I may stand out a little amongst the sophisticated stylish crowd at Printers Row Lit Fest.

I had been waiting until the details were finalized before I posted about this, but now I am shouting it from the proverbial highest roof!

Printers Row Lit Fest Panel Discussion

Michael Corcoran, Arnie Bernstein, and Robert K. Elder

Sunday, June 9. 1PM
University Center Multimedia Room
525 S State St.

Tickets are required and will be available May 27th.

Moderator: Chicago Tribune Columnist Nina Metz

Of course, that may not be the order in which the Printers Row folks have it billed

Robert K. Elder is a brilliant journalist, author and film critic who also has a book coming out with Chicago Review Press in June entitled The Best Film You’ve Never Seen: 35 Directors Champion the Forgotten or Critically Savaged Movies They Love.

He and Arnie will provide the gravitas and I will be bringing the bluster. We will discuss some overlooked and/or forgotten films and directors.

This is seriously starting to seem surreal to me. I am half expecting my third grade nun to suddenly walk into the room or for me to open my back door and have it lead to a red-curtained room with a dancing, reverse-speaking dwarf.

For those few of you who may not know, Printers Row Lit Fest is kind of the Lollapalooza of the Midwest literary scene. Scores of hugely famous (e.g. Judy Blume) and unknown (e.g. Me) authors, hundreds of publishers, and thousands of bibliophiles converge on the South Loop Area for an immense celebration of the printed word.

I would have been thrilled just to be appearing in a little tent along Dearborn Street, but to be indoors in the lovely air-conditioned confines of University Center is just about as good as it gets for the likes of me. Damn, this may even be recorded and televised on CSPAN! So I will perhaps be able to tell myself (instead of some public policy wonk) to “shuuut the hell up” while absently flipping through channels on a Saturday afternoon.

Tickets are free but on a “first click- first served” basis, so start your last week in May off by ordering some before you have your morning porridge.

The Last Pullman Car (1982)

The Last Pullman Car goes back to the Pullman strike of 1894 and then details the labor movement in the US in order to explain the state of labor relations at the Pullman plant in 1981.

Ok, I am not going to lie to you, my fellow Kartemquinites. This is a tough one. Watching a documentary about a group of heavy industry workers in the US heartland trying to save their union and their jobs at the beginning of the Reagan Era Corporate Globalization and Union Busting Program is somewhat like watching a documentary about gay Jewish performance artists in Berlin in 1936- you know it isn’t going to end well— either for the documentary subjects or for any of their contemporaries.

However, it is really a must-see for those who wish to understand how we got to the point where we are now in terms of the global stranglehold that multinational conglomerates have on humanity.

The Last Pullman Car documents the struggles of Pullman-Standard Passenger Car Works employees on the far south side of Chicago from 1979 to 1981 as they unsuccessfully fight to prevent their plant from being closed. United Steel Workers of America Local 1834 President John Bowman and the workers at the Pullman plant battled mightily and bravely to keep their plant open but were swamped by a tsunami of historical forces; short-sighted industrial policies, government abetted union busting, the rise of multi-national conglomerates, industrial competition from Germany and Japan, the gutting of mass-transit funding throughout the US, the withering of national union power overall, the flight of US industrial plants to other countries, and the brutal recession of the early 1980’s.

After an opening segment which introduces the workers and their quest, producer/director/writing team Gordon Quinn and Jerry Blumenthal go all the way back to the bitter and violent Pullman Strike of 1894 and then detail the subsequent industrial union movement in the US in order to illustrate how these forces came into being.

The Pullman Strike of 1894 quickly expanded into a national rail strike which was then brutally crushed by the US government at the behest of George Pullman and the Rail Trust. This only fueled the overall push for national unionization, which flowered in the early 20^th Century and by the 1950’s had brought the industrial middle class of America into the highest standard of living that rank and file workers had ever known.

Of course the forces which seek to control workers and maximize corporate profits did not take this situation lying down, and there was a major push to roll back union gains as the 1950’s progressed. It is here where the highest echelon of union leadership made a grave tactical error, seeking to hold on to individual wages and benefit structures instead of trying to use their power to change society and government on a “macro” level such that corporations did not have such an undue influence on them. Basically winning several short term battles but losing the overall war, as US industrial monopolies steadily morphed into the multinational conglomerates of today.

