Literary Minds on Main Street

This is the year I especially appreciate my own neighborhood and it is always fun to learn more about it. So when the Evanston Literature Festival offered a literary walking tour along the Main-Dempster Mile, I signed up right away.

I am of course familiar with the bookstores on Main, but it is always fun to learn more and share experiences with like-minded people. We started out at Booked, a charming shop with a  child-size fairy door beautifully illustrated by local author Diana Sudyka. 

I only learned recently that it now also carries an adult selection, which co-owner Betsy said was due to caregivers also wanting to talk books while expanding the minds of their young charges. Founded by former elementary school teacher Chelsea Elward in 2018, the store changed ownership after a few years, and Abby Dan and Betsy Haberl celebrated their one-year ownership anniversary this May.

Booked celebrates families and humans of all kinds, with a mission to provide windows and mirrors in their selection-meaning children age zero to eighteen can see themselves represented in pages (mirrors) but also learn about families and lives different from their own (windows). They offer story time twice a week and founded 2 Book(ed) Clubs-the Sunday Smut Club for lovers of romance novels and a group for literary fiction and non-fiction. Booked also supports HIVE Center for the Book Arts’ Eat Their Words book club, a ticketed event that includes chef catered items based on the book’s culinary theme. 

As Independent Booksellers, Betsy implored the group to use bookshop.org and libra.fm as they actively support independent bookstores, whereas “Jeff Bezos doesn’t need any of your money,” she said. She also supports the use of Libby via the library. Booked proudly hosts book signings and book launches by “A treasure trove” of local authors and illustrators, and of course had a pile of local titles on hand, gushing about each one with pride. Lucy Knisley’s feature local children, and she also created the Booked cutout now available as stickers. 

We then wandered to the Toby Jug Museum which houses literary characters, but since it was closed this was the place to shout out to FEW Spirits in the alley, which named its distillery after Frances E. Willard, who dedicated a page of Our Classic town: The Story of Evanston to “our literary people,” counting 30 people as authors in Evanston and offering a list of publications in her 1891 book.

Our tour guide, local author John K. Wilson, highlighted the book drop drawer that was once part of the Mighty Twig, and pointed out the activism of Evanstonians to ensure South Evanston kept a library branch in spite of lack of public library funding. 

The need for a south branch highlights the inequities of Evanston’s history, fraught with racist undertones. While there was a black community in the Main-Dempster area of Evanston, segregation and redlining pushed African American home owners out toward the West into the Fifth Ward and further away from municipal resources. The crowdfunded library opened when Evanston Public Library’s South branch on Lee and Chicago avenue closed. The grass-roots effort was noted by the Library, which then managed the site for a while until the Robert Crown Community Center was built to better service the southern and western parts of Evanston.

The repercussions of segregation continue to pose challenges for reparations and ‘restoration’ efforts. Shorefront Legacy Center actively researches and preserves the vibrant stories of Black history in Evanston. Evanston is home to  one of the first Black publishing houses, Path Press Publishing Inc., founded by Bennett Johnson. This civil rights activist joined the NAACP at age 12 and later became the organizer of the Chicago League of Negro Voters. His activism continues today.  

Another publishing house tried to fly under the radar in Evanston at Dempster and Sherman. Under the umbrella of Blake Pharmaceuticals, William Hamling and his wife Francis had a lucrative business printing Rogue magazine (competing with Playboy) and publishing pornographic paperback books (Nightstand Books, Midnight Reader, and Regency Books). The company faced obscenity violations and thus used the pharmaceuticals alias to conduct business from the 1950s to the late 1960s, said Wilson.

The Chicago-Main Newsstand is also subject of local activism and preservation. The original newsstand operated on the site in the 1930s, with the Sunday New York Times attracting people from Wisconsin and Indiana to pick it up, said current manager Manager Eric Ismond. When the city tried to turn this corner into a park, residents banded together to find a new owner for the abandoned newsstand. 

After rebuilding the stand as a permanent building, the NYT Sunday edition tradition continues, along with offering as many magazines as possible that are hard to find elsewhere. With online media usurping a lot of profits, the newsstand also offers books, souvenirs, and convenience items to serve the Metra and Purple Line riders. The old newsstand continues to pop up as a source of nostalgia on Facebook.  

I personally enjoy the foreign section as well as the crafts and design magazines. This spot is so full of inspiration to me.

Squeezebox Books and Music had its start on Dempster and Chicago Avenue in 2013 (where Nice Lena now thrives), and moved to its current location on Sherman and Main to expand  operations. The store offers records, books, DVDs and CDs. They buy used books and have notable sales throughout the year, especially the much anticipated record-store day. 

Here you can find a local authors section, along with antique books, special interest topics, greeting cards, t-shirts, and fun socks. 

With a limited budget I love poking around the discount carts, and when a library loan turns into a must-have, I often order the title here. 

Owner Tim is known to spin records at the Custer Oasis, which is still open this summer in spite of construction. 

Another free walking tour is slated for August 18, designed to support the Main Street shops as construction has thwarted profits for the third year in a row. 

I love this pocket of Evanston and really want to see it thrive after this final beautification project. 

After all, numerous authors and bloggers (like me) are known to be writing in the local coffee shops like Brothers K, Reprise Coffee Roasters, and Hoosier Mama Pie. 

Also, the Evanston Public Library Main Branch is promoting books by local African American Authors, as showcased by Shorefront Legacy Center on the third floor. I have read a few of these and learned so much.