FREE
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Vol. 34 No. 32
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Businesses struggle with national coin shortage,
August 5, 2020
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austinweeklynews.com
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Also serving Garfield Park
@AustinWeeklyChi
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Meet Jamara Gilmore, PAGE 9
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‘Austin is where we want to be’
Despite pandemic looting, West Side small businesses still loyal to community By IGOR STUDENKOV Contributing Reporter
On June 6, less than a week after the wave of looting swept through West Garfield Park’s Madison Street corridor, Out of the Past Records store, which has been operating at 4407 W. Madison St. since 1986, was open for business. Marie Henderson, who founded the store with her husband, Charlie Henderson, said that the store has been struggling throughout the pandemic. And while it wasn’t looted, in the month after the reopening, the business hasn’t fully rebounded to where it was pre-COVID-19. The Hendersons are among a handful of small business owners on the West Side who were interviewed about how they’ve fared since the pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Some of the entrepreneurs reported an increase in profits while others found their business model completely disrupted. The Hendersons said that at one point they owned 12 record stores throughout Chicago, but as tapes and later CDs became popular, the demand for records plummeted and they wound up consolidating their inventory into their current location. “We never tried to change and we never jumped to conclusions,” Marie said. “My husband said, ‘I ain’t selling my records.’ Because, he said, people be looking for that stuff. And he was right.” When Out of the Past had to close after the looting, customers kept up with their demands for product, so the Hendersons wound up doing curbside pick-up. “It wasn’t that great, because I lost a lot of business,” Marie said. “And the business hasn’t See BUSINESSES on page 6
Provided
TAKE & GIVE: A pop-up food shop called Alt-Market aims to rewrite the narratives of scarcity embedded into Black communities on the South and West Sides.
Free grocery store pops up on West Side Inspired by Little Free Libraries, artists stock vacant building with food donated by neighbors, nonprofits
By PASCAL SABINO Block Club Chicago
An art installation has transformed an abandoned building near the Austin Town Hall into a gathering place where residents can get free food. The pop-up food shop is a project of Alt _, an art nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing the area. The group uses art as a way to rewrite the narratives of scarcity embedded into Black communities on the
South and West sides. People who need food can grab anything they see on the shelves installed on the outside of the shop, while those who are able are encouraged to leave their own excess nonperishable food items on the shelves. The model is inspired by the Little Free Libraries scattered across Chicago neighborhoods, and it follows the same give-and-take principle. “Our communities, we needed help long
before George [Floyd] was murdered. Long before the looting, long before COVID, a lot of Black communities happened to be food deserts,” said Alt_ co-founder Jon Veal. The idea for the free market came after Alt_ gave away hundreds of care packages in June filled with groceries to help communities whose grocery stores and corner markets had shut down due to the See FREE GROCERY STORE on page 2
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