The unmolested carnie paintings behind former Earwax Café
Wicker Park in the 1990s, they had names right in the middle of that place, right? Urbus Orbis, the Quaker Goes Deaf, Bombardier Café, Earwax Café… to half-remember a few. Are fragrant traces left behind the bright store windows of destination brands, with surplus-value products at nosebleed prices to satisfy distant investors? Not much. Take a jackleg off North Avenue directly south of where Urbus Orbis once sat, in the alley just east of the Flatiron building, and you’ll get a teensy glimpse of something you absolutely must gander that’s inexplicably still: in a vest-pocket parking lot behind what had been Earwax Café for the last of its twenty-one years, atop what had been the site of so, so many conspiracies, confusions, connivances and curious eavesdropping, the vegan mainstay’s leafy patio, faux carnival paintings rest, unmolested after eight years, an entire “royal family of strange people” including the mysterious “Tirko” and “Fee Jee” and the Monkey Boy. (Ray Pride) Alley behind 1561 N. Milwaukee
