Hi all--it's been a crazy holiday season--hence the lack of posting. I have a number of picture-heavy posts in the works, but those take me about 3 times as long as text-based posts, so I figured I'd write a couple of those in the meantime. I may get around to adding pictures. We'll see.
We had a busy holiday season around here. We had to work basically up to the last minute, so we didn't leave for Chicago (casa del Kate) until Dec 21st. We left for Southern Oregon on the 26th. On Jan 1st, we drove down to San Fransisco, where I had professional obligations in San Fransisco starting Jan 2nd. On Jan 5th, we flew back to Chicago and then immediately drove back to Ann Arbor.
Whew.
Despite the frantic pace, the whole thing was lovely.
Well...actually, scratch that. Once we got to Chicago, it was lovely. The trip from Ann Arbor to Chicago, which normally takes 3-1/2 to 4 hours, took 27 hours total--10 of which were on the road. There was snow and high winds through most of the state, but it wasn't too bad (good road conditions and ok visibility--60 feet or so) until we hit mile marker 55 in Michigan, at which point traffic stopped. We stopped at around 4 pm didn't move an inch for nearly 3 hours. We found out later that the accident ahead of us contained 6 jackknifed semis and at least a dozen cars. Given what we saw on our way through the site, I would be surprised if that figure included all crashes related to that initial accident.
It was 3 degrees outside, and the wind was strong enough to make leaving the car an unpleasant proposition--unfortunate, since I really really had to pee. However, all things considered, it wasn't so bad. We turned off our lights, ran the engine just enough to keep it and the car warm, and listened to NPR podcasts. I eventually admitted to myself that I didn't have the aim to pee in a bottle, and briefly left the car to take care of things. Good news is, I would be surprised if anyone could see my blazing white butt through the blowing snow. Bad news is, I froze my ass off (really--being a woman sucks). We had Roxy in the car (we left Maggie with a friend, but figured that Roxy could use a little adversity in her life), and let her out to wander around the car a bit. We hoped that she'd taken car of her kitty business before we left.
At some point, traffic started moving--we would inch forward 15 feet and then stop for 10-15 minutes. After a few rounds of stop-and-start, we realized that unless we wanted our windshield wipers encased in ice, we would have to run them constantly. Over the next 2 hours, the swish-swish would slowly drive me crazy.
The good thing about our piecemeal mode of travel was that it gave us plenty of time to gawk. First, we started to see cars off the road--presumably people uninvolved in the first accident who simply failed to stop in time. Then we started into the accident zone proper--all flashing lights and guys in uniform looking way cold. One of them cleared off our wiper for us, saving us a 10th trip out in the cold. They were dragging stranded cars across the median, presumably because the other side was more easily accessible. There was a semi tractor with the front smashed in, and several facing the wrong direction. Eventually, we made it to the next exit, where we were routed off the road into small towns. I was following a semi tractor for a while, but he made an ill-advised decision to pass a stranded semi who couldn't make it up a hill. He drifted away, and suddenly I was at the front of a massive, slow-motion parade. I didn't see the trailer again.
By the time we got back on the highway, visibility had fallen to about 20 feet. 4 hours of zero traffic left the roadway encased in snow. We found ourselves at the center of a sphere of snow. 20 feet from the car, the world may as well not have existed. It was impossible to tell where the road ended and the ditch began, so our parade took a firm position at the center of the roadway. A sedan in back of me (who had apparently missed our 3 hour long lesson in why- not- to- drive- like- a- jackass- in- a- blizzard) decided that this was a good time to pass. I saw him come up on my right, and then he slowly drifted off the side of the road. He left my personal bubble of world, and we didn't see him again. Nobody attempted to pass after that.
We spent an amusing interlude at East Bumblefuck Michigan (motto: don't stop here) and decided that we would have to try to make it the 13 miles to Benton Harbor. Although it seemed impossible, the road was even worse when we got back on. We could see as much as 20 feet in front of us, but when the wind shifted, all I could see was windshield, and I would have to stop on the roadway until it cleared. I've never driven in worse conditions. Long story not-so-short, we made it to Benton Harbor, checked into a hotel (best $80 I have ever spent), threw our totally freaked-out cat in the bathroom, and slept like the dead. The next day, it was still snowing, but not as badly. Since it was only 25 miles to get into Indiana, where the snow would probably stop (lake effect), we decided to go for it. It took us another 2 hours to get to my folk's house--a distance of probably 60 miles.