Pullman was one of the first companies to do so, diversifying into other industries and expanding their global scope until the rail car making business was just a tiny fraction of their overall profit scheme. Once this was accomplished, Bowman and his cohorts were defeated before the battle had even begun. By 1979, the car manufacturing plant was so insignificant to the Pullman Corporation (who obviously wanted to be rid of it anyway) and the rail car industry was in such dire straights that threatening to shut the plant down with a strike was like threatening to kill a hostage with terminal cancer that your adversaries wanted dead to begin with.

This is something that the workers did not understand until it was much much too late; and it is heartbreaking to watch them struggle with this realization as they are sold down the river by their government and their national union (although by that point in the process the legislators and union brass aren’t really lying when they say their hands are tied). Simple, decent folks so imbued with a strong moral code that they were virtually unable to comprehend the fact that their opponents had no morality whatsoever (and essentially saw them as worthless) and so naïve about the reality of their position that they had no idea how badly the cards were stacked against them. At one point, after the national Steel Workers union forces them to shut down their local, Bowman says “If this is their answer to deal with plant closings in this country- the working man is in trouble.” This statement (for me) is pretty much the crux of the entire film.

The Last Pullman Car also begs extremely thorny questions which the world is still trying to answer: How can a community, city, or nation keep a company that wishes to move its factory from leaving without totally trashing the concept of private property and free market? Are these concepts as important to a free and just society as we have been led to believe? Do people have a “right” to a well paying job and is it the government’s duty to make certain that they do? If not, then what is the purpose of government in the first place?

These are not easy questions to resolve, but resolve them we must if we are to avoid a dystopian “Blade Runner meets The Jungle” future.

So as not to end this post on a total downer; it is my belief that in the long term this future will be avoided. With apologies to Abraham Lincoln- “You can oppress some of the people some of the time and all of the people all of the time, but you can’t oppress all of the people all of the time.”

Although globalization has temporarily given the conglomerates the upper hand as they abandon areas where unions are strong and move their plants to places where they can cheat their workers- the union movement has also grown global and is steadily spreading to those locales where sweatshops are the norm and those oppressed people are becoming empowered to throw off their shackles and agitate for fair treatment and decent wages. To revive the lingo of the 1960’s and 70’s—-The Man can run, but he cannot hide!

Who is that handsome young man with the camera? Kartemquin Films co-founder Gordon Quinn would like to know!

]]> http://chicagocinema.net/?feed=rss2&p=1191 0 http://chicagocinema.net/?p=1179 http://chicagocinema.net/?p=1179#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 02:08:11 +0000 Michael http://chicagocinema.net/?p=1179

The Book Stork brought me a beautiful 3 Pound, 400 Page Trade Paperback today, and it couldn’t be cuter.

I was sitting down to write a couple posts today, when the UPS man rang with my 10 contractually obligated complimentary copies of… you guessed it— HOLLYWOOD ON LAKE MICHIGAN, 2ND EDITION, BABY!!!!!!!

If you thought that Booklist review got me Verklempt; I spent 3 hours sitting on my back porch gently cradling it in my hands, cooing over it, and getting weepy at times. Up until now, the whole thing has been just a really big WORD document and the project has felt like a gigantic term paper. But today sitting on that couch on the porch, it finally was no longer an abstract concept or this albatross like thing I bored my friends and family talking about but a BOOK— and a pretty awesome one at that— looking even better in reality than in my wildest Trade Paperback Dreams(TM).

Chicago Review Press did such a great job on it; from the layout to the quality of the printing and images all the way to how well the text reads due to those innumerable editing, fact checking, and proofreading sessions. All those questions and corrections to review, some which made me want to pull my hair and scream “Who the hell cares?!?!,” were worth every second of excruciating exactitude (and petulant whining) on my part. I give great thanks to Devon Freeny and his army of fact checkers and legions of lexicographic legerdemain practitioners; Cynthia Sherry for her work on the manuscript and for rescuing this project from limbo last year; and to Mary Kravenas and Josh Williams for their marketing and publicity expertise.

And of course, Arnie Bernstein for writing a brilliant book for me to draft off of and Sharon Woodhouse at Lake Claremont for bringing me on board this project in the first place.

In another few weeks, everyone will be able to see my pretty new baby!!!

Born 50 years ago today, he has not been seen in over 45 years.

