Ira,

These flashes from the past are quite intriguing--to say the least---like fireworks that flashingly explode, draw the eye, and wink out.

The first paying gig I ever had was in Hyde Park--at a storefront coffeehouse on 57th Street called the Limelight. It was operated by Norman Tong---who inexplicably got rather upset when I once told someone what his last name was --for some reason. The deal was that I was to be paid twenty-five per cent of the door. ONE PERSON came in and plunked down her dollar cover---so, at the end of the evenings festivities, I went home with twenty-five cents. It cost me more than that on the Illinois Central R.R. to get back to the loop and then on to the North Side of town.

Across the street from the Limelight Coffeehouse was the Fret Shop music store--where Paul Durst camped out in their back room. He was 93 then. Born in 1868. He'd been a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Knew Joe Hill--and they had shipped out together on a tramp steamer to Hawaii. He told me he'd been asleep under the boardwalk when the bomb went off at the Haymarket Riot in Chicago. Also said he'd been part of the strike in Ludlow, Colorado when the Ludlow Massacre went down.

Those storefronts on the North and South sides of 57th St.---between the I.C. tracks and Stoney Island Avenue, were left over concession shops from the Columbian Exposition of 1893. After the Exposition ended, those cold water shops with dirt floors became known as the 57th Street ARTIST COLONY. Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandberg, Floyd Dell, Maxwell Boddenheim, and many others got affordable cheap lodging there.

In 1963 the first Mayor Daley decided to tear 'em down. We had a festival in the middle of the street with music and speeches trying to save those little places---. Willy Wright and Jim Norris and Ella Jenkins ane me and Little Brother Montgomery and Dodi Kallick and Spanky McFarland and others did what we could--but to no avail.
And, I guess, I'm here, like Ishmael, to tell thee!

It's fun to remember...

Art Thieme