Once we got there, though, we had a lovely time. In addition to our traditional Christmas Eve gift of matching pajamas, the cats and dogs got matching bandanas. Suprisingly, Roxy didn't seem to mind hers and kept it on for the whole time we were there. On the whole, Roxy had a fantastic time at my folks' house. She seemed to enjoy having other animals around--even if she wasn't too fond of the dog at first. We made christmas cookies, wrapped presents, decorated the tree, and prepped the country ham we bought my mom for Christmas. We had an ice storm, and I took some pictures of my mom's winter garden (maybe I'll get to post some later). On a lark, we went to Cabella's, which is like Disneyland for hunters and included a mountain of stuffed game, an animatronic deer exhibit, a fish tank full of enormous fish, a wild-game cafeteria, a gun musem, and an entire section of disgusting bait items (I love looking at disgusting bait items). On our last day, we went to the Brookfield zoo. I love going to the zoo in the winter, and it's long tradition in our family. We saw gibbons singing to each other, a pygmy hippo, and some gorillas playing in the straw. We saw an orangutan going crazy over a giant orange-flavored popsicle. We saw an *enourmous* alligator (>15 feet long), and an owl with a lazy eye. We saw the keepers feeding the tapirs and hippos hamburger buns (hippo can haz cheezburger?) and indulging the elephants with big squirts of water. The best was the polar bear, who was playing with a small red ball. Early on it fell into the moat. He eventually decided to brave the icy steps to get it, but ended up falling into the moat. At that point, we looked in the mirror set up for moat-viewing and realized that all of the bear toys are in the moat. Reminds me of a certain cat I know, who likes to knock her toys down the stairs into the basement.
We seem to have used up all our bad luck on the trip to Chicago, because the trip from O'hare to Portland to Medford, which should have been fraught with trouble the entire way, was ridiculously easy. We headed out to the Oregon Coast to meet up with Caitrin (Ross's sister) the next day. The coast was lovely. We saw lighthouses, wind-bent trees, and crashing waves. We went to a wonderful aquarium with plexiglass tubes that let you walk underwater, and a petting zoo where you could touch anemones, sea cucumbers, sharks, and rays. We went to a garden with a fantastic light show, and a whale-watching center. The whale watching center has a real whale skeleton set up in the building. I also learned that little bits of junk in the ocean sometimes accumulate bits of plant matter in their travels, forming something that looks like a miniature tumbleweed. Later on, I looked for these balls on the beach, but didn't find any. We did find some jellyfish, though, and some blobs of clear stuff that felt a bit like rubber. Ross and I argued about the source of these--I thought they were organic (maybe dried out jellyfish, or whale barf or something), while Ross figured they were man made material (maybe packing material, or a component of a ship). I found a kid's toy--a plastic grenade--which looked pretty old, from the 70s maybe. We found some neat seashells, including one with a gradient from silver to purple, and another that was raspy and brown. We got a great lesson in the power of the pacific, when an extra-large wave caught me by surprise, and forced me to run up the beach to avoid getting wet. Ross's dad, who was taking pictures of me while I scrambled to safety, ended up getting caught too, and executed a neat little roll to get out of the way. The dunes themselves were the best part--covered in a spiky grass, making them look almost furry.
The trip down to San Fransisco was also uneventful. We stayed with Ross's aunt and uncle in Alameda. I had some professional obligations, but we also had some time to just wander around. We hiked up a big hill (though not by any stretch the biggest) and went to a toy store past Chinatown. We walked through a really sketchy neighborhood to a beer store that turned out to be closed. The brewery that we settled for was called the Thirsty Bear, and turned out to have some decent beers. That evening, we got to see some good friends who moved to Oakland a few years ago. We had fantastic sausages, made by a guy who was of Turkish decent, born in Germany, and grew up in Canada. Man knows his sausages! He was really nice, and let us come behind the counter to top our own sausages. He let us eat there while he closed up shop, and even gave us some of all of his french fry dips to try. The next day, Ross's uncle drove us around to see some different neighborhoods in the city. We went to yet another great sausage place, with the best business model ever. The sausage place is next door to a great bar. You can get your sausage for here, to go, or "for next door". We, of course, carried our sausage (wild boar for Ross, duck with figs for me) next door to have a beer. We were shocked to find that we didn't recognize a single beer on the menu! Awesome! We also subjected Ross's uncle to two different toy shops. But the second one was well worth it. We bought three original prints and spent only $48. Totally awesome.
