The long-running blog of American poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg: poetry, horror and cult movies, Rockford history, cryptids, art, humor, gaming, and cultural commentary.
Showing posts with label Rockford history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rockford history. Show all posts
In a Midwestern city not too far away in a future far, far from now, Zombie Logic Press became part of Rockford History. The only issue I have is the story is dated 2907, and while I might not mind living a 1000 year life, I'm not sure I want to do it in Rockford, or after a trump administration. One of my conciliations is that I never believed I would live until fifty, and I as I approach fifty it's certainly no certainty I'll get there. This latest book is meaning more and more to me the more I think of it. Before my heart surgery I really didn't make a lot of preparations for my death. A few. I signed a power of attorney form and destroyed some old journals I didn't think anyone would want to or need to read, but I just couldn't do it. Almost four years later I still haven't prepared for my death, even though the realistic odds of it happening at any time are 1,000 times greater than yours. When Jasper was younger I'd be with him and I'd think "If I died now I wonder if he'd remember me." It was always a constant reminder to be who and what I'd want him to remember me as if I didn't have all the time I wanted to create those memories with him. Now he makes books more complex than the one I'm about to release. And the twelve year old has written two novels.
He made a functioning pop up book all by himself. Finishing off Atrocious Poems A To Z was difficult for me. I didn't really have the energy or vigor I needed to drive it home, but I did my best. And maybe I'll still get a couple more cracks at it. Buy your copy of Atrocious Poems A To Z
With the grim news earlier in the week that police had discovered a body decomposing in a garbage can on Market Street, today's scuttlebutt that the remains had possibly been there for years gives new meaning to garbage night tonight. Jenny and I started dragging the cans to the curb last night then realized it was a garbage holiday because of the Fourth of July. Zombie Logic Press headquarters is a block away from the scene of the grisly discovery. Makes me feel glad I never won any of my races for Winnebago County Coroner.
Grateful that I never beat Sue Fiduccia in any of those times I ran for Winnebago County Coroner. I think I first ran for Winnebago County Coroner in 2004, but I can't remember. I decided not to run anymore now that Sue Fiduccia has retired. I have had two people contact me about poetry projects this week. But this week is about Jack's sixth birthday. I bought him a Super Nintendo with Super Mario Kart and the Five Nights at Freddys plushy dolls. Pin It
There's this very small building tucked in between two larger buildings on 7th Street here in Rockford, Illinois. For decades now 7th Street has been the street in our city known for prostitution and drug dealing. If you wanted to misbehave, you went to 7th Street. It is also remembered by older Rockfordians as a grand corridor of factories and furniture makers emblematic of their Swedish heritage and Rockford's glory days. The sound you hear me making is simulated masturbation, because those days are forty years behind us. Those grand building have been sitting and decaying for twenty-five years. A few developers own most of them, and allow them to sit and rot until they can find a way to get the public to pay them to create condos or a retail space that will soon become irrelevant because no one wants to go to Midtown because even if things are changing for the better all they remember is what they've seen on the police blotter all their lives. All of that back history related so I can say this...
This is the Untied Artists Building at 205 7th Street in Rockford, Illinois, America's 3rd most miserable, uneducated, fattest, and dangerous city. For about a decade I have been walking
by it and dreaming I'd buy it and have a creative bureau where all my
favorite creators just punched in whenever they damn well felt like
it and worked on whatever they wanted. Obviously that will never
happen, but I can say in that past decade all of those people have
done amazing work and I think they are all awesome. Oh, J painted
this. I now own the Untied Artists Building, sort of.
I normally dislike small spaces and buildings, but for some reason this tiny place just captures my imagination. Last night J and I peaked in as we were on our way to Phoenix Traders to deliver copies of the latest Zombie Logic Press book The Blood Dark Sea by Dennis Gulling for his shelves. There wasn't much to see. I don't ever remember anyone being in there, or it having been open for any purpose, but of course one of the local vulture slum lords owns it and has no intention of keeping it up like a decent human being or offering it for sale so someone else can. To let the once majestic structures of a city like Rockford sit and crumble must be some sort of cosmic crime. Of course it's not the type of crime we prosecute in America. In fact, we celebrate vultures who prosper this way, because they succeed, if you call allowing neighborhoods to crumble for years, even decades so you can profiteer from them later being a successful human being.
