Letter From Milo: The Fortunes of War

As I mentioned in a few earlier posts, I am a veteran of the war in Vietnam. It was an ugly meat grinder of a war, fought for the wrong reasons, against the wrong people, and, predictably, it all went terribly wrong. I'm not smart enough to explain the the political, ethical or fiduciary reasons for the war, I'd just like to relate a few odd incidents that you might find interesting.

Incident #1

We had a 2nd Lieutenant, let's call him Lt. Smith, who served as my platoon leader for several months. He seemed to be a nice enough guy, considerate of his men, easy to talk to and not too eager to cover himself in glory. He was an educated man, with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and when we had some downtime he would usually spend it reading paperback books. He seemed like a completely normal guy.

If Lt. Smith had a quirk it was that he was madly in love with his college girlfriend. Whenever I talked to him the discussion would invariably turn to the love of his life. He carried a photo album of her and would whip it out at the slightest sign of interest. The photos depicted an attractive young woman in a variety of settings, on campus, at the beach, on the ski slopes.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Lt. Smith would always ask me, after showing me her latest pictures.

"Yeah, she's a real looker."

"We're going to get married when I get back to the world."

"That's great, sir."

"We were going to get married before I came in-country, but I thought it best we wait, just in case."

"That's real sound thinking, sir."

One day Lt. Smith got a letter from his beloved, which contained a couple of more photos and mentioned that she and a few girlfriends were going to spend the weekend in upstate New York attending an outdoor music festival. As it turned out, the festival was Woodstock.

Just to remind those of you whose memories are shot, whose brain cells are fried, or who are in the early stages of Alzheimer's, Woodstock was the blow-out party of the 20th Century. It was a life-changing event for many people, changing their attitudes, redefining their reasons for existence and altering the trajectory of their lives. Apparently, Lt. Smith's girlfriend was one of the people who went to Woodstock and never looked back. Lt. Smith, who used to get a letter from his girlfriend every other day, never heard from her again, at least while he was in Vietnam. I doubt I've ever seen a sadder or more forlorn man.

Incident #2

Packages from home were always a welcome treat. We called them "Care Packages" and they usually came from parents, grandparents, wives or girlfriends. The packages contained everything from homemade cookies to bottles of whiskey, porn magazines to editions of hometown newspapers. My father once sent me a wicked-looking Buck knife with a fine leather sheath. I lost it a couple of months after it arrived.

There was a guy - let's call him Freaky Joe - who received a package from his girlfriend that contained a DayGlo paint set. Readers of a certain age will remember that DayGlo paints were all the rage for a time, especially with the psychedelic set. The paints glowed in the dark and were used for decorating t-shirts, making posters and face painting. I knew a guy in college who liked to get stoned, use Day-Glo paint to paint all of his teeth different colors and then go out at night and smile at people.

Anyway, Freaky Joe spent one afternoon smoking reefer and painting a Claymore mine with his newly-arrived paint set. A Claymore mine is a plastic shell filled with C-4 explosives and packed with hundreds of BBs or ball bearings. It was attached to a 50-yard-long cord that had a manually activated detonating device at its terminus. When the device was set off, the Claymore exploded with devastating power, shredding everything in its range.

Freaky Joe was sitting with a goofy smile on his face, a Claymore in his lap, painting stars, half moons, polka dots and stick figures all over the mine's outer shell. When asked what he was doing, Freaky Joe replied, "Just fucking around."

That night Freaky Joe's squad went out on night ambush. This was an exercise where a squad of eight men went out in the evening and set up an ambush along a well-traveled trail. Anybody who came walking by was in trouble. To be fair, the other side did the same thing.

Freaky Joe had his own idea of how to run a night ambush. He hung the painted Claymore mine in a tree, about head high. Then he went off about 40 yards, found a good place to hide, and , using his night vision goggles, waited for some poor soul to come by.

A while later, a lone Vietnamese came strolling along. He might have been an NVA regular, a Viet Cong or just a luckless farmer. The man saw something odd hanging in a tree, something unexplainable. It was a group of stars, half moons, stripes and stick figures, all twinkling and glowing in the dark. His curiosity obviously piqued, the man walked up to the glowing vision and pressed his face close to see what it was. At that point Freaky Joe activated the Claymore and blew the man's head off.

"Curiosity killed the gook," Freaky Joe said. The boys got a lot of laughs out of that one.

