Jessica Herman

One dinosaur-sized yellow claw flops its pointy toes beside the moat of cement powder and gravel surrounding Akira's storefront, a clothing boutique on North Avenue in Wicker Park. Two girls peer into the ditch, wondering how they'll reach the tube dresses and halter tops in the window. "See. These girls, they don't want to cross the construction," Akira's owner John Cotay complains to the construction worker handling the bulldozer.

Moving to the center of North Avenue is like approaching the earthquake's epicenter: the road is ransacked with cement barricades and orange-and-white striped construction signage, and the shop owners have become increasingly shaken up by the disturbance. Once the bulldozer scurries off, Cotay crosses a wooden plank to visit his neighbor, the Mexican restaurant Las Palmas. On the way, he presses his body stiff against the wall, demonstrating how customers were forced to walk when the pile of rubble was even bulkier. Pushing up his purple sleeves, Cotay introduces himself to Las Palmas executive chef Brant Coulter outside his kitchen. He launches into complaints while pointing to a printout of the email his co-owner recently sent to the alderman.

"It's a serious situation because we're on the upswing and just when we're about to break even, bam! They've crushed it," Coulter agrees. "You want to have me go talk to them?" "I already did. I basically bitched them out," says Cotay.

They go outside to survey the situation and stomp in the dirt together, sharing a moment of silence for the guy who owns the liquor store down the street, where delivery trucks now refuse to deliver.

(2004-04-27)

Also by Jessica Herman

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