“I hate funerals!”
“Man, I’m sellin’ my place and movin’ to Kansas or somewhere. Why not? I got it all set up–some guy tried to fuck me on it but don’t worry, I’m gonna fuck him back. Shit, there ain’t nothin’ like this anywhere. Me and my crazy partner might as well just get the hell outta Chicago and go live off the land, just be left alone. There ain’t anyplace left where people understand life like they do here. It’s the Mardi Gras of the mind, and there ain’t no other like it. It’s time to go.”
Through it all, the Peanut Man never looks right or left. In a world of spielers, rappers, and hucksters his refusal to participate in the shout is one of the most effective sales techniques going.
Just a few years ago, though, that strip was lined with businesses: a couple of convenience stores, an all-night taqueria, a pub on the corner of Halsted and 14th where mariachi bands would play on Sunday afternoon. Everyone remembers the day the death knell sounded there: a house imploded and almost took one of the market’s most irrepressible residents with it.
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“The Lord looks after drunks and fools,” a regular suggested.
In retrospect, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, and Moses had returned to organize the masses and lead “Jewtown” into a new century. It’s clear now that the issue wasn’t just UIC, not even redevelopment per se. A city with the economic resources and geographic space of Chicago won’t go broke if it sets aside a few square blocks of otherwise vacant land so a few thousand people who aren’t rich and powerful can make a little money and listen to some free blues once a week.
