On Belmont and Clark

On Belmont and Clark

It was either a warm night during winter break or a chilly night during spring break halfway through college. Too cold, we realized, to drink our bottle of five-dollar chardonnay at the harbor as planned, so we walked from the lake to Starbucks. I asked the barista for three grande cups of ice water. Then I poured the ice water out in the bathroom sink and poured the wine in. The three of us drank all sitting in a row at the long table against the coffee shop window. The window looked out to the corner of Belmont and Clark which seemed nearly empty on a Sunday night. The two girls I sat with were old, old friends. 

Facing the street I could see, kitty-corner, an H&R Block that took up two storefronts bordering the cornball costume shop, Hollywood Mirror. And directly across: a new mini-Target built on a triangular axis (eight stories high, including the apartments) so that the beige building extended down both Belmont and Clark for a quarter-block each way, its telltale red bullseye visible only from the corner of the Starbucks window. The Target had no other signage; just a still, red circle opened like a moralizing evil eye toward the intersection. I noticed no pedestrians until eventually some drag queens tottered past in glittery platforms toward the sole club, Berlin. One of them momentarily leaned on an empty RedEye paper dispenser for support. I finished sipping my wine through the green straw, not quite buzzed but maybe just buzzed enough to feel nostalgic.

The first time I ever ditched class, I went to Belmont and Clark. A bunch of us girls all snuck out our middle school downtown. We took the “L.” We couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. I had never even been to Lakeview before, but one of the more audacious girls who had her train lines memorized confidently strode from the blue line to the brown line to the vintage shops and we all followed. It felt like hours spent in Belmont Army, the five-floor behemoth of consignment and army surplus where we tried on pillbox hats and motorcycle helmets and bought polyester Chicago flags (two blue stripes, four red stars). We hung out on couches near the dressing rooms drinking root beers. We stopped across the street at The Alley, the old goth head shop-superstore with a Victorian exterior. One of the girls got her doubles pierced. While everyone squealed as the gun neared her earlobe, I pocketed a fifteen-dollar locket of Al Capone. When I got home, I ran upstairs to hang my flag before anyone could ask me how school was. 

I, like most kids I knew in Chicago back then, attended a selective enrollment school. This meant travelling across the city each day for a better education. My friends came from all over the city. Always on the move, most of us were not quite attached to our own neighborhoods. But throughout my adolescence, I identified Belmont and Clark as a reliable third place outside of school or home. If I didn’t have plans, I hopped on the train and wandered through Lakeview with no exact routine. Next to the train stop was an American Apparel where some friends worked. I could hang out there for a while, flipping through the day-glo racks of skin tight leotards and bullshitting with the cashier. Sometimes I bought a Stephen King paperback nextdoor at Bookman’s Corner and read in the Starbucks. If I didn’t know where to go on a date with a new boy, I always said, “Let’s just meet at Belmont,” and with a bottle of vodka we would sneak onto the roof of the army surplus or just walk around, slowly making our way east. At the lake we would make out in a park. Sometimes we might stop for a donut. Our parents said that in the 80’s, the Dunkin’ Donuts there was called Punkin’ Donuts and had a real parking lot nightlife full of leather-clad, Rockabilly freaks leaving clubs that I will never know the names of. But when I was in high school, that Dunkin’ Donuts didn’t even let us use the bathroom. 

Belmont and Clark, as I knew it, was always half-sterile. Few remnants of Lakeview’s eccentric roots remained, but I still found colorful spaces in the storefronts down Belmont. The Alley was overpriced, but I liked poking around. Starbucks was a chain, but I found comfort in its modest dependability and free plastic cups. When I was a senior in high school, I got a job at the the army surplus selling women’s clothes on the second floor. I took cigarette breaks with the girls from American Apparel, leaning against red brick facades. On bad days we ate stale long johns from Dunkin’ Donuts. On payday we went to Chipotle. That was the same year Mark Thomas, the owner of The Alley, unsuccessfully ran for alderman against incumbent Tom Tunney who planned on opening a Walmart-Express down Clark street and allowing a Target right here on Belmont and Clark. After 40 years in business, Thomas could have just retired but he clung to the hope of a funky Lakeview with the chrome-studded Alley at its heart. It was a nice commercialist sentiment, but even as a high school senior I sensed the deracination of this stucco utopia was totally inevitable. 

That was the same year I visited LA and saw factory workers from American Apparel marching through the garment district chanting Save Our Store! Both American Apparel and The Alley closed down in 2016. While the popular chain became an empty storefront on Belmont (and remains between two other empty storefronts), the local landmark transformed into one third of a Target complex. So did the Punkin’ Donuts. Belmont Army could likely close too; I recall several days that summer closing the floor register with hardly any sales. Sometimes the only shopper for hours was the old lady with wild white hair who smoked her cigarettes inside. There was no use asking her not too. She had fake eyelashes glued a centimeter too high and used to try on the most expensive pieces. She never bought them though. She always wore sequined berets and over-the-knee black stiletto boots. She had trembling, acrylic fingertips. I remember because once I saw her do cocaine in the Starbucks. For years that old lady shopped around Lakeview, high as hell and ashing all over the place with no money to spend. We all used to talk about her. She appears in my memory now like tan ghost, or harbinger, flitting out from behind paisley dressing curtains.

Certainly most Chicagoans would not consider the years in which I bummed around Lakeview any golden age for the neighborhood, which was already full of big brands and new construction. But I didn’t really mind. Us kids had made do even when the eight-story tall nexus left Belmont and Clark unrecognizable, and cast the avenue in looming shade. Last month though, I hurried past the Target toward the warmth of my Starbucks and discovered something much more dismal: the coffee shop had remodeled. They removed all the tables and chairs. The entire floor space is now reserved for the anticipation of lines. The countertops and the floor are sleek white. The bathroom remains locked. When I asked the barista what happened, he told me Starbucks is trying out “a new look” at some of its more popular locations. 

When I left, I drank my coffee on a bus stop bench facing where The Alley once stood. And I remembered last spring break, or was it winter break, when I sat drinking chardonnay at the Starbucks with two girls from high school. That night we had noted the banal changes to our favorite block, but recognized that when we’d worked and shopped at those gimmicky stores years before we were young and without responsibility. Maybe that’s why it was so fun. We could have had fun anywhere. And we sat talking and wondering where we might move after college, to what neighborhoods or even what cities, we sat talking until the Starbucks closed.