Bob Katzman was 15 when he opened a newsstand in a three-by-four-foot wooden shack at the corner of 51st and Lake Park in 1965. He called it Bob’s Newsstand. The business was a success, and as it grew and expanded–eventually becoming a walk-in store–it began to acquire an international flavor. Katzman sold European magazines, and, during the war, newspapers from North Vietnam. Twenty years and two fires later he decided the neighborhood was no longer amicable to his enterprise. He closed Bob’s Newsstand and left Hyde Park.
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Katzman is now 43 and owns the Grand Tour World Travel Bookstore, on Clark just north of Belmont. When he was 18, just enrolled in the University of Illinois at Chicago, cancer invaded his left salivary gland. Doctors successfully removed the tumor, but they also had to cut away the left side of his jawbone. They later replaced it with one of his ribs. The cancer is gone now, but after a series of reconstructive surgeries his face remains partially paralyzed, slightly lopsided and chubby. With his dark hair he looks a little like Buddy Hackett in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Yet Germany is the European country he’s visited most–he’s returned twice for book fairs. Visiting the country where the Nazis flourished allowed him to confront his apprehension, he says. “I had a conflict about forgiving the Germans for a long time. But it was a burden to carry those feelings around. And I finally decided that it wasn’t fair to the current generation of Germans.” Ironically it was while trying to enter a synagogue in Oslo, Norway, that he encountered blatant xenophobia. A man at the temple door wouldn’t let him enter because he thought Katzman might be an Arab terrorist.
Grand Tour, 3229 N. Clark, is open 10 to 9 Monday through Saturday and 11 to 6 Sunday. Call 929-1836.
