignified presentation was reserved for the mourning. The store would hush as word went about.  “Funeral suits” one would say to a colleague, nodding toward the aggrieved. The respect afforded to these poor souls was edifying. Salesman who spoke out of the corners of the mouths to neighborhood hoodlums stopped dropping the endings of words.  They stood upright, addressed the family as “Sir” and “Madam”, and guaranteed the garments would be fitted and delivered for them to wear in time for them to receive the line at the visitation. Tailors would pay their verbal respects in broken English and then stay late if the alterations for these customers were complex. The staff, arriving early the next morning, would sometimes place notes of condolence in the pockets of the finished garments.

There were times when a mourner, retrieving his mourning garment, confessed that he knew not how to tie a cravat. A stockboy would ask for the tie, discreetly slide into the stockroom, and emerge with it knotted and dimpled; ready for a simple donning.

“Thank you.” the relieved mourner would say, quietly.

These small, elegant moments are mostly gone now, perished with the advent of the digital economy, the casual Friday, and the triumph of the big box store.

Much is gained and much is lost. Progress.

-Danny Grosso

From Chicago Gothic (2007), available now at Amazon Books.  Artwork and text copyright Danny Grosso.

He didn’t say ‘Boo” because he didn’t need to. Central Casting could have provided no better spook. That face, the spiked beard, the arching crown of blue-black hair, a mane really, tamed momentarily be the oil, and, like him, ready to bust out into mayhem without notice. He had a voice that, before cranially implanted messaging receivers, would have been used on radio to portray monsters. Surely he knew all of this – he did nothing to change his look or his vibe. Perhaps there was nothing he could do – he seemed born into this character. He inhabited himself so thoroughly. His fly-car was painted disappearing black and when he landed and oozed out of the pit with his long coat it was all like the oozing of ink in the ocean. Then he’d disappear into the night streets.

Once, long ago, there was a story of a child born into odd circumstances, whose visage so frightened people that the child, grown accustomed to menacing peoples’ sensibilities, accepted his abilities and embraced his destiny as a spine-tingler. He was, certainly, an odd child, and an extraordinary adult, in the way that a feral cat will be odd and extraordinarily different than a house pet. Our man would lurk in doorways and under bridges, where all one could see was the whites of his eyes, if he’d allow it. Weather seemed not to bother him. He’d be the only one out in the rain. Dogs on leashes would injure the arms of their walkers as they bolted for the opposite side of the street. People seeming to be in his circle would disappear without a trace. Authorities, knew of him, of course, but even with chip-enhanced surveillance and anticipatory interventions, no pattern was ever established to lead to his removal. Not that it would matter – his horrific gifts were such a part of him that any colony that received him would have established a similar oral legend of fear in no time. One other thing; he seemed to be impervious to time. people spoke of their grandparents fearing him when they were children, when he was, well, the same grown man, in the same clothes, haunting the same places – everblack with a red red aura.

On Halloween one year, ages ago, some kids saw him crouched atop a streetlight post. Grounded beneath him, a small flock of dark birds stared up at him in rapt attention, as if wondering how he had displaced them. They seemed clearly fearful of reciprocating. It was said that on the following morning, All Saints Day dawned without a single chirp, caw, or call, and that there were no birds at all in town that winter. Belief spread, and the legend was born, that the birds had been dispatched into the netherworld by the awful power of his evil stare. The memory of those events has faded, yet still abides. The old of that place still walk out at midnight each November 1st, spreading feed under streetlights in hopes of averting the birds’ gaze from their lamppost tormentor. In remembrance of the birds lost that long ago overnight, the elderly seed spreaders have taken to pinning black feathers to their outer garments as they attend to their nocturnal duties.

–Danny Grosso

Secret agents gotta eat too, so I popped into this joint on a breezy street just off the Mag Mile. The guys frequenting the place were done up just like me – they were secret agents of another kind, for different kinds of chiefs. So, being from separate tribes and all, they looked at me with cowboy eyes, and bared their teeth, which were strewn with garlands of rapini. I ordered a sidecar at the bar, and another, and by then everyone’s nerves seemed calmed enough for me to have lunch and sit on a stool. The place still had hooks hidden under the bar to hang hats. so I put mine there and ordered a Delmonico, rare.

Halfway through the steak, which was great, a twist walked in, half wrapped in a fur shawl. She stopped at a table for a whisper, then moved to the opposite end of the bar, resting just a bit of herself on a stool. Things stayed this way for a minute, and I was going to send a drink, but the bartender suddenly walked over to her, and after a short conversation, she got up and walked out the door. I took a bit to chew and headed for the restroom, wondering if this little vignette was something I needed to sort out. So I ran the water and pretended to wash my hands, and unable to decipher a scheme, I headed back into the dining room.

Everyone was gone, excepting the bartender, who appeared to be rooting around for something under the sink. Every table was empty and set, servers and bussers were out of sight. I spun my head around slowly, as I’d been trained to do, but saw nothing but an empty restaurant. The barman popped up, and asked if he could help me. His accent had changed from southside Chicago to cockney. He even called me mate. I could see that my place at the bar had been cleared. I nodded towards him, “You getting the place ready for a private party?”

“The whole of our world is a private party, innit?” he replied.

Free lunch or not, I wanted not to be there now or ever again, so I headed to the door, which was only there in theory, as it looked like a door but did not function as one. It was clearly part of the wall of glass and wood framing that fronted the place, and also not separated from it as an opening. Still, I pushed at what did not give. I could see outside now, and the street was barren, windswept, lots of East Berlin before the fall vibes. And then the light changed, accelerating shadows, daylight to dusk to sunrise again in a matter of seconds, cycle repeating, dizzying. I blinked, involuntarily, then hoped it would reset the scene. I turned around. The bartender was smiling at me, and around him were my family, as they were when I was a kid, the old grandparents, uncles and aunts included, dressed up for a party and bearing gifts as if it were Christmas. “You can join the party or not,” the tender said, “it is always your choice, always was.”

What ever else would I have to do in place of an old-time family Christmas? I disregarded all of my training, I subjugated all of my skills. In that instant, I knew that they were all useless against whatever power had produced this moment.

As I walked over to them, one of my aunts began singing a Christmas carol.

–Danny Grosso