Mary Susan Littlepage

It's a little after midnight, and club-goers at Vision are living for the weekend.

Meanwhile Gertrude Lias, 59, of the Pullman neighborhood, is working in the nightclub's biggest ladies' room, where she is part bathroom attendant and part doodads hustler.

"Here you go, ladies," Lias says as she leans forward from a chair and offers paper towels to two girls just done washing their hands. One takes a towel. "Here you go, Miss," Lias says to the other girl. Lias, who is wearing a yellow shirt, black pants and shiny earrings, lets clubbers take and borrow items lined up on a shelf and on the bathroom counter, and she hopes the same folks will drop tips in her jar adorned with a bow.

When a dark-haired, buxom twentysomething hottie asks Lias if she has any menthol cigarettes, Lias says "no" but that Phil, a guy who works in the men's room, may have some. Lias, who doesn't drink or smoke, says that even though she sees girls getting progressively drunker and louder as the nights carry on, most clubbers treat her well, and she says she doesn't see many crazy happenings.

Sometimes girls puke, but she never has to carry any of the rowdies out of the ladies' room (because other employees will), so she doesn't have any complaints.

Even cleanup, which takes her about ten minutes at the end of a night, is no big deal, she says. That's because she tries to keep all thirteen toilets--seven on one side, six on the other side--working and the floors looking clean all night.

When not working at Vision, Lias cleans houses. She grew up in Fayette, Mississippi, and moved to Chicago in 1968, she says, because she wanted to live close to two of her older sisters, and she wanted to leave her husband.

These days she usually works three nights a week at Vision, where she's marking five years on the job, but her arrival time varies, depending on whether the club is hosting a special event, such as a bachelor or bachelorette party, before the regular club-goers arrive after 10 pm. She'll usually stay until 3:30 or 4am.

So what sells best? Blow-pops are the hottest selling item. Other big sellers are Big Red and Doublemint chewing gum. Tampons sell bloody well, too: "First of the month, they go like hotcakes," Lias says.

On this night she is sold out of chocolate candy bars. And no, booming tampon sales and high chocolate sales don't tend to coincide.

(2005-08-02)

Also by Mary Susan Littlepage

Calling Aunt Jemima
Tall stacks of thick, big-ass pancakes--pancakes that take up more plate space than personal-pan pizzas do--sit on a table in front of a stage at the Filter coffee shop in Wicker Park
(2005-07-05)

Taken to the Cleaners
All kinds of items turn up in the pockets of customers' dry-cleaning clothes
(2005-05-17)

The Magic Klute
Although Tom Withers, better known as drum `n' bass DJ/producer Klute, was born in Connecticut and grew up in the UK, he says that his heart--in a musical sense, anyhow--is in Detroit
(2005-03-08)

Tip of the Week
Birmingham, UK DJ Surgeon and New York City DJ/producer Dietrich Schoenemann will take over the Logan Square Auditorium for In Your System!, a humongous, two-room techno party not to be missed this Saturday
(2005-02-15)

Special Requests
(2005-02-15)

Tip of the Week
(2005-01-25)

The Fast Lane
(2005-01-25)

Tip of the Week
(2005-01-04)

Industrial evolution
(2005-01-04)

Tip of the Week
(2004-12-14)

Sweet science
(2004-11-17)

The Dallas-Chicago connection
(2004-11-17)

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