A crew of dear old friends put together a pilot for Dragons, an original comedy series about two skate buddies transcending their human forms and attaining enlightenment, starring skate legend Mike Vallely. Treat yourself to a half hour of good vibes.

Chicago is a reading town. Reading towns demand good bookstores and it doesn’t get much better than Quimby’s. A landmark in Chicago’s literary scene for almost two decades, Quimby’s is the archetype for what a good bookstore should be: weird, intriguing, fun, surprising and a bit mysterious. Owner Eric Kirsammer answered a few questions about how Quimby’s achieved this level of awesomeness.

What’s the origin story of Quimby’s?

Quimbys was started in 1991 by Steven Svymbersky.  He was doing a zine called Quimbys in Boston then he decided to move to Chicago and open a store by the same name.  Steven sold the store to me in 1997.

What’s the curatorial process when choosing books to stock?

We look for any type of publication that is about things out of the mainstream.  Anything weird and important.  There  are so many things being published that just do not get the exposure they deserve.  For zines we take a very broad range of things on consignment.  This allows us to carry a lot of different zines and allows someone just starting out to get their book on the shelf.

What helps a book sell? What are some of the more successful books at Quimby’s?

Quality writing in an interesting package.  We do well with things that hit it on multiple fronts.  Some of the books that we do well with are anything by Chris Ware, Dan Clowes or Dave Eggers.

Quimby’s has achieved this legendary status among independent bookstores. How did this happen and how do you maintain relevance in the age of Amazon?

We have stuck to our mission of carrying the offbeat and being very open to people just starting to publish.  We also hold a lot of events which has built community support.  We try to stock the books our customer wants.  Quimbys is a niche bookstore are we have never had the desire to become mainstream.

Please describe the cat that lives in your store. If you don’t have a bookstore cat, please explain why.

We do not have a store cat for several reasons,
1.  I would always be worried about the cat running out the door.
2.  I don’t think the cat would get the attention it deserves.
3.  Our store mascot is Chris Ware’s Quimby the mouse and cat and mice just do not mix.

The city of Chicago was up to a whole heap of bullshit, as mentioned a couple weeks ago. Not sure how it happened, but the Chicago Public Library stepped up and got the Gabriel Levinson’s bike full of books out of the garage and back onto the streets where it belongs. Raise a glass once again for Gabe and the CPL for keeping an undeniably good project going.

Read a good interview with Gabe here.

Our intrepid intern has a brother named Andy. He outputs under the name Visual Armory. Out of the kindness of his heart he sent me a little care package.

Why, whatever could it be?

Cards! Beautifully silk-screened inspirational cards!

Andy’s work boasts an attention to detail and a level of heart that shines through and will take him very far as an artist and a person.

I know who I’m sending this one to…

Thanks Andy. Your gifts warm my heart in a season of unending cold. Cyber hi-five.

MAKR and I went up to Chicago. He had to go to Horween, one of the oldest leather tanneries in the country, to pick out some hides to make into bags.

It was like Charlie and the Chocolate factory. But with dead flesh.

This is what it looks like in Jason’s brain.

This is how the hides come in. That’s horse hide imported from France.

I want Horace McCoy to write a book called The French Eat Horses, Don’t They?

The hides are bathed in a sort of bleach wash deal that turns them into pasty white piles of mush.

Leather byproduct splatter strewn across an American flag. There’s a metaphor there but I’m not sure what it is.

Most footballs used for pro games? Yup. They came from Horween.

This place has been around since 1905 and is still family owned and operated. Skip Horween, the gentleman who showed us around, took us to this dark hole where the hides dry.

Horween is the last place in the States to make Cordovan, which is essentially the butt of the horse. I told Skip that it kind of looks like Illinois. He agreed and told us that an uncut hide looks like the United States. I said there was another good metaphor in there somwhwere. Skip quietly tolerated the foppish writer by saying, “Yeah, there’s something in there.”

But it wasn’t all leather for us. Side note: I enjoyed introducing Jason to my Chicago friends by saying, “This is Jason. He’s really into leather.”

We went to the Russian Tea Room, which made people whisper further.

We took the pink line (God, this is getting bad) down to Pilsen.

If you live in the greater Chicago area, care about the most interesting stuff happening in art book publishing and you have not yet been to Golden Age then you, my friend, are robbing yourself of one of the better experiences of your lifetime.

Go see Marco and his amazing store right away!

This was one of the best trips I’ve made back to the city since I moved. Without a doubt.

Thank you Tom, Bill, Ben, Anne, Theresa and Sheba. I miss you all.

And dare I say it? I miss this city.

Old Chicago bud Chris Bower has adapted a story he wrote for our very first (and currently out of print) issue into a short play that will start its run this weekend. Go check it out if you live in the area and enjoy turbulent relationships and mysterious fish!

Dunno if any of the remaining Chicagoans who read this blog (close to 60 of you!) are still interested in buying books, zines and other shit for weirdos. But if you are, I would reccomend heading on down to Golden Age on the lower west side-ish area. I ain’t never been there, looks like they opened right when I left. But the place looks dope. If you go you should take some pictures and talk to the peeps who run the place and maintian an overall interest in the operation of brick-and-motar art/book/art book stores.

While scouring the webs yesterday I came across this video of recent contributor Joe Meno reading from his new book.

Joe has been kicking ass lately. Makes me feel like a proud poppa. Even though he’s seven or eight years my senior. And is my former teacher. And has published a bajillion more things than I ever have or will. And has met Salman Rushdie.

Proud poppa nonetheless.

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