Incident #3

Every couple of months my company would be taken out of the field and taken back to Division Headquarters in Chu Lai for three days of rest and relaxation that was known as "standdown." There was plenty of relaxation but very little rest. It was basically a three-day beer bust, with lots of reefer and opium to grease the skids.

One of the best things about standdown was that Division HQ provided live entertainment, in the form of rock, country or R&B bands. The bands were generally from Australia, South Korea or the Philippines. I don't remember if they were any good, but they were always fronted by attractive female singers.

One of the rumors going around was that these singers also doubled as whores. We had just finished watching a performance by an Australian group that featured three very good looking singers. They played mostly Motown stuff and did a credible imitation of the Supremes. When the show was over, I huddled with a guy named Duffy and a 2nd Lieutenant, whom I'll call Bruce Diksas to spare him any undue embarrassment. We decided to take a shot at the the Aussie Supremes.

Lt. Diksas, being an officer and a gentleman, was able to commandeer the company jeep. Then he, Duffy and I went in search of the women.

"Oh, man, round-eyed women."

"Yeah, and two of them are blondes."

"Shit, man, I haven't seen a blonde in eight months."

"Did you bring the weed?"

"Brought a bottle, too."

"Oh, man, this is gonna be great."

"Fucking blondes, can you believe it?"

We finally located the entertainers' compound. It was a heavily guarded area of Airstream trailers enclosed by barbed wire. The only reason we were able to get inside was that Lt. Diksas pulled rank, telling the MP at the gate that we in search of an AWOL and had information that he might be in the area.

When we located the Aussie Supremes' manager, a greasy looking guy who resembled a debauched Oliver Reed, we made our offer.

"We'll give you a hundred and fifty dollars each for the three girls for the night."

The manager lit a cigarette - I remember it was a Salem - and considered our offer. He pursed his lips, rocked his head from side to side, squinted his eyes, and then finally broke our hearts.

"I'm sorry, lads. That's a nice offer, but the girls are playing the Field Grade Officers Club this evening and I'm sure we'll get a better deal."

I guess the old adage is true - rank does have its privileges. With apologies to General Sherman, war is, indeed, hell.

Big Mike: The Good, The Bad, And The Repulsive

Ah, back in good old Louisville, where the magnolias are deep green, the grass awns wave blue in the breeze, and my nasal passages are packed with concrete, thanks to all the Ohio Valley allergens fighting to get a crack at me.

My four-day sojourn in Chicago brought about the usual love-hate reaction. The bad: the crush of traffic, the brusque - almost hostile - manner of passersby and check-out clerks, and the phallic prominence of Donald Trump's new monument to himself on the site of the old Sun-Times building. As I understand it, the condominiums of his Trump International Hotel and Tower are largely empty and he's being sued by his creditors. Come to think of it, maybe this isn't such a bad thing - it's always a pleasure to see a confidence man get his comeuppance. Still, that soulless 1300-foot sex toy on the Chicago River has marred a mostly magnificent skyline.

As for the good, well, there are my pals Sophia and Danny and their two kids, Arianna and Matty, with whom The Loved One and I stayed, Benny Jay and Milo, of course, Chinatown and Ricobene's pizza joint on 26th Street, and Wrigley Field - which I always drive circles around when I visit. The ballpark looks gorgeous, even with the commercialization of the bleacher entrance (good god, the Cubs have essentially sold naming rights to a doorway - what's next, the Michelob Pale Ale Urinals? The Vagisil Medicated Anti-Itch Ladies Room?)

I love Chicago and I hate it. I suppose that puts me in the good company of some 2,896,016 people (according to the latest official census.) A dozen or so of those citizens were gathered at the access road away from McCormick Place Monday afternoon as The Loved One and I drove past, giving us a remarkable send-off. I mean, I assume they were Chicagoans but, then again, given the reason for their jarring presence, they might well have been from distant points on the American map (as well as the American psyche.)

The Loved One had just attended a convention of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists at the Lakeside Center. Now that she's drawing pretty pictures for reproductive technology products for her new employer, she has to rub shoulders with medicos who specialize in women's plumbing.

Our plan was to begin the long drive back to Kentucky as soon as her Monday convention session was finished. The Prius was packed with all our luggage, as well as a sizable Ricobene's pizza - much of which we demolished by the time we got to Indianapolis. The sun shone, the temperature hovered around 70, the Cubs were in the midst of a four-game winning streak - what could tarnish the mood?

How about a seemingly endless string of enormous, full-color placards of human fetuses in various states of destruction? There were images of half skulls, bloody limbs, gooey guts, and all the rest of the emotional pornography that anti-abortionists wallow in. The dubiously self-described "right-to-lifers" had chosen this spot to attempt to shock us into agreeing with their selective love-of-humanity philosophy, figuring, I'm sure, that at least some of the conventioneering doctors have performed an abortion or two.

Fair enough. I love being an American and support the right of anyone to carry a placard, even if it compares Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler or posits that George W. Bush and his boys engineered the 9/11 attacks. Lunatics have as much right to shout from the rooftops as I do. Only I don't shout from rooftops nor do I much care to tote a picture of a fetus's severed arm.

So rather than drink in that last glorious glimpse of the Loop, Navy Pier and the Ferris wheel, the blue lake, and the lovably pretentious neo-Grecian architecture of the Field Museum, we were forced to peer at some religious fundamentalists' macabre messaging.

The jerks.

Benny Jay: Talkin' Tony The Teeth Cleaner

It's dentist day. Damn. I hate everything about it. Can't stand sitting in the chair with the teeth cleaner hovering over me. Can't stand the sound of the drill. Can't stand the scratchy sound the scalpel makes when it scrapes across my teeth....

Plus, it's raining. Got wet running from the car. Sitting in the lobby reading an old copy of The New Yorker. Must be from March. I hear a drill in the distance. I feel a headache coming on....

I hear my name. I look up. It's Tony! The world's greatest teeth cleaner. He leads me to the chair and already I'm feeling brighter. Haven't had him in years. Forgot he even worked here.

He's not like most teeth cleaners who don't say anything until your mouth's open wide and then they ask you a question. Like they really care about what you have to say even though they know you can't possibly say anything intelligent with your mouth open wide. Is this passive aggressive or what?

But Tony doesn't ask questions. He talks. He's this gay guy from a small-town in Michigan and he has a sixth sense for the inconsistencies in life -- like how we say one thing and do something else. It's like having a stand-up comic chatting away while he cleans your teeth. Not a Rodney Dangerfield comic, more like a Jerry Seinfeld. You know, situational humor....

"I used to have a dog, but I gave her away...."

"Why?" Only it comes out "ahy" cause my mouth is open.

"She hated me...."

"Ril-ly?"

"I never heard of a dog who hates its owner. Usually, they love whoever feeds them, right? But this dog hated me. She used to leave the room when I came in. She would sit on the other end of the couch when I was watching TV. I could have grown beef jerky for armpit hair and she still would have hated me...."

"Goo' wah....."

"The funny thing is -- she loves the people I gave her to. They call me up, `oh, she's the sweetest little dog. Cuddles with us at night.' She never cuddled with me. She wouldn't even get in bed with me...."

I spit. He starts talking about his family -- not sure how the topic comes up. He has two brothers in the Army. Both overseas -- Iraq, Afghanistan. For awhile one of his brother was stationed in Kuwait: "I sent him a guide book -- things to do in Kuwait. Art museums to go to, restaurants to eat at. He calls me, `Tony, I'm not on vacation -- this is war.' I'm like -- `well, you still have to eat.....'"

He turns on the drill:"I'm the only boy in my family who didn't join the military. My father was a Marine. He used to wake me up early. `Get out of bed, soldier.' I mean -- soldier? Good God, I'm like 12 and he's calling me soldier. If I did something wrong, he'd make me rake the leaves. `You're gonna rake the leaves until I'm tired.' I was so literal minded. I'm thinking -- `how can that be? I'm raking the leaves -- not him.'"

He turns off the drill: "When I was 17, I told my father I wasn't going to the military. It devastated him. But there was no way -- just no way -- I was going to the Army or the Marines. Especially the Marines...."

"Is he still in the Marines?"

"No. He left the Marines and became a computer programmer. He works at a hospital. He's big time in the union...."

"So he's a Democrat?"

"Are you kidding me? He voted for McCain. I'm like -- hello! You're in a union. You work in a hospital. Why are you a Republican? It's all that Marine in him. He's incapable of being a Democrat. He still can't pronounce Obama's name. He calls him Obamba -- like the song. Does this make sense? None of this makes sense. But since when did life make sense...."

