Seattle Press on Line - Maxwell Street

Maxwell Street

By Joe Winston

May 31, 2001 -- Last month, my friend Bob and I bought bicycles. Within a month, both had been stolen. First Bob's, then mine.

Bob has a remedy: we'll go down to the Maxwell Street Flea Market this Sunday and look for the bikes. It's well-known in Chicago that if something gets stolen, the Maxwell Street Sunday Market is as likely a place as any for it to turn up.

We didn't discuss what we'd do if we actually found it.

Now, it's Saturday night I stumble home around 3 a.m., having completely forgotten our plans. Two hours later a horrible noise awakens me: the doorbell. And Bob, fresh from completing his shift--driving for a local escort service.

We jump into his car and drive South, way too fast, past all the new condominium construction, down the Kennedy Expressway, beyond the Loop, toward Roosevelt and Canal. At 5:30, we arrive, just as the vendors unfold their tables and benches and pile them high with second-hand merchandise. After browsing the stalls without success for half an hour, my head throbs, and the bicycle is a fading, distant memory.

Suddenly, a battered, sputtering Dodge van pulls up and three young Mexicans jump out, producing a bunch of really nice bikes. One of which is mine. Three weeks ago it was three hundred dollars. Now, it's only sixty bucks.

I walk towards the vendors but Bob pulls me away, pointing me toward a man with a badge. We start talking. The official nods sympathetically and walks us back to the Mexicans, who are setting up their merchandise and joking with each other in a language I don't understand. But the badge-man does, and he speaks Spanish to one of them, who nods, grins sheepishly, then takes my bicycle out of the line-up and walks it over to me.

I'm all but ready to produce a receipt--which I'd forgotten--to prove my ownership of the bike, or at least to haggle the price down. Instead, I stand there dumbly as the vendor shoves it towards me, handlebars first. The badge-man says to me, "Let's just forget this ever happened."

That's it. I'm free to go. The vendor shook my hand, still grinning, and Bob and I leave. Thanking the badge-man and feeling the freshly familiar grips in my hands, I try hard to find my way to the lesson I'm supposed to learn here. But there's nothing. Just the grainy, sleepless edge of knowing that the street gave me back what it had so randomly taken away.

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!

No comments yet!