Commentary
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Whatever it is I think I see, becomes a Tootsie Roll to me…
Now is the time of year that our minds drift towards fantastical costumes and sugary delights. Above, perhaps the sweetest costume I’ve ever seen. The Tootsie Roll Baby Bunting costume is made out of a soft brown felt and is available at Target.com. A bit about Tootsie Rolls (a Chicago based classic): Tootsie Rolls were first manufactured in…
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Tapes Lost to Time: Chicago Stories
I am bothered by tapes that disappear, the same tapes that record our collective story. The sort that get erroneously misplaced, taped over, or buried (true stories, all). It’s happened often in Chicago to bits of media that palpably documented Chicago Cultural History. It seems to have happened too many times for my taste. Here’s a…
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Operation Breadbasket, the seed of PUSH
I have dedicated a number of posts here at Darkjive to the PUSH Expo, a 1970s exercise in Black Economic Empowerment (or Black Power as it was then known). The PUSH Expo phenomenon was borne from the seed of Operation Breadbasket (a department of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference), but the roots…
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And now, a word from Chicago’s own Lady Terror
Lady Terror (aka Tricia Hersey-Patrick) says she’s a menace on a mission. Terrorizing for a cause. Be it staging a soapbox rant in front of Rothschild’s Liquors (clamouring for more grocery stores) or engaging in impromptu yoga at a Harold’s Chicken Shack (calling for inner city yoga centers for the sake of public health), her…
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Hey, White Girl! Susan Gregory’s Chicago Story
The intersection of race and class. In Chicago. In the late 1960s. That’s the backdrop of a memoir (rather cheekily) titled “Hey, White Girl!” written by Susan Gregory (Norton, 1970). In the book, teenage Susan transfers from well-heeled, suburban New Trier High School to attend infamous-even-then Marshall High School on Chicago’s West Side for her senior year.…
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Dancing Lesson: Jamaican Import circa 1964
thanks to Mr. Catano for the headsup on this video…. At the bottom of this post, Tony Verity breaks down ska dancing (quite anthropologically, I might add). Byron Lee and the Dragonaires play backup. Plays out a bit like the movie Hairspray, only with a Jamaican twist (the original, of course…John Waters kept it gritty, yet sufficiently…
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The Color of Water
[ Near Philadelphia, kids of color were allegedly turned away from a private club’s swimming pool (even though they’d ponied up the nearly $2000 entry fee). Upon arrival, the kids’ presence allegedly made the regular pool crowd uncomfortable. Now the blogosphere is abuzz. “Racism!” “It’s 2009!!!” What does that even mean? All I know is that racists are better…
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Dear Michael….
What bothers me are bandwagon tributes. An Icon, they say. A Genius. The same cackling media outlets that refused to play Michael Jackson’s music for years, and affixed an implicit punchline to his name. Whatever. Artists are not perfect people. We can choose to accept the art without embracing the artist. In the case of Michael Jackson,…
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Electric Mud: Electrified Delta Blues got a New Jolt
(“Tom Cat” by Muddy Waters) The late sixties in Chicago was a wild time. The Democratic National Convention and the Riots in 1968 labeled us as unruly, Serial Killer Richard Speck in 1966 labeled us as unsafe, and Martin Luther King, Jr., (marching in North Lawndale for equal housing in 1966), labeled us as a…
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I’m in love, and his name is TESLA
I love my car. I do. But the above COMPLETELY ELECTRIC car, the Tesla Model S is making me fantasize about a polygamous vehicle relationship. To be clear, when I say electric, I am not referring to those butterflies I feel. I refer to Tesla Motors’ status as the only highway-legal electric car company based…
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