Anyway, this was a long post, but it was a great trip. We were gone for much too long, but we enjoyed ourselves. How was your holiday season?
Showing posts with label chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicago. Show all posts
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Great Media Devestment Project...
My folks have been thinking about starting a used book selling business for a while, and this year they decided to take the plunge, and get a booth at the Printer's Row book fair in Chicago. It sounded like fun, and my mom promised me a cute little hardware store apron to store money in, so we drove down for the weekend to help out.
An aside: Printer's Row is an interesting part of the city. My grandfather worked in the printing industry there, back when it was a heavily industrial area--it was such a bad neighborhood that he wouldn't let my grandmother visit him at work, and he refused to park his car there. But a combination of the death of the printing industry in Chicago and the general gentrification of the South-loop area means that the old factories and paper mills are now pricey lofts. My grandfather would be shocked.
Anyway...the Printer's Row book fair has been around for a long time (23 years) and attracts a wide variety of booksellers, including national chains, museums, individual publishers, and "independents"--a category broad enough to encompass Powell's bookstore, the guy who sells only rare architecture books, and HJ booksellers (that is to say, us). The wares sold span as wide a variety as the sellers--brand new best sellers, tattered paperbacks, rare books, seconds/damaged books, overstocks, authors and/or (that "and" is really a bitch, I hear) publishers hawking their latest offering(s), art taken from cut-up books, old magazine covers, posters, and all other conceivable works on paper. We fit right in.
Our booth consisted of a table, with an L-shaped arrangement of bookselves around one side. We were selling a mixture of cookbooks culled from my mom's collection, mysteries and science fiction hardbacks, children's books, and a sometimes-odd mix of non-fiction (including, among other gems, a set of books entitled "The Bottom Line" from the years 1992-1996, published by "Boardroom Classics"). We were basically selling the dregs of my folks' personal collection, so we started off at $3 a book or 4 for $10. My friend Dirk balanced off the other side of the table with his collection of art posters (including a lovely 1979 Lichtenstein poster for the exhibit "Art for Art's Sake").
The first day, we sold around $700 worth of books, easily making back the $200 buy-in cost and the second day, we sold an additional $500 worth of books, bringing our total for two days to $1200--that is approximately 800 items, 40 square feet, or 600 pounds, for those of you keeping track. That, despite getting caught in a micro burst that nearly sent a 30'x30' tent sailing over our heads, 100 pound weights and all.
Ah yes...my old friend the tornado siren. Unfortunately, the weekend had a wee bit of drama. On Saturday, we'd had a late-day rainstorm, which was unpleasant but short-lived and pretty innocuous. The next day, at around 11:30 am, we received news from the organizers that we should be expecting "some weather" to come through in about 1/2 hour. We expected the same short rainstorm we'd experienced on Saturday, located our plastic sheets for quick recovery, and went about our business. At 12:30, it started to drizzle, so we covered the books. At 12:40, the sky opened up and the wind swirled up violently, ripping the tarp off the tables of the seller in the tent across the way. We secured our tarps just in time to see one of the 30'x30' tents in the street start to lift off, moving towards us. As it moved, it exposed more of the next tent to the wind, knocking down several bookcases and causing it to start to move as well.
This was about when I realized that this was no normal storm. The tents at this fair are provided by the city and they are not lightweight. They are also weighed down by 55 gallon drums on each corner. Later that day, I tried to move one of the drums and couldn't budge it at all. So this was some Major Wind. When the tent started moving across the street, my sister and Dirk both raced over to help hold it down. Between the two of them, they probably saved it from taking off, 55 gallon drums and all. As it was, the tent had moved about 10 feet to one side. The seller at the tent next door lost considerable stock when the bookcases blew over--I would guess that the weekend was more-or-less a loss for them. Fortunately, our table was shielded from the worst of the wind--a considerable bit of luck, since the sellers at the table 20 feet down the street from us were close enough to the cross street to get blown to shreds. They had actually closed up shop before the storm started because the fair-weather wind was so bad that bystanders were having to hold down the books for them during gusts.
As is usually the case with this kind of storm, the drama was done after about 15 minutes--by which I mean that we were left with pouring rain and lightning, rather than pouring rain, lightning, AND gale-force winds. So we decided that maaaaaybe we should go get some lunch. After lunch, we wandered back to the booth, figuring that the fair would be pretty much over, since...you know...one of the tents NEARLY TOOK OFF. But when we got there, we found a guy waiting for us in the still-drizzling rain, in the hopes that he could buy two of our VHS tapes.