Rumor has it that he was lost in The Wicked City Of Chicago.

If this is the case, one can only speculate about the horrors he has undergone!!!

Here is a rendering of what he might look like today.

Anyone who may have knowledge of his whereabouts should alert the proper authorities.

Hollywood On Lake Michigan, 2nd Edition Launch Party

Friday, June 14—— 7PM

Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore

7419 Madison St.

Forest Park, IL 60130

Much more information (across multiple platforms) will be forthcoming!!!

]]> http://chicagocinema.net/?feed=rss2&p=1138 0 http://chicagocinema.net/?p=1109 http://chicagocinema.net/?p=1109#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 19:25:47 +0000 Michael http://chicagocinema.net/?p=1109

I can’t get over the feeling that this is some elaborate prank. But here is the Booklist edition the review appears in.

The following review of Hollywood On Lake Michigan, 2nd Edition appears in the May 1, 2013 issue of Booklist, the official publication of the American Library Association (their online site has a pay wall so I have just pasted in the whole darn thing):

Film lovers and Windy City fans will cherish this updated guide. Film historian Bernstein, who wrote the first edition, “brushed up the silent section,” but the heavy lifting here is done by Corcoran, for 10 years a tour guide whose Chicago cinema excursions are his most popular offerings. Bernstein’s “The Silent Era” traces South Side black filmmakers, including Oscar Micheaux, as well as more familiar North Side figures like Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson at Essanay, spotlights early movie palaces, profiles silent film accompanist David Drazin, and traces the real murder mystery behind Call Northside 777. Corcoran shifts from history to geography, exploring the Loop and nearby areas, and then Chicago’s North, West, and South Sides and their respective suburbs. Each chapter mixes nuggets for self-guided tours, tales from the making of specific films, and chats with such Chicago-area film folk as Tim Kazurinsky, the Hoop Dreams and Barbershop teams, Harold Ramis, Joe Mantegna, and Irma Hall. A list of more than 1,250 movies, mainstream and indie, filmed at least partly in Chicago or its suburbs is included. 

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. This is the first official review of HOLM 2, and I have been waiting a long time for any recognition at all for my efforts, much less such a glowing recommendation.

Booklist is a publication beloved and respected by librarians and bibliophiles the world over, so this is huge in so many respects. First off, these folks live and breathe the printed word, so to get such a positive review from them provides a little more cachet than one from a regular entertainment publication (although that would be awesome too). Secondly, this is where librarians go to make decisions about what books to order for their collections; and aside from the extra copies a Booklist review can sell, it just gives me SUCH a huge thrill to think that a book I wrote is going to be available in Public Libraries— a place where I spent some of the happiest hours of my childhood.

Perhaps some dorky, lonely kid in a small town somewhere will come across it on his Library shelf and be inspired to become a writer or filmmaker— or at least be entertained for a few hours.

Thanks much to Booklist, Arnie Bernstein, Chicago Review Press, and everyone else who has helped me along this long and twisted path. I do believe I will go and have a little Happy Cry right now.

According to the article by columnist Andrew Evans in his Digital Nomad series, 3 or 4 Bollywood films are shot in Switzerland every month (Dhoom 3 shot there as well); mostly because of the lovely mountain vistas (which make fabulous backgrounds for large musical production numbers, a staple of Indian films). The mountains of Kashmir originally used to suffice, but strife and tension in the region in recent years has made that a dicey proposition, so the filming of the dance scenes has steadily shifted to Switzerland. The fact that the Swiss are not so intrusive when it comes to permits and oversight has also helped fuel the transition. A major Indian location manager is quoted as saying “Switzerland is the best—you don’t have to ask so much permission. You just get one permit and it covers everything. They are very supportive here—you just land and shoot.”

Since they shoot movies in several different languages, Indian filmmakers can reuse locations. Rengarajan Jaiprakash (the location scout quoted by Evans) says, “This movie’s in Telugu, so I won’t use it again for that, but we might come back for a Hindi or Tamil shoot.”

The slew of Bollywood films shooting in Switzerland has also fueled an Indian tourism boom in the alpine nation. So if you are ever in Switzerland and are wondering why there are so many fine Indian restaurants, now you know.

Last summer, I wondered if Dhoom 3 would perhaps result in an Indian tourism boom for Chicago, but Indians and other south Asians make up such a large portion of our tourists already that I’m not sure we would be able to tell. But later this summer if you see a group of Indian tourists excitedly pointing at the downtown Chicago River, they probably aren’t recounting the Eastland Disaster.

A Good Man (2011)

Bill T Freaking Jones!!! As he is known to many.

This documentary; which was directed by Kartemquin cofounder Gordon Quinn  and veteran television director Bob Hercules, produced by Joanna Rudnick and Rachel Pikelny, and featuring Keith Walker as Director of Photography; originally appeared on PBS as part of the American Masters series.

It chronicles modern dance pioneer, choreographer, director, and cultural icon/national treasure Bill T Jones as he and his company create and perform an original work about Abraham Lincoln for the recent Bicentennial celebration of his birth. The piece was commissioned by and performed at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.

Jones is most known as the co-creator and public face of the Broadway sensation FELA!, based on the life and music of AfroPop sensation and political activist Fela Kuti, but his artistic impact has been felt ever since he burst upon the modern dance scene in the 1970’s with his partner/collaborator Arnie Zane. The pair formed the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982 and redefined modern dance with their intense, socio-politically charged fusions of dance, music, theater, and performance art. After Zane’s passing in 1988, Jones continued the ensemble he had founded with his lifelong love and muse, and the company’s work has continued to define the cutting edge.

A Good Man follows Jones and his cohorts through the creative process; casting ensemble members for the production, brainstorming about the form the piece will take, adjusting and improvising as the piece begins to take shape— all the way through the furious final push to bring everything together into a finished work. Creating such a large and ambitious multi-media piece from scratch is the ultimate high wire act, made even more treacherous by the realities of the dance world. As Jones wryly laments, “in commercial theater, this would be the first preview, but in the world of dance, this is our World Premiere.”

The footage of this frenetic and often angst-laden struggle to “fashion something from nothing” provides an incredible window into the creative process, as Jones and his team of brilliant and committed collaborators from several disciplines (composer/musicians, light, sound and set designers) work in tandem with the dancers in constructing the piece.

Photo from the production of Fondly We Hope…Fervently We Pray, which premiered at Ravinia Festival.

Distinct from all other types of performer, dancers have a certain unique intensity about them. A mixture of conservatory trained artist and Olympic level athlete, they seek and achieve transcendence on multiple levels, a process which has a powerful effect on one’s psyche. The peculiar emotional zeitgeist engendered by being an artist whose medium is their own body can make them on occasion, shall we say  “a bit tightly wound.” Jones and his dancers are no exception to this phenomenon, and some of the exchanges captured might seem adversarial to those not familiar with artistic/performance subcultures, but are all in a day’s work for those involved in the arduous process of raw creation.

As are the often awkward interactions between Jones and his musicians as they try to bridge the gap between two entirely different artistic languages, music and dance. Composer/Bandleader Christopher Antonio William Lancaster remarks “the miscommunications that happen between me and Bill and the rest of the musicians are an integral part of the process. That’s just how we do it.”

That may be Jones greatest challenge— translating movement into the language of not just music but lighting and design. He is often forced to resort to what seems like a mixture of non sequiturs and Zen koans. There is an especially amusing scene where Jones and Lancaster are watching the dancers work. Jones suddenly turns to Lancaster and matter-of-factly intones: “He- They.  He- They.  He- They.  US    He-They-Us   He–They–Us” and just as quickly turns away as Lancaster smiles enigmatically.

Jones is an amalgam of exacting theater director and hard ass football coach, pushing everyone in the production to give every fiber of their being to the effort. His manner can get brusque, but he tries to temper to the vinegar with a bit of sugar, and is quite candid with the others about his own fears and insecurities as he wrestles with the material.

The dance piece itself, Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray, is incredibly wide ranging; incorporating Lincoln, Slavery, the Civil War, Abe’s relationship with Mary, Jones’ feelings about Lincoln, and even the personal biographies of Jones and the dancers themselves. New elements are folded into the show even as the premiere approaches and new dialogue put into the script the very morning of it.

A Good Man intersperses footage of the rehearsals and creative meetings with that of the actual performances and sprinkles in a few hilarious snippets of post show commentary from some Bougie North Shore culture vultures kvetching about how they don’t like political/social commentary in their art and especially their dance. There is also a fine overview of Jones’ career embedded within the narrative.

