
Chicago’s Uptown Neighborhood in the mid-1970s was filled with buildings that had seen better days. This was one of them. The windows had been broken so many times that the owner put up plywood. Then, as if adding insult to injury, people started pasting layer after layer of posters and graffiti on the building – even the alderman (Chris Cohen) who was trying to clean up Uptown. The final insult: litter everywhere. Around the rotting plywood and crude hasp and lock on the door, you can still see remnants of the once proud building characteristic of Uptown’s better days. Back in this era, I owned a used Dodge that I bought for $200. It burned a quart of oil every fifty miles. This building was the equivalent of that vehicle – at the end of its commercial life.