Yes, you heard right. He was waiting--in the rain--to buy two VHS tapes. Tapes that, at that point, we would have been perfectly happy to seen stolen. Moreover, contrary any kind of logic, we did a brisk business for the rest of the day. Who'd have thought?
(By the way, this weekend marks the second (maybe third, if you count sandstorms) time in my life that I've been stuck outside in severe weather. Someday I'll have to tell you about being in a tent during a tornado, which is bit more dramatic.)
Anyway...Ross and I didn't leave the fair empty-handed (how could we?) and and despite feeling like a bit of a book-glutton, I can't help bragging about our great finds. So here's a list of our aquisitions...
From the Art Institute's damaged and overstocked table:
From the movable type seller:
From an art-on-paper dealer:
This was the deal of the century. We were browsing through the bins at a tent selling a variety of art works on paper. Most of them were cut from books or magazines (which we refuse to buy on principle--don't cut up books!), but in one bin marked "African American Artists" we found a whole mess of original, signed(!) woodblock prints from an artist named E.W. Washington. I haven't been able to find anything about him online, but his work looks a bit like the illustrations in Lynd Ward's wordless books. The prints are from about the same era as the wordless books--1917 through 1940--and while they aren't quite as good as Lynd Ward, they are still pretty amazing. We paid less than $70 for three prints.
From Drawn and Quarterly:
3 graphic novels for $36. It's a bit unclear exactly how much of a discount we got. After the big storm, Ross asked if they were selling for retail (Drawn and Quarterly tends to be more expensive than most graphic novel publishers). The two guys behind the table looked at each other, shrugged, and said "How about...half off?" We snapped up three books before they had a chance to change their minds.
And finally, some things that we didn't get:
An aside: Printer's Row is an interesting part of the city. My grandfather worked in the printing industry there, back when it was a heavily industrial area--it was such a bad neighborhood that he wouldn't let my grandmother visit him at work, and he refused to park his car there. But a combination of the death of the printing industry in Chicago and the general gentrification of the South-loop area means that the old factories and paper mills are now pricey lofts. My grandfather would be shocked.
Anyway...the Printer's Row book fair has been around for a long time (23 years) and attracts a wide variety of booksellers, including national chains, museums, individual publishers, and "independents"--a category broad enough to encompass Powell's bookstore, the guy who sells only rare architecture books, and HJ booksellers (that is to say, us). The wares sold span as wide a variety as the sellers--brand new best sellers, tattered paperbacks, rare books, seconds/damaged books, overstocks, authors and/or (that "and" is really a bitch, I hear) publishers hawking their latest offering(s), art taken from cut-up books, old magazine covers, posters, and all other conceivable works on paper. We fit right in.
Our booth consisted of a table, with an L-shaped arrangement of bookselves around one side. We were selling a mixture of cookbooks culled from my mom's collection, mysteries and science fiction hardbacks, children's books, and a sometimes-odd mix of non-fiction (including, among other gems, a set of books entitled "The Bottom Line" from the years 1992-1996, published by "Boardroom Classics"). We were basically selling the dregs of my folks' personal collection, so we started off at $3 a book or 4 for $10. My friend Dirk balanced off the other side of the table with his collection of art posters (including a lovely 1979 Lichtenstein poster for the exhibit "Art for Art's Sake").
The first day, we sold around $700 worth of books, easily making back the $200 buy-in cost and the second day, we sold an additional $500 worth of books, bringing our total for two days to $1200--that is approximately 800 items, 40 square feet, or 600 pounds, for those of you keeping track. That, despite getting caught in a micro burst that nearly sent a 30'x30' tent sailing over our heads, 100 pound weights and all.
Ah yes...my old friend the tornado siren. Unfortunately, the weekend had a wee bit of drama. On Saturday, we'd had a late-day rainstorm, which was unpleasant but short-lived and pretty innocuous. The next day, at around 11:30 am, we received news from the organizers that we should be expecting "some weather" to come through in about 1/2 hour. We expected the same short rainstorm we'd experienced on Saturday, located our plastic sheets for quick recovery, and went about our business. At 12:30, it started to drizzle, so we covered the books. At 12:40, the sky opened up and the wind swirled up violently, ripping the tarp off the tables of the seller in the tent across the way. We secured our tarps just in time to see one of the 30'x30' tents in the street start to lift off, moving towards us. As it moved, it exposed more of the next tent to the wind, knocking down several bookcases and causing it to start to move as well.