A must see for fans of dance, art, music, culture, and the creative process. Even hardcore historian fans of Lincoln may be intrigued by it. And hardcore Kartemquinites (Kartemquians?) like myself will adore it!

Much of Jones’ narrative struggle in creating Fondly Do We Hope…Fervently Do We Pray revolved around his own feelings about Abraham Lincoln.

A fine film that has yet to receive its due, The Merry Gentleman has now sparked a lawsuit.

I was just hipped to this story by Ruth Ratny in her online publication, REEL Chicago, which is the bible of Chicago production news; but check out this link to the actual court documents from the lawsuit (included in her article), which detail chapter and verse the plaintiff’s allegations against Michael Keaton.

According to the suit by Merry Gentleman, LLC; Keaton’s bad behavior during and (especially) after principal photography for the film The Merry Gentleman unnecessarily added millions to the budget and essentially doomed the picture to low box office revenues.

The suit alleges that as production for the film approached, slated director Ron Lazzeretti (who also wrote the screenplay) fell ill, and the company began looking for another person to direct the film. That was when Keaton offered to take on directing duties, and in 2007 two separate agreements, one for acting and one for directing, were drawn up between Keaton and the producers. This is when the shenanigans allegedly started on Keaton’s part:

First off, he refused to hire an editor to help him look at and evaluate the footage shot each day during production (aka “the Dailies”) and shirked the task himself, leaving an integral part of the director’s job undone.

After primary filming wrapped, despite the contractual understanding that he was responsible for producing a “first” cut, but not a “final” cut (the responsibility of the producers), Keaton still refused to hire an editor and went back home to California. The producers then used their own money to set up a professional editing suite in Santa Monica near Keaton’s home so he could participate in the editing process. Whereupon Keaton announced that he was leaving for a fly fishing trip to his estate in Montana.

The producers spent their own money again to build yet another professional editing suite in Montana and even hired an assistant, so Keaton could edit between trout outings. Yet he spent little or no time in the editing suite during the weeks in question, leaving important issues to be decided by subordinates.

When he returned to California his haphazard work habits continued, costing the production further delay and expense, and when he did finally produce a rough cut of the film, all parties (Keaton included) agreed that it sucked (technical legal term). After some negotiation between the producers and Keaton’s attorney, it was determined that Keaton would be given another try and the producers would also work on their own cut back in Chicago, whereupon Lazzeretti and company would decide which one was best. When Keaton found out there was another cut being worked on in Chicago he refused to have any further contact with anyone he had previously disagreed with- which happened to include basically everyone involved in the higher levels of production.

The two cuts were screened a few months later and it was determined by consensus that “the Chicago cut” (as it became known) was far superior to Keaton’s second attempt, which not only was still flawed but now had a score done by his son (who had no experience) that was intrusive and amateurish. The producers decided to go with the Chicago cut, which was totally within their rights under the contract.

The Chicago cut was submitted to the prestigious Sundance Festival and was accepted by them, which would have positioned the film to at least be an Art House hit if not a mainstream one. But when Keaton found out about this he and his people pitched a hissy fit (another legal term) to the Sundance authorities,  telling them that he would refuse to appear at Sundance if his cut wasn’t shown at the festival. The Sundance people, intimidated by his clout and star power, sided with Keaton. This forced the producers to cut a deal with Keaton allowing his cut to be shown, but just at Sundance, provided Keaton put in some work to clean up and fix some remaining flaws in his cut. Keaton allegedly also blew off these duties/obligations and in addition forced the producers to pay expensive licensing fees for some popular songs he insisted be included in his cut at Sundance (for which they got a one-time licensing fee). Despite everything the Keaton cut was well received at Sundance.

The suit goes on to allege that Keaton’s hijinks delayed the movie from being able to be released during Christmas season of 2008 (which would have been perfect as the film is set during the holidays- plus dark dramas always fare better during that time period), thus depriving the film of its optimal release time and causing the revenues to suffer because of it. They also detail Keaton’s bizarre and distracted behavior during promotional appearances for the film, which contributed to the poor box office showing (less than $350,000).

ALTHOUGH THEY ARE NOT PLAINTIFFS OR INVOLVED WITH THE SUIT IN ANY FASHION, two of the individuals identified in the complaint as people involved in the film whom Keaton later refused to deal with (Producers Steven A. Jones and Christina Varotsis) are actually featured in Hollywood On Lake Michigan, 2nd Edition.

I have been told that the suit was brought by an investor whose lack of film experience and own emotional excesses may have contributed to the situation.  So we shall see how this plays out.

The biggest irony in this whole ordeal is that the version of the film I saw in a theater in 2009 and later on DVD (apparently a mixture of Keaton’s second cut with several tweaks by Lazzeretti and a different score) is an excellent piece of work. A really fine dramatic film that deserves much more recognition that it has received. I will rent it again and whip up a review in the next week or so.

Keaton’s performance in it is brilliant and he seems to have a fine eye for directing. If only he could have done all his work on time and played nice with the other kids. Or at least hired an editor!

Not seen this man lately? Turns out there may be good reasons for that.

I still remember how beautiful it was that day. A freak February thaw had brought a week of sunny skies and balmy temperatures to Chicago. Unfortunately, the weather coincided with an intensification of a long-simmering gang feud in my area, and the animosity between two rival neighborhood leaders had somehow spiraled out of control to the point where the honor of the entire Vice Lord and Gangster Disciple Nations became involved. A day before the shit had totally hit the fan, and cars and vans started streaming into the area dropping off foot soldiers from all around Chicago and vicinity. Groups of up to 50-60 guys armed with various weapons had been roaming the streets engaging in pitched battles.

This was something nobody (be they cop, citizen, or criminal) had ever seen before and myself and the other people in the fledgling CAPS program were on high alert (hell, everybody was on high alert). Rogers Park was one of the CAPS pilot districts and we had just put together a Beat Plan and were continually trying to organize against a full scale invasion of the neighborhood that had happened the previous Spring, but this was something completely beyond even what we had already been seeing. Ironically, it was the success of our initial efforts which contributed to sparking the conflagration that was now consuming the area.

The quality of the neighborhood had begun slipping several years before when a group of idiot douche bags (I met them once so I know of what I speak) bought all the big buildings in the area toward the end of the late 1980s “no money down” real estate craze. When the bubble invariably burst, they just walked away from all their properties, which went into foreclosure and were then abandoned and/or purchased by slimy slumlords. Over the next few years the neighborhood changed from a bucolic middle class polyglot of various races, ethnicities and backgrounds into an increasingly sketchy and distressed one, with friendly conversations on the sidewalk between neighbors being replaced by street drug sales and trashy assholes just hanging out drinking.

The slide turned into a plunge in the Spring of 1994, when a Vice Lord “District Manager” (for want of a better term) was released from prison and was given Rogers Park and Evanston as his territory. He was particularly ambitious and well organized; and one day there were suddenly five guys on every corner slinging crack, heroin and whatever else the street addict desired, as well as several 24/7 high volume crack houses around the vicinity- including one in the third floor apartment above my wife and I. Pushed into a corner, we began working with other folks in the neighborhood and various community groups under the auspices of the pilot CAPS program.

At first our efforts seemed laughable in the face of the entropy storm that had overtaken the area, but by the end of the summer our faction was starting to gain some traction as our dogged work and unconventional tactics (like putting up gaudy flyers to scare away drug buyers) were starting to bear fruit. The most notable change being that the District Manager (I will call him Bill) moved his “office,” which had previously been on the corner outside our first floor walk up apartment, a block south to avoid our scrutiny and constant (polite) requests to move himself elsewhere.

Unfortunately, this moved him right on to the turf line between his vast Vice Lord territory and that of a small enclave of Gangster Disciples further south on Damen Avenue (affiliated with a larger GD faction over by the Howard L). Friction between Bill’s crew and the GD’s soon flared into a brawl where the GD crew leader (Sean) got his face severely smashed in with a baseball bat. When Sean got out of the hospital several weeks later he was primed for vengeance and gun play became more commonplace, leading up to whatever situation it was that involved the honor of both Nations and the full out war that was now happening on the sunny day in question.

It was late afternoon and during that brief period right after the elementary school down the block let out where all the kids that weren’t involved with gangs would quickly scurry home. Battles had been going down all day, and these were not just random skirmishes, these were regimented. Earlier that morning I had watched a car with an open trunk filled with sticks and ball bats slowly roll down the street with two young guys walking behind calmly pulling them out and dropping them along the sidewalk and parkway, their demeanor like that of a couple city workers planting tulips in the median. That way soldiers roaming the area when a police car rolled by could just drop their weapons and move on knowing there would be another one strewn somewhere ahead of them (the quick melting of huge snow banks in the previous week had also left the ground littered with thousands of beer and liquor bottles which had been chucked into them). Several months of post Bill Invasion conditions (including occasional death threats from he and his crew) had steeled me to a lot of things, but this was some scary shit.

Not that the Police were anywhere to be found anyway. Already loath to respond to calls on those three blocks of Damen Avenue and their side streets that had been designated the battlefield, they had been pretty scarce since things had started the day before, only streaming in en masse after something so massive happened that the flood of 911 calls couldn’t be ignored anymore. Even our normally baddass third watch beat cops were flustered by this unprecedented flurry of open warfare, not that I could blame them.

The instinct to get home before things started up again was being trumped by the unusually beautiful day, and a small group of 12 or 13 year old nerdy neighborhood kids were dawdling on the corner of Damen and Birchwood. I was sitting in the window waiting for the next battle to start so I could call 911 and hopefully spur them into sending somebody. I had just gotten a call from a fellow CAPS person down the street that there was a big bunch of Vice Lords gathering at their rally point in a fast food parking lot at Howard and Damen, so I knew something was going to go down soon and I am wishing these kids would get their asses home. But they are fluttering about excitedly as tweens do; wired out of their minds by the end of the school day, the lovely weather, and the insanely furious fighting of the previous day and night.

I don’t know exactly how many GD’s were in the group that came storming up Damen Avenue from the south. I heard over my police scanner several minutes later that someone who had called 911 apparently described it as “a million dudes” (the dispatcher had great fun imitating the guy’s voice) but I was so stunned by the river of rage rolling north that at first I just sat and dumbly stared. Damen Avenue was completely clear of cars because everyone was parking a few blocks away to try and avoid having a brick or a bat smash their windshield. A fast moving wave of guys standing shoulder to shoulder filled the entire street from building to building and stretching back at least a half block, all carrying golf clubs, bats, sticks, bricks and stones and literally screaming bloody murder. How many? Five hundred? A thousand? Two thousand? What the fuck is going on?

The nerdy kids were stunned at first too, and one of them made a terrible mistake and ran west on Birchwood instead of north on Damen where he might have made his escape down an alley and away from the battle. A wave of the GD’s peeled off and surrounded him in seconds, thirty or so of them massing around to take turns kicking and stomping and whomping him as I sat horrified and paralyzed, making weird mewling noises like a panicked toddler.

After a minute or two they drifted away to rejoin the main group now facing off with the Vice Lords at the end of the block, leaving what looked like a bloody pulp laying on the sidewalk. I finally snap out of it and run to dial 911, thinking this kid has got to be dead. When I get through, I begin describing the situation and begging the operator to send an ambulance for him. “How do you know he’s dead?” she asks. More fun with 911.

While the operator is dicking me around and the battle is raging back and forth up the street, I see the kid’s mom and sister come from around the corner where they lived and carefully try to rouse him. Holy shit, he’s conscious and getting up! They help him to his feet and gently support him as he hobbles and limps away. At this point I realize that I wouldn’t be doing him a favor by getting him an ambulance, as he would face police pressure to testify and be in for more trouble no matter how it played out. I hang up.

I hear from my scanner that several calls have gone out and in another minute a swarm of police cars arrived and the remaining combatants (the battle had mostly subsided by then anyway) dropped their weapons and disappeared to the four winds. The battle had ended for now.

The war raged on for a few more days until a massive and slightly psychotic show of presence from CAPS people and other fed-up neighbors seemed to blunt the fever of the conflict and regular Chicago winter conditions returned, but that is a story for another time.

The nerdy kid eventually healed from his horrific beating. I would sometimes see him around the L station heading to or from the new school to which he had transferred after his recovery. His limp went away in a year but the haunted look in his eyes stayed long afterward. I still think about him when the weather starts getting nice and my residual anxiety at the approach of spring, still leftover from those times, begins to gnaw at me. Lately I wonder what might have happened if there had been someone around back then who could have actually tried to intervene when Bill and Sean’s tiff first began. Who might have interrupted the spiral of aggression before it became a tornado that consumed a neighborhood and turned a nerdy kid whose only sin was picking the wrong direction to flee into a bloody mass of tissue slumped motionless on a sidewalk.