I don't. But then again, I make things, and tend to evaluate people by what they create, teach others, and contribute to the general pool of ideas and objects that move us ever forward instead of backwards. Rockford is just one of those places that loves the past. And longs to return to a past that will never, ever exist again. The way forward is creativity, ingenuity, and accepting the fact that the world has moved on ,and as a city we need to move on with it.
What I'm pining for here was never more than a small pipe dream of mine. The adult in me knew I was never going to own a building where all my friends showed up and made whatever they wanted and people were going to give us money and everything would be a happy ending. But in that past decade those friends have been incredibly productive here in Rockford. Painters, photographers, musicians, poets, videographers, web developers, dancers, spoken word artists... so it turns out The Untied Artists Bureau is just a metaphor for the life I live already, and am so proud of and grateful for. And neighborhoods like Midtown and Downtown are now coming back. Soon we won't even be able to afford to live in the places we helped survive the darkest days of decay and paying for the sins of the past.
But that's ok, because we'll be somewhere else creating and dreaming and breathing life into places others left for dead.
This is the logo for Castaways On the Rock, the bar my brother opened in 2005. Maybe it was 2004. It's right on the Rock River in Rockford, Illinois. I think this logo was done by either Andrew or Ryan Davis, and we just used it like dicks because I honestly didn't even know how things like that worked back then. I, Thomas L. Vaultonburg, have about a billion stories from this bar, but I'm not going to tell them. I was the General Manager there for three years. The Rockford Rage Roller Derby league was formed there in the ladies restroom. The Downtown bars sure did steal a lot of my ideas back then, and it was amazing that we were able to get a crowd of the young, hip, and culturally aware to cross the river and walk into a dive bar under a bridge. I'm proud of the work I did there, creating events like Zombie Night, and attracting creative and bright people. Getting 250 people on a Tuesday night to go to a bar they never heard of to watch a movie like The Stuff, Hard Rock Zombies, or The Story of Ricky O is no easy task. But we did it. And others imitated.
Poster for Zombie Night, created by Andrew Davis. Those days were sort of my Camelot. Brief, but powerful, and filled with moment.
For all actions there is an equal and opposite reaction. One of the laws of physics. Maybe. I'm not a physicist, but I'm certain I've heard that somewhere before. The poet John Keats had a similar concept for dealing with the negative. He called it negative capability, and the general gist of that is creation involves what you do with the empty, negative spaces the Universe offers you. You can see them as empty, dark places, or as opportunities to create something where nothing existed before. To do this one needs to ignore the boundaries and boxes we too often feel we're confined by. Blow up the paradigm. It's almost never in this life you're given a perfectly operating widget factory with no defects and all you're asked to do is sit in your office and press a button when you want coffee. No. No one ever hands you the keys to the New York Yankees and a blank check and says "just win." If you want to succeed at anything more than likely you'll do it from humble beginnings, without much help from anyone else, and often you'll encounter criticism and challenges from those who say either it can't be done, or it shouldn't be done. That said, this blog is about Rockford, Illinois, and the Misery Loves Company of The Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. No, actually this blog is about me. Someone I knew once gave me a St. Jude medallion because with the amount of hopeless and forsaken causes I champion they thought I needed all the help I could get. One time at Castaways, the bar my brother and I owned, we were literally working under three inches of water because of flooding, and I lost that medallion. A few weeks later it flooded again, and St. Jude popped up from the abyss I thought it had disappeared into.
