(courtesy of Vermilion Development)

In May 2008, when the University of Chicago completed the $6.5 million purchase of Harper Court, President Robert Zimmer heralded the moment as an opportunity. “Ideally,” he said in a public statement on the purchase, “this project will be reflective of the distinctive nature of Hyde Park and represent the best of Chicago’s mid-South Side.” This January, after Vermilion Development was selected by the University to redevelop Harper Court, its CEO, David J. Cocagne, was quoted by the Chicago Maroon echoing the same sentiment. “We’re very excited to be undertaking this project,” Cocagne said. “We think it will be very transformative for the commercial core of Hyde Park and will really celebrate all that Hyde Park is.”

The idea that Harper Court, once it is redeveloped, will represent the essence of its neighborhood has garnered considerable backing from both the University and its developers, who also market the redevelopment as bringing a much-needed retail and entertainment district to the area. But what is the “distinctive nature” of Hyde Park, and how do the redevelopment plans celebrate it? What is going into the Harper Court redevelopment? What will come out of it? Currently, the University is working with Vermilion Development (which could not be reached for comment) to prepare financial proposals for the project that are due in mid-June, according to Susan Campbell, Associate Vice President for Civic Engagement at the University. Once the funding is approved, Vermilion will begin work on a final redevelopment design, which will incorporate retail and office space, a hotel, a parking garage, and possibly a movie theater, and deal with structural changes such as the rerouting of streets as thoroughfares. While there have been no changes to the planned groundbreaking in early 2011, the financial climate is making it difficult to find funding for some aspects of the development, especially the housing project that is proposed for the second phase of construction, scheduled to be completed in 2015.

The funding issue highlights an important issue surrounding the redevelopment of Harper Court: gentrification. If the housing units of the redevelopment were priced at market rate, it is likely that many current residents of Hyde Park would not be able to afford to live there, while those with bigger pocketbooks would. Although the intent is to eventually offer affordable mixed-income options for sale and for rent, right now money is tight. “It’s hard to find funding to build housing, let alone mixed-income housing, “ Campbell says.

There are also questions about the displacement of local businesses from the revitalized Harper Court, a concern embodied by the departure of Dixie Kitchen in June 2009. Though Dixie Kitchen was not actually forced out by the university—Campbell quickly points out that they were offered relocation assistance by the University and that “it was a business decision” to close the Hyde Park location—it was an unsettling indicator of the potential negative effects that redevelopment could have on locally owned businesses. Campbell, however, points to measures to be taken by the University to engage with the community and local businesses to make sure that the final redevelopment plan is equitable. Her office is partnering with the Southeast Chicago Commission and the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce to plan events like a July 4th neighborhood fair at Nichols Park, which is intended to “highlight businesses that have stayed in Hyde Park.” The project’s declared goal is revitalization that works for Hyde Park residents. “We have a vision of making a more vibrant commercial corridor, including retail that appeals to everyone” while at the same time “always trying to help [local] businesses,” Campbell says. “Hyde Park has a uniqueness, a diversity that people enjoy. Our key claim to fame is our people.”

Community response to the proposed redevelopment has been markedly more positive than it was when the University first announced its obtainment of the Harper Court property, and certain elements of the designs, like open spaces for farmers markets, suggest there is a real possibility of keeping a local sensibility in the new developments.

The Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC), a local association, has grown to support the redevelopment plans. According to HPKCC’s president, Jay Ammerman, what was once a controversy about whether to do anything with an underperforming Harper Court became a compromise, and what was once a community-run commercial center was turned over to the University with the promise of future revitalization. “Over the course of several years, we came to the conclusion that a change was necessary,” he says. “I don’t think we have an argument about where this is headed.” He adds, though, that HPKCC, in its capacity as an organization working on behalf of the community, would continue to critique University involvement so that community concerns would be heard.

Underlying the whole project is the question of whether or not the University would transform Harper Court the same way that it had redeveloped neighborhood spaces in the past. “When urban renewal was initiated in 1958, it meant drastic change, and a lot of displaced people with low incomes, small businesses, and people involved in the arts,” says Bart Schultz, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the UofC and director of its Civic Knowledge Project. The development of Harper Court in 1965 was a response to the displacement of artists from the prominent artist colony at 57th Street and Stony Island Avenue, where artists, writers (including Sherwood Anderson), and used bookstores set up shop. Harper Court was envisioned as a retail space for artisans to replace their previous haven. While it didn’t successfully replicate the atmosphere of the artist colony, Schultz argues that open space and elements of local authenticity like public chess tables made Harper Court “innovative” in its own way.

For Schultz, a successful development will keep those aspects of Hyde Park that set it apart from other neighborhoods in the city. According to walkscore.com, for example, Hyde Park is one of the top 10 most walkable neighborhoods in the city, rivaling the Loop and Lincoln Park. Institutions like the Seminary Co-op—which Schultz calls “the best bookstore in the country”—should be treated like “treasures to be preserved.” How, he asks, will plans for a hotel, which brings in road traffic, be reconciled with Hyde Park’s walkability? How will it be guaranteed that local business not suffer if chain retailers move in? “In all honesty, it’s hard, when you have what’s essentially a 12,000-person corporation, to engage the community,” says Campbell. “We try hard to help and to not overstep our bounds.” To that end, the University is working through its Civic Engagement office to be far more open with the community on the Harper Court redevelopment than with other projects currently underway. Just last week, for example, the University announced their selection for the architect of the new Milton Friedman Institute without any faculty or community input. Schultz says that measures like soliciting art installations from the Hyde Park Art Center are a move in the right direction, but he cautions against rejoicing too soon. “It’s very easy to announce a project with great fanfare, when really it’s a constant process,” he says. “I worry about that.”

The chess tables that once lined the open space at the center of Harper Court are more significant than they might appear. In the original plan for Harper Court, a chessboard prominently backdrops its logo, and its outdoor tables were a meeting point for neighborhood chess enthusiasts. Upon the removal of the chess tables in 2002, community groups like the Friends of Harper Court Chess staged protests and encouraged boycotts of the shopping center. Chess, they said, was something that made Harper Court unique, something that was a part of “all that Hyde Park is.” Maybe the powers-that-be are listening. At the February 8th meeting of the 53rd Street TIF (tax increment financing) district, Vermilion presented plans to include a small pavilion in the redevelopment, complete with chess tables. It’s a start, but Schultz encourages restraint and patience. “When a community gets into something like this,” he says, “the discussion is just barely starting to get along.”

Harper Court is a product of 1960s urban renewal and its backlash, an architectural legacy that’s visible in its boxy split-level façade and isolation from the street. In the 1950s and ‘60s, scores of businesses were cleared from Hyde Park as part of the city-wide renewal project, which sought to remove “blight” by replacing blocks of working-class commercial interests with residential zones and planned developments. Before clearance, the stretch of 55th Street between Ellis and Kenwood Avenue used to resemble present-day 53rd Street, with a mix of businesses including a roof repair workshop, a printer, and a cobbler; today the only retail there is in one building on 55th and Woodlawn, with the rest filled in by houses and the McCormick Theological Seminary. In a Chicago Maroon article from October 15, 1963, business owners voiced concerns that would sound familiar to current Harper Court tenants: the city and University were forcing them out of their current locations, but rents were too high and spaces were too small elsewhere in Hyde Park.

In addition to the dry cleaners and window shade sellers, small craftsmen and artists were caught up in the sweep of urban renewal. Hyde Park’s art colony, housed in nineteenth-century buildings on 57th Street, was condemned as a firetrap and seven artists were displaced. Their eviction notices were served the same week as a proposal was submitted to the city for the development of a commercial complex that would preserve Hyde Park and Kenwood’s local artisans by offering new retail spaces at below-market rent. Muriel Beadle, the wife of the University of Chicago’s then-president, George Beadle, spearheaded the Harper Court project; keeping with her close association with the University, she appears to have envisioned Harper Court primarily for the use of the University community. Hyde Park was “the type of community that needs picture framers and has stringed instruments to be repaired,” she said in a July 23, 1965 Maroon article. Other acceptable businesses proposed for the space, listed in a poll for the public and reported in the Nov. 8, 1963 Maroon, included antiques restorers, four categories of bookstores, a flower-arranging school, and a “Chinese teahouse.”

The grand opening of Harper Court was accompanied by a balloon release, fireworks, and a marching band. But like most urban renewal products, initial investment in the space soon stagnated. Dreams of pottery shops and knitting collectives could not survive the ‘70s, and the type of planning exemplified by Harper Court ignored the community’s real commercial needs.

A November 18 press release from the University on Harper Court’s redevelopment sounds much like the 1963 discussion—Muriel Beadle would approve especially of “a destination that communicates the distinctive qualities of Hyde Park and the University of Chicago.” Recent upscale openings like the Zaleski and Horvath MarketCafe on 47th Street seem like a good fit for the original Harper Court. But to some, the University’s clearing of tenants may cast it instead as the big bad landlord of urban renewal, updated with new principles of city planning and design.

Jerry Kleiner’s new restaurant Park 52 opened in Harper Court just over a week ago, and it is poised to establish itself as Hyde Park’s one fashionable destination restaurant.

The restaurant is arguably the most expensive in the neighborhood, with the bulk of its entrees over $20, comparable only with La Petite Folie. Its design is just as uniquely high-end. Chant, another recent Hyde Park opening, also broke ground for high-end Hyde Park dining, but Kleiner’s team went leaps and bounds further with their design.

The restaurant shares a chicly cerulean tile-and-wood-panel-clad building with the storied Checkerboard Lounge. It is hard not to look up as you enter. The ceiling is very high—there is a small loft in one corner—and it is adorned with lamps encased in what appear to be enormous and vividly colored, yet minimalist, hoop skirts.

Looking down, the marble-topped bar stands out with its back wall’s spartan display of bottles far above the bartenders’ heads and a plasma TV that feels like an odd transplant out of a very different kind of establishment. In the center of the restaurant, a false wall of columns and curtains rises above a row of diner-style bench seats facing free-standing tables. The wall opposite the bar is cluttered with an arrangement of framed pictures, mostly magazine-style fashion photographs.

All of this makes the cavernous space feel like a big, cozy living room—albeit perhaps the big, cozy living room of someone with an unlimited furniture budget.

On a heavily booked night on their opening weekend (reservations are recommended), I lingered just long enough to finish a plate of curly fries ($6). The fries were simple—the menu is modern but straightforward American—spiced with only a bit of salt and parsley, plentiful, elegantly presented, and quite good.

Staying for dinner, one could order a “1/2lb. Burger” ($12), a mushroom pasta ($18), or one of plenty of salads and starters ($7-15). The restaurant’s focus is on meat. They offer the oddly named “Duet of Beef” (five-ounce filet and stroganoff, $28), a full-pound rib-eye with Fat Tire onion rings ($36), and the barbecue braised beef short rib with “fennel slaw and garlic mash” ($24), which comes with a recommendation. They also keep a cellar with about seventy-five bottles of wine.

The opening evening clientele was a wide mix of ages and races, all well-, if not formally-, dressed. Two valet attendants were waiting patiently by the restaurant’s private 52nd Street driveway. While the restaurant’s name hints at Hyde Park, and Kleiner saw “tremendous neighborhood interest” in his project, its target demographic presumably extends—in Kleiner’s style—well across the city.

“What do you want with your vodka?” asked Jerry Kleiner, as I sat down with him and his kids at his South Loop restaurant Room 21. Tempted to ask for vodka with my vodka, I asked for an iced tea instead. Better to stay sober when interviewing the mogul of such heavy-hitting eateries like Giocco, Opera, Marché, Red Light, and now, Park 52, located in Harper Court at 52nd Street, and scheduled to open in early March 2008. Given Kleiner’s characteristic belatedness, April seems like a more plausible opening date.

The buzz about Park 52 is justified—the blog Hyde Park Progress is particularly enamored of the place—because of Jerry Kleiner’s history. The man has been cited as the catalyst for the development of the South Loop restaurant district with his Opera, Giocco, and Room 21, all higher-class eateries catering to a more affluent clientele, unusual for the far South Loop. Room 21 is located a stone’s throw from a Chicago Housing Authority housing project, and Harper Court isn’t exactly West Loop, either. One would think that people willing to drop up a hundred or so on a meal for two wouldn’t dare venture out to the South Loop, or even Hyde Park—but Kleiner seems to have succeeded in extracting those people out of downtown.

Uncommon neighborhood choices are what Kleiner’s restaurants are known for. Yet, he says that he’s not parading into Hyde Park on his high horse: “I’m not creating any big waves like, well I’m coming in here, I’m the messiah. I felt there was need in the community [for Park 52],” citing “tremendous neighborhood interest.” Originally named Hyde Park Grille, the new place was renamed Park 52 after residents complained that the name was “too common.” The classic American restaurant is on 52nd and Harper, at the end of Harper court, and he alludes to the many parks in and around Hyde Park—Washington Park, Nichols Park, Jackson Park, not to mention Hyde Park’s title—in his name selection.

The choice of location was inspired by his habit of visiting different neighborhoods in Chicago, and Kleiner calls himself “a studier of Chicago history … I know Hyde Park really well, and it has tremendous history.” He says that he eats out seven meals a week, and used to drive through Hyde Park “and try to find places to eat; there’s never very many.” He is a fan of La Petite Folie and, more unexpectedly, Rajun Cajun. Still, he didn’t “find a restaurant in Hyde Park that really has a bar setting, comfort food American stuff that’s done [by a] chef and presented well, like in some of my other restaurants.” He envisions the restaurant as having a “clubby sort of feeling,” where people from the community can come together.

Despite his insistence that he’s “not looking to stir any waves,” when Park 52 was first announced in early 2006, people expected Kleiner to wave his wand again over the Hyde Park restaurant scene. But delays plagued the development of the restaurant, each time pushing the grand opening further into the future. This may have been compounded by the fact that Kleiner, at any given moment, is working on at least a half-dozen projects at a time.

Park 52 is his seventh restaurant with his KDK restaurant group (one of his many groups), and he estimates that he’s built around forty buildings since 1982. As for projects on the horizon, it seems best to let the man speak for himself: “I’ve got multiple projects. I’m designing hotels; I’m doing stuff all over the world. So Hyde Park will be the seventh, and I got a place in Hinsdale opening up this summer, that’s eighth, and doing a place on North Wells Street, that’s nine, and Chicago Illuminating Company, a big banquet facility, that’s my tenth project. I have my own design and manufacturing company.” He adds, “I’m building Karnivals [Kleiner’s nightclubs] in a few places, one in Orlando, one in Atlanta, and one in the Bahamas. Working on stuff in Las Vegas, in Dubai…besides, I’m working on three hotel projects, with restaurants in those hotels. So, that’s the short list.”

Kleiner attributes Park 52’s delay between conception and construction to building problems, explaining that it was “very difficult building … it’s a concrete structure—the whole building is concrete.” He seems to have run into the same problem as Hyde Park Produce, another buzz-laden business in Hyde Park that faced major delays because of deficiencies in the original structure. He complains, “There was nothing there. We had to dig out major trenches, and this and that. The construction was very difficult.”

The finished product is a handsome blue-bricked building right behind the Checkerboard Lounge. Kleiner is known for the design of his restaurants, and his hope with Park 52 is “to achieve something that has history, something that won’t offend the community at all … a very comfortable, stylish place…Not sterile, not modern, but warm.” He claims that Park 52 will be “priced reasonably, affordable for the community, not downtown prices…you want people to feel that they can eat at this place like two or three times a week.” The menu includes “Great Caesar salads, bleu cheese wedges, chicken, fish, meat, meatloaf, shrimp”—standard grill fare. He later specifies that entrée prices will be in the teens to high 30s, so it seems like Park 52 clientele from the community will probably end up being professors, grad students, and professionals.

In many ways, Kleiner’s prognostications are spot-on: “I think it’s a great community and it’s just ready to take off. It’s been a sleepy little community for many years.” He approves of the closure of the Co-op, joining the ranks of most of the University community: “That co-op, I’ve been in there a couple times and it’s just embarrassing, the quality of their product. What’s the point of that, when you’re endangering people’s lives by serving bad food that’s handled improperly?” The indignation then turns into a tinge of condescension: “I think it’s time for the community to start elevating itself.”

Best Hangover Cure
Salonica
Writing this entry was delayed several hours by Salonica; an hour-and-a-half spent eating dinner, and another spent in peaceful digestion. In fact, most any Salonica meal is well followed by a period of rest, since the cooks intimately know the meaning of “well-fed,” and their dishes pose a stiff challenge to even the fastest metabolisms. Salonica specializes in typical Greek diner-style items like moussaka, pasticcio, and spinach pie, and also offers sandwiches and breakfast items. Their soups are excellent, especially the legendary egg lemon orzo soup. Dishes fall squarely into the category of comfort food with their focus on rich, carnally satisfying ingredients prepared simply and honestly. Such decadence is best on weekend mornings, when Salonica is packed with the pious after worship and pale, sunken-eyed youths recovering from the previous evening’s abuses. A cup of Salonica coffee and a bite of saganaki can instantly clear one’s liver and kidneys of any toxin and ready one’s mind for the day’s work. Dinner specials at Salonica cost about $7 or $8 and include an entrée, soup or salad, drink, and dessert. Evening Salonica meals go well with a bottle of wine, especially cheap wine. 1440 E. 57th St. Sunday-Saturday, 7am-10pm. (773)752-3899. (Dave McQuown)

Best Restaurant in Which to Break Veganism
Ribs N’ Bibs
If you’re a hipster from Los Angeles or New York City, you probably consider Hyde Park a major step down. There are no nearby places to see shows, no Trader Joe’s, and the nearest vegan pancakes are a Red Line trip away. Others of your kind on the North Side probably think you’re from a bad neighborhood and wonder how you manage to focus on your studies amidst the constant gang warfare. For you enlightened folks with alternative diets, the best Hyde Park restaurants are east on 55th where Korean, Japanese, Middle Eastern, and Thai foods abound. However, such ethnic variations on pan-fried vegetables grow old quickly, leaving one craving more violent flavors. The restaurants on the other end of town, along the western 53rd Street corridor, have a much different character. On one’s first visit, your sensibilities may be confused and offended by the strange words you notice on the storefronts: “fried chicken,” “ribs,” “Jamaican jerk.” Yet, this is the culinary heart of Hyde Park; a garden of flavor obscure to vegetarians and vegans. If, someday, you wish to return to the world of meat, Ribs ‘n’ Bibs has you covered—I speak from personal experience. When it’s finally time to take that morbid plunge, saunter over to Ribs ‘n’ Bibs and order the Ranch Owner’s Smorgasboard, a delicious menagerie of meats that will slow your heart to a crawl. A combination of ribs, fried chicken, and sausage allows a former vegetarian to “play the field” and try a bit of everything he or she has been missing. Ribs ‘n’ Bibs has become a South Side institution over its more than forty years of business and the inside walls are covered with signed photographs of notable fans—from newscasters to politicians—and letters of thanks. For the college student, Ribs ‘n’ Bibs is important because it’s one of the only restaurants in Hyde Park that is open past midnight. On such late night visits, try the Gunslinger Sausage Sandwich. 5300 S. Dorchester Ave. Sunday-Thursday, 11am-12am; Friday-Saturday, 11am-1am. (773)493-0400. (Dave McQuown)

Best Place Where Learning is Fun Again
Museum of Science and Industry
Never mind that this Chicago staple is housed in the architectural centerpiece from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The Museum of Science and Industry’s monumental superstructure, within spitting distance of the University of Chicago, houses the coolest museum we’ve ever been to. There’s the first Boeing 727 that United Airlines ever owned, the first diesel-powered train, a reproduction of a coal mine that became the template for similar exhibits at industrial museums across the country, and—oh, yeah—one of only two German U-boats ever captured during World War II. And visitors can walk through them all. The permanent exhibits are augmented when special exhibits come to town, like Body Worlds 1 and 2, in which real human bodies are preserved in ways that make anatomy cool (or gross). Then there’s the Omnimax Theater—who doesn’t like seeing movies about pharaohs on a five-story screen? 57th St. and Lakeshore Dr. Monday-Saturday, 9:30am-4pm; Sunday, 11am-4pm. (773)684-1414. www.msichicago.org (John Thompson)

Best Friend for Chefs
Freehling Pot and Pan Company
There’s not normally anything exciting about a store that sells cooking supplies—unless they sell every one imaginable. On Hyde Park’s beautiful main drag, Freehling Pot and Pan has everything a well-stocked kitchen needs, plus basters, specialized cheese graters, Cuisinart griddles, and fresh coffee beans. They still handwrite receipts here, and the friendly salespeople know everything about the kitchen. The prices may be a tad higher than at Target, but Target doesn’t stock Teflon-safe firm-grip spatulas or specialty pastry tips for making macaroons. 1365 E 53rd St. (773)643-8080. (John Thompson)

Best Four-Sided Public Space
Harper Court
It’s not so much the court as what’s in it. Founded in 1963, the not-for-profit Harper Court Foundation leases retail space to businesses at reduced rates in order to promote and maintain the economic development of Hyde Park. Today, it houses some of the most vital neighborhood resources in Hyde Park, as well as some of the coolest stores in the city. There’s the island treats from Calypso Café (the seafood cakes, fried plantains, and ropa vieja all deserve special mention), the soul food from the Dixie Kitchen, the French bistro fare from C’est Si Bon, and burritos as big as your head in Maravillas. Anyone can get essential services at Wheels and Things bike shop—where the sole proprietor is gruff but knowledgeable—or buy and sell records at the deals-aplenty Dr. Wax Records (sadly moving at the end of October). Finally, the fashionably inclined can buy high-end footwear from Alise’s or custom sneakers from Phli. And if you haven’t heard, Jerry Kleiner, the restaurateur notorious for building successful establishments in suspect markets, will be opening his latest haute cuisine creation in Harper Court near the end of September—right next to the legendary Checkerboard Lounge, the blues club that launched a thousand careers. Ooh la la. Harper Ave., between 53rd St. and 52nd St. Hours vary by store. (773) 363-8282. www.harpercourt.com (John Thompson)

Best Venue to Watch a Thyestean Feast
Court Theatre
During Court Theatre’s upcoming season (the fifty-third) there will be plenty of opportunities to see revenge plays, including “Thyestes” and its Shakespearian progeny “Titus Andronicus.” If past success is any indicator for the future, then we should all be expecting revenge of the finest type (including, in the case of “Thyestes” and “Titus,” parents unsuspectingly forced to eat their own children with an extra dramatic flair). As the theater in residence at the University of Chicago, Court Theatre has been providing modern interpretations of classic plays for years, including last year’s highlight “Arcadia,” the Tom Stoppard masterpiece. Dubbed “the most consistently excellent theater company in America” by the Wall Street Journal, one of Chicago’s finest art institutions is a South Side treasure that never stops thrilling. And this new season, Court Theatre is back with a vengeance. Hide the kids. 5535 S. Ellis Ave. (773)753-4472. www.courttheatre.org (John Thompson)

Best Modern Art Gallery
Renaissance Society
The fourth floor of Cobb Hall at the University of Chicago, among the half-lit seminar rooms and nondescript tile floors, is the last place you’d expect to find one of the pre-eminent art institutions in America. For over ninety years, the Renaissance Society has made sure that the vanguard of the international contemporary art scene makes its way to the Midwest. Though the Society’s history—as the first Midwest venue for artists as groundbreaking as Picasso—is legitimizing enough, consider that this season’s first exhibit comes from British filmmaker Steve McQueen, 1999 winner of the Turner Prize. He’s not showing any shorts near the bigger, fancier venues downtown, only at the Ren. Talk about cred. 5811 S. Ellis Ave. Bergman Gallery, Cobb Hall 418. Tuesday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, 12pm-5pm; closed Monday. (773)702-8670. www.renaissancesociety.org (John Thompson)

Best Bookstore
Seminary Co-op Bookstore
The flagship store for Seminary Co-op Bookstores, Inc. (with Hyde Park’s 57th Street Books and the North Side’s Newberry Library Bookstore rounding out the lineup), the Co-op is a bibliophile’s paradise. No Minotaur lurks in the store’s labyrinthine subterranean vaults in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary, but the infinite shelves of books are an adventure for anyone who wants to find that one obscure tome. Don’t think you won’t find it: the Co-op is the largest carrier of academic titles in the country, serving as the largest single customer for a number of university presses. The Co-op is also consumer-owned. You just need to buy thirty-dollar stock to become a Co-op member and you get ten percent off all subsequent purchases at any of the stores. When you decide you no longer want to be a member, sell your stock back for a full refund. As General Manager Jack Cella once told a curious University of Chicago student, “It’s the closest thing to a free lunch you can get.” 5757 S. University Ave. Monday-Friday, 8:30am-9pm; Saturday, 10am-6pm; Sunday, 12pm-6pm. (773)752-4381. semcoop.booksense.com (John Thompson)