This was about when I realized that this was no normal storm. The tents at this fair are provided by the city and they are not lightweight. They are also weighed down by 55 gallon drums on each corner. Later that day, I tried to move one of the drums and couldn't budge it at all. So this was some Major Wind. When the tent started moving across the street, my sister and Dirk both raced over to help hold it down. Between the two of them, they probably saved it from taking off, 55 gallon drums and all. As it was, the tent had moved about 10 feet to one side. The seller at the tent next door lost considerable stock when the bookcases blew over--I would guess that the weekend was more-or-less a loss for them. Fortunately, our table was shielded from the worst of the wind--a considerable bit of luck, since the sellers at the table 20 feet down the street from us were close enough to the cross street to get blown to shreds. They had actually closed up shop before the storm started because the fair-weather wind was so bad that bystanders were having to hold down the books for them during gusts.
As is usually the case with this kind of storm, the drama was done after about 15 minutes--by which I mean that we were left with pouring rain and lightning, rather than pouring rain, lightning, AND gale-force winds. So we decided that maaaaaybe we should go get some lunch. After lunch, we wandered back to the booth, figuring that the fair would be pretty much over, since...you know...one of the tents NEARLY TOOK OFF. But when we got there, we found a guy waiting for us in the still-drizzling rain, in the hopes that he could buy two of our VHS tapes.
Yes, you heard right. He was waiting--in the rain--to buy two VHS tapes. Tapes that, at that point, we would have been perfectly happy to seen stolen. Moreover, contrary any kind of logic, we did a brisk business for the rest of the day. Who'd have thought?
(By the way, this weekend marks the second (maybe third, if you count sandstorms) time in my life that I've been stuck outside in severe weather. Someday I'll have to tell you about being in a tent during a tornado, which is bit more dramatic.)
Anyway...Ross and I didn't leave the fair empty-handed (how could we?) and and despite feeling like a bit of a book-glutton, I can't help bragging about our great finds. So here's a list of our aquisitions...
From the Art Institute's damaged and overstocked table:
- Cabinet of Natural Curiousities ($20--a giant book full of illustrations from different 18th century naturalist's collections--also the best deal we got on a per-pound basis)
- Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind: Selected Diaries, Letters, and Files ($1--pretty beat up, but I'm a fan)
- The Little Book of Plagiarism ($2--don't know what this is, but Ross is the anti-plagiarism crusader, so h
- Matisse and Picasso ($10--a book comparing paintings by the two artists, one page at a time)
- Ravi Shankhar cd ($1--how could we resist a deal like that?)
- Two misc southeast asian music cds ($1 each)
From the movable type seller:
- Numbers 0-9 in various fonts ($5 total--wood type)
- Two parentheses, a colon, a curly bracket and a large skinny X ($7 total--metal type that we will use to make a little text guy with a mustache and eyebrows--just think about it for a moment)
- A type drawer ($20--Ross is going to use this to hold his burgeoning collection of star wars micromachines...no...really!)
From an art-on-paper dealer:
This was the deal of the century. We were browsing through the bins at a tent selling a variety of art works on paper. Most of them were cut from books or magazines (which we refuse to buy on principle--don't cut up books!), but in one bin marked "African American Artists" we found a whole mess of original, signed(!) woodblock prints from an artist named E.W. Washington. I haven't been able to find anything about him online, but his work looks a bit like the illustrations in Lynd Ward's wordless books. The prints are from about the same era as the wordless books--1917 through 1940--and while they aren't quite as good as Lynd Ward, they are still pretty amazing. We paid less than $70 for three prints.
From Drawn and Quarterly:
3 graphic novels for $36. It's a bit unclear exactly how much of a discount we got. After the big storm, Ross asked if they were selling for retail (Drawn and Quarterly tends to be more expensive than most graphic novel publishers). The two guys behind the table looked at each other, shrugged, and said "How about...half off?" We snapped up three books before they had a chance to change their minds.
- Dogs and Water (surreal and wonderful)
- Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography (one we've been looking at for a while)
- Berlin: City of Stones: Book 1 (unlike the other two, not one we'd been coveting for a long time--but it looks good)
And finally, some things that we didn't get:
- A field guide for US troops in Australia (1942) (the same time my grandfather would have been there--but $15 was too much)
- A number of pages cut from Lynd Ward books (don't cut up books!)
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