What's the point? None, really, I just detect an resemblance between the advertising campaign I designed for Castaways, a bar that had been largely forsaken and left for dead under a bridge, and the RACVB's campaign Misery Loves Company. Here's one of the radio spots I wrote. When I wrote that spot I had been given what seemed like an impossible task. To get people to come to a dive bar under a bridge with a tradition of being seedy, unpleasant, and crowded with unfriendly drunks. Did my campaign work? Well, no, because it was impossible, but I can say 7 years later that location has been revitalized and made relevant again. I was charged with reversing a negative image and making it into a positive. It's not easy to change public perception. Especially a deeply ingrained, negative public perception. I can understand what the RACVB was thinking when they devised the Misery Loves Company Campaign, but I don't think it works. Because words have meanings. And your audience tends to tune you out these days before you get to your punchline. If I say "Bill Clinton is a terrible womanizer and the best President we've had in recent history," what most people will remember is that I just admitted, or asserted, that Bill Clinton is a womanizer. Everyone who already believes that is going to use that to re-affirm what they already believed, and almost everyone else is going to be checking their Twitter before you finish with your message. Another reason I find the campaign to be a mistake is that the RACVB is trying to assume the role of the underdog, or the put upon little guy fighting the big machine, but these are the people who comprise the machine. At least the local machine. They don't understand the true struggle of people who are oppressed, forsaken, or marginalized by the prevailing system. they ARE the ones who messed it up in the first place, now they want to make a joke as if they're clever. And it rings as dull as a bell of lead. A better tack, in my opinion, would be to accept their large role in creating the very conditions they now want to lampoon, apologize, then promise to do better. Sure, humor can be part of that, but if my surgeon cuts off the wrong leg the last thing I want to hear from him/her is a joke. If you want to do comedy, hit one of the open mic comedy nights here in Rockford. It's an added insult to an injury for which you were largely responsible. This community needs Sully Sullenberger, not the Italian Cruise ship captain who needed to be ordered back on the boat by authorities. I understand the idea behind this campaign. Hell, it's almost identical to the one I tried to use to turn around a business with a long history of mismanagement, but in my campaign I wasn't saying my business sucked, I was saying it didn't suck. I didn't allow the listeners first contact with my product to be an admission of failure. After an admission like that your punchline is irrelevant. You already told us what you thought about your own city. Words have meanings. Here's another example from Rockford, Illinois.
Now this is just an unfortunate and careless thing to let people you're trying to convert see. True, I'm hypersensitive to the juxtaposition of language and images, being a poet, and I did see this banner about a million more times than your average Rockford citizen, but until you stop doing things like this you're going to be mocked.
An old cliche says that all publicity is good publicity, even when it's bad, but mockery is never good. be defiant, yes, and people might take up for you because you're fighting back in the face of hopeless odds, but be a smartass when you're trying to evade responsibility and people will skewer you. And that's how this campaign feels to me and a lot of the creative types I know who actually work in this city trying to create and just doing our best to get by.
Maybe your campaign will be successful. I'd have preferred to see something like what the American auto industry had to do when they fessed up to making crappy cars and getting outworked and outdesigned by the Japanese for a long time, but the difference makers in this town don't seem interested in shouldering the blame for anything. The ship went down. You were at the helm. Apologize and start looking outside the myopic cadre of cohorts who seem to be exercising too much influence and using too little judgement to be trusted in the future.
Scrap this ill-conceived campaign, apologize, accept responsibility, then have a real meeting with the creative types of Rockford. The types of people out there populating the art scene, the music scene, opening stores and restaurants, small businesses of every type. You've ignored them for too long, and your tone deafness has led to this heaping on of criticism from the national media. The national media has no bone to pick with Rockford. They couldn't care any less. They're just reporting facts. And John Keats would advise you to use that assessment as a motivation to change the paradigm, flip the script, and make Shinola out of this mountain of shit.
2026 Update: what I could never say about this blog is my friend Andrew made a website shortly after this documenting all the real misery going on in Rockford, from the homelessness to the urban blight, and the weasel cocksucker who designed this moronic campaign came to his job at a news station and leaned on his bosses to either make him take the website down or fire him. He took the website down. But it was a weasel cocksucker move and par for the course for the corrupt Chamber of Commerce types we have here who still ignore all forms of real misery but their own while stuffing their pockets from the public coffer.
Greetings from Rockford, Illinois. I found these postcards of the Faust Hotel on Ebay today while I was looking for some neat historical memorabilia. I can see this hotel from my North window. From the same window I can also see The Midway Theater.
Presidents and the rich and famous stayed here at the Faust. Kennedy was in there. Sinatra. I've never been in there but in the uppermost room a few nights ago I saw a light I hadn't seen turned on in four years and I imagined a super-secret meeting of some ancient society sworn to protect the city had been convened. I just couldn't think of anyone in this city who would be summoned to such a meeting.
This is the lobby of the Faust. It looks pretty much this way when I walk by it almost every day. Knowing Rockford that's probably the same carpet. I'll look hard next time and report back on that.
And this is one of the lounges. I hear there's also a bowling alley in there. I wonder if JFK bowled when he was there. It seems unlikely given the many quality entertainment options open to him, but it could have happened. Right here in...
You know you're in some deep shit when the people of the Quad Cities start making fun of you. I've been to the Quad Cities. It's sort of like being made fun of by the chess team in high school. Only a few months after Forbes Magazