It was hot on the day I heard Tricky singing You Promised Me Poems with his usual, gravely trip-hop intensity. I’d spent the weekend with Corey—as is our custom—and with Tricky in the background we decided to check out the nearby Borders Books. We were in the thick of Spring, and already hints and whispers of Summer’s coming heat were upon us, and so—on the day I heard Tricky singing You Promised Me Poems I decided (with Corey) to seek out new books, and photographic opportunities. When I returned to Chicago from two glorious years in the Czech Republic, I found myself shocked by the city’s lack of architectural (and sociological) authenticity. After living in an ancient city with wild and conflicting histories, it felt as if I’d stepped on a plane, crossed the Atlantic, and landed in an immense, Chicago-sized movie set. By European standards, everything here is new…nothing bears the patina of age, and in the eyes of a Chicagoan accustomed to Prague, everything seemed to be little more than an ornate façade propped up by an elaborate network of 2X4 support struts. Chicago, I felt, was a city of faces pretending to be buildings—a Hollywood back-lot awaiting the arrival of actors and cameramen. I mention this because I remembered this building from the lazy day’s I’d spent on the far north reaches of Broadway Avenue; as was my custom in those days, I spent Thursday nights with friends—the Thursday Club, as we’d dubbed ourselves. We were a motley, international bunch of urban adventurers with a taste for milkshakes and rum. We were writers and musicians, would-be animators, and fans of The X-Files back when it was a creepy underground hit that had yet to reach its peak. We were a gaggle of Columbia College artists out to conquer the world, or at least kiss our way around it. In those days, this building (I don’t remember the name of it) stood on a grungy and run-down stretch of Broadway. It was dangerous—to a degree—to stand for too long in front of it. In the days before digital photography, there were no reasons to linger in front of this massive and ornate puzzle of stonework. It was gray and crumbling in spots. Borders Books did not yet stand across the street from it, though Tricky had already recorded You Promised Me Poems…or was about to. The building—like the nearby Uptown Theater—was a part of the common Thursday Club experience, a part of Thursday’s particular emotional geography. Corey and I hadn’t met when I was a member of the Thursday Club. He hadn’t been graced with the gravely, off-key voice of one Cyrille Didierjean, burning its way through some Heavy Metal Head Banger anthem with a noticeable French accent. He hadn’t met LaTonya. He didn’t know Pam or Jeremy, Genni, or Cyril—the other Frenchman. There is a chance he’ll meet LaTonya, however, as she lives in Oregon and it’s so short a distance from Washington and Northern California. He and LaTonya are Facebook Friends…and so, some aspect of the Thursday Club may yet re-emerge, phoenix-like from it’s own quiet slumber. But I digress…. It was a hot and muggy Spring day when Corey and I rediscovered Tricky’s hypnotic You Promised Me Poems, and we’d gone to Borders Books and decided to search for enormous burritos as well. When we left Borders, I saw a familiar and comforting building. It was substantially cleaned up and as solid and imposing as anything I’d seen in Prague. It was a comfort, an echo of friendships now slumbering, and the promise of new Thursday Club connections, here in the USA, and also in Prague and in Moscow, in England, and perhaps even Denmark, Finland, and Macedonia. There will be other buildings, and perhaps I’ll photograph them. In Moscow. In Prague: again. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting…and a particularly warm thank you for everyone who has presented with such a vivid and fantastic array of Birthday Dedications and well wishes.