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.
Jeremy Pollack portrait made by James Iska two months ago.
Jeremy Pollack lived in a black and white world which fit him just fine.
His love of noir’, a 1950s love song and the smell of fresh newsprint shaped a colorful life. Pollack died on Nov. 17 after a short bout with pancreatic cancer. He was 55 years old.
His death came just two months after he released “The Hard-Boiled Detective 1,” an acclaimed collection of pulp short stories set in Chicago that he wrote under the pen name Ben Solomon. The writing is tight and rhythmic which amplifies the drama.