Big Mike: The Kidney Stone Kids

I've been chewing my fingernails for the last hour and a half. Jeez, I'd better watch out or I'll draw blood. I'm tense, edgy. The guy driving the black BMW in front of me is going about 12 miles an hour, leaning over and checking addresses. I honk. He turns around and flips me the digit. I pull around him to pass and yell, "Get the hell outta my way!"

As I pass, I see him shouting a response. Most of the words begin with an F.

I'm back in Chicago.

The reason for all my nail-chewing and overall angst is the city's unbearable traffic. I've been in Louisville more than two years now and people down there consider five cars stopped at a red light to be a traffic jam. I don't know how I survived 50 years in Chicago with my sanity intact.

I'm heading over to Benny Jay's estate, hard by Lincoln Square, a hop, skip and a jump from Wrigley Field. How long has it been since I laid eyes on my literary colleague and business partner? It becomes obvious the first time we see each other as Benny answers the door. He shushes the dog and wrestles with the front door lock. My technologically challenged old pal. He's stuck - the lock has baffled him. He literally has to run out the back door, around the house via the gangway, and out to the front to greet me.

We seem to freeze for an almost imperceptible moment, assessing each other after we hug. There's a hell of a lot more gray on both our heads, some three or four more belt notches around my waist, and -believe it or not - a good decade of living separating this moment from the last time we saw each other.

"Honestly," Benny asks, "how long has it been?

I ponder a moment. Then it hits me. I remember that memorable early October evening when we watched the festivities on TV in the Irving Park Road bowling alley after Rod "The Shooter" Beck had snuffed out Dusty Baker's San Francisco Giants, vaulting the Sammy Sosa Cubs into the 1998 playoffs. As Sammy himself body-surfed over thousands of delirious bleacherites, some now-forgotten glamorous TV reporter shoved her microphone into the faces of blotto revelers and asked, "How do you feel?"

Some nameless bowling alley employee turned to Benny and me and shouted, as if it were he she was pumping for a sound bite, "Nice tits, bitch!"

Benny and I doubled over in laughter even though we we're both smart enough to be disgusted by his ridiculous, benighted, antediluvian outlook toward women. Why? Who knows? Maybe we were giddy over the Cubs' rare success. Maybe we felt we were suddenly 12 again, giggling over some classmate's use of dirty words.

Whatever. I'm sure we'd seen each other since then but that episode will do for now.

Benny shows me a recent picture of his daughters, who, if I recall correctly, had spaghetti sauce and jelly stains, respectively, on their T-shirts the last time I saw them. They are now grown women. Ouch! What does that make me? The living dead?

Milo calls. "Glab's here!" Benny shouts into the phone. "He's in town! He just dropped in!" And, like that, Milo hops into his car to join us.

Handshakes and hugs abound. Three old goats stand around staring at the ravages of time on each other in Benny's cramped office garret. Before we know it, we settle down to discuss the things that really matter to such venerable figures.

"My doctor says I'm doing good," Milo says. "Blood pressure's good. My weight's good." (At which point I think, The bastard.) "All in all, not bad for a geezer."

I congratulate him on his good fortune.

"But, he did say my kidneys are a little iffy," Milo adds.

Uh oh.

"Yeah, I had kidney stones and they left some scarring."

At this very moment, Benny lopes up the stairs. He'd been downstairs taking a phone call.

"Whaddya guys talkin' about?" he says with the air of a 12-year-old expecting to jump into a chat about the Cubs or the Bulls or the Monkees.

We ain't 12 anymore. Kidney stones, we inform him.

"Oh yeah, I had 'em," Benny crows, almost like a 12 year-old bragging that he's kissed a girl. "I never felt such pain! I remember, it was 2003. I was coaching my daughter's baseball team. It hurt so bad I was nauseated. After the game, I was walking home through River Park and I had to stop to throw up. One of the kids was passing by as I'm bent over and I'm thinking, 'Oh great! What's this kid gonna tell her parents?'"

Milo and I agree that the kid'll probably grow up to be an eminent blogger. One of her posts will be about the time she saw her drunken old baseball coach puking his guts up in the park after a game.

We laugh. Deep, basso, raspy laughs. Milo coughs a bit. I try to catch my breath. Benny says, smiling sagely, "Ah, these kids!"

It's good to be home.

Benny Jay: Winning The War

After the Bulls ended their season by losing game seven to the Celtics, I took the dog for a walk.

I thought I'd get away from the disappointment, but the details live in my mind. We race to the early lead, but the Celtics go on a run that turns a six-point deficit into a 14-point lead. The Bulls scratch and claw to get back. Cut it to three late in the fourth. Ben Gordon has the ball. Can tie the score and really turn things around. Should take his time, and work it around the perimeter to find a better shot. But, c'mon -- you know Ben. That's not his style. He's been a chucker all this season. He's not about to change now. Especially with the game on the line and no one else ready to step up....

The man throws up a prayer from the other side of Mongolia. It bounces out. Boston gets the rebound. And, well, here I am. Walking the dog....

After the game the TV shows Vinny Del Negro's locker-room talk to the team: I'm proud of you. You never quit. No one expected us to even be here. And so on and so forth....

It sounds like everything I ever told any little league team I ever coached after a disappointing loss. You'd think they'd come up with something more profound to say in the pros. But, really, what else is there to say?

The phone rings. It's my older daughter. She sounds like she's about to cry. Says she feels so bad cause she's really fallen in love with the Bulls in this playoff series.

I think back to a scene in my parent's house over 40 years ago after a playoff series between the Bulls and the Atlanta Hawks. I was crying in front of the TV set. I was in what -- sixth grade? My mother comes in and asks: "Why are you crying?" I tell her, "the Bulls lost." She says: "so, is that a reason to cry?" I tell her: "you wouldn't understand...."

Somehow or other I must have passed this lunacy onto my daughter.

I walk to the corner where months ago I howled at the moon. That was after Miami beat the Bulls on a last second shot by Shawn Marion. Remember? The shot came after Thabo Sefalosha threw the ball away. Thabo Sefalosha! The dude doesn't even play for the Bulls anymore. They traded him to Oklahoma City for a draft choice. Probably figured he'd never come to anything after watching him throw away that pass. Just thinking about that play makes me groan. Freaking Bulls....

I can't believe the season really ended. Feels like it just got started. They say it's too long, but I don't think it's long enough. Now I have to wait `til October -- another five of six months -- for the start of a new one.

This is too damn depressing. I call Johnny, the black Forest Gump, the wisest man I know.

He says he's at work, sitting in his patrol car out by O'Hare Airport. He heard the game on the radio. Tough game to take.

I tell him my daughter was just about crying. He tells me to tell her that "the Bulls lost the battle but they won the war."

How's that?

"They're stronger from this -- they'll come back stronger next year. You tell your daughter that what can't kill you only makes you stronger. It ain't even about the basketball game. For me `n you, the greatest thing in the world is to watch the games with our daughters. I watched game six with Taaj. She was telling me -- `Bulls gotta switch up their defense.' `The Bulls ain't blockin' out.' Tellin' me all kinds of stuff. The girl really knows her stuff. You `n me, Benny, we got to be the luckiest guys alive. Get to watch the games with our daughters.

"Make sure you tell your daughter that we lost the battle but won the war. And tell her that if this is the worst thing that ever happened to her, she's doin' all right...."

Letter From Milo: The Bum Gene

Some people inherit great wealth. A select group of inbred Europeans inherit noble titles and vast estates. Some people inherit beauty, brains or great physical skills. Hair color, eye color, freckles, height, weight, even some diseases are embedded in the DNA. Every generation inherits something from the previous generation.

In my case, I inherited the Bum Gene.

The Bum Gene, as my similarly afflicted friend, Bruce Diksas, explains it, is the component in the DNA that compels a person to make stupid choices, opting for instant gratification over delayed satisfaction. Faced with a choice between a brief moment of pleasure or doing something constructive, a person with the Bum Gene will choose fleeting pleasure, every time. Faced with a choice between being a productive member of society or giving in to your worst instincts, the Bum Gene-afflicted will always opt for the latter, no matter the consequences. In Aesop's fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, the grasshopper was the one with the Bum Gene.

My father used to enjoy the old Rip 'n Roar. He drank, smoked, gambled, ate red meat, cursed freely and, for all I know, had impure thoughts. If the stories I heard are true, so did my grandfather. And I, to borrow a line from Hank Williams, Jr., am carrying on the family tradition.

I started smoking at about the age of 13. I remember my first drag from a cigarette very clearly. It happened in Jefferson Park, in Gary, Indiana. There was an older kid, maybe 15, named Pete, who offered me a puff from his smoke. It was an unfiltered Lucky Strike and he handed it to me with the admonition, "Don't niggerlip it."

I took a drag, held it in my mouth, then quickly blew it out.

"No, man, that's not how you do it," Pete told me. "You gotta suck it into your lungs. Like this."

Pete showed me how to inhale. and in a moment I was hacking, couching and gagging, while Pete was laughing his ass off. It tasted terrible, burned my throat and made my eyes water. Within a week I was a confirmed smoker.

I started drinking a couple of years later, along with a few of my buddies who had also inherited the Bum Gene. It's funny how people with that particular gene seem to find each other. Anyway, since the drinking age in my town was 21, we had to find older people to buy our booze for us. Then we heard about Mr. Lucky's.

Mr. Lucky's was a bar and liquor store in Midtown, which was the black section of Gary. It was rumored that Mr. Lucky's would sell booze to anyone of any age. Since we were paying a premium to obtain alcohol from older folks, who sometimes marked up our purchases 100 percent, we made the fiduciary decision to try Mr. Lucky's. Since I looked the oldest, easily passing for 17 or 18, I was chosen to make the buy.

There was a large black man behind the counter when I walked in. He smiled when he saw me and asked, "What can I do for you, boy?"

"I'd like two sixpacks of Blatz and a pint of cherry vodka, please."

"You 21?"

"Yes sir."

"Any ID?"

"Darn, I left my wallet in my work clothes, in my locker, at work."

"You a workin' man, are you?"

"Uh huh."

The man regarded me suspiciously for a moment, then said, "Next time bring your ID. We can't be breaking no laws here."

"Sure, no problem. Oh, and can I get a pack of Lucky Strikes, too?"

When I started college, what do you think was the first thing on my agenda? Did I spend my time productively, buying books, sharpening pencils, scoping out my professors, figuring out where the library was? No! My first day at college was spent cruising the local liquor stores, trying to find one that would sell booze to my thirsty, underage ass.

As the years went by I went along my merry way. I was a child of my times, subject to the illicit enthusiasms of my age. I smoked, drank, toked and joked my way through life. The Bum Gene would not be denied.

If there was a party, I was in the middle of it. If there was a card game I had a seat at the table. If there was a joint being passed, it usually passed in my direction. If there was a way to avoid honest work, I found it, most of the time.

Don't get me wrong. A lot of people inherit the Bum Gene and still succeed in life. Ulysses Grant was a drunkard. Bill Clinton was a serial womanizer. Dostoevski was a degenerate gambler. Keith Richards, well, let's just say that he must have inherited Bum Genes from both sides of his family.

In my opinion, the main problem with the Bum Gene is that no matter how much you personally enjoy the condition, the last thing you want to do is pass it down to your children. I've got two lovely daughters and both of them seem to have avoided their father's propensity for the high life, or, more properly, the low life. They are two hard-working, responsible young ladies. I'm very proud of them. But if I ever catch them with a pack of Lucky Strikes...

Editor's Note: Still haven't purchased Milo Samardzija's masterpiece, "Schoolboy"? Whaddya waiting For?

Randolph Street: The Real World of Wicker Park and Bucktown

Photojournalist Jon Randolph travels to the Wicker Park/Bucktown area for this week's installment of Randolph Street. Nelson Algren, the author of "The Man with the Golden Arm," prowled these streets and carried on his torrid affair with Simone de Beauvoir here.

For much of the 2oth Century, Wicker Park/Bucktown was home to newly-arrived Polish immigrants. Puerto Ricans settled here in the 60s and 70s. The artists and hangers-on took over in the 80s and 90s. Now, people who drive Toyota SUVs while sipping five-dollar Starbucks drinks hold sway.

continued below images

The Flatiron Building

at the intersection of North,

Milwaukee and Damen avenues.

Letizia's Natural Bakery, 2144 W. Division St.

The Chicago Moving Company

performing at the Bucktown Arts Fest.

The fountain in Wicker Park.

Psycho Baby, 1630 N. Damen Ave.

Flash Taco, 1570 N. Damen Ave.

A woman crosses the street at

North, Milwaukee and Damen avenues.

The bouncer at Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee Ave.

continued from above images

We'll see Randolph Street here next Friday. Look for a Letter From Milo tomorrow and more from Benny Jay and Big Mike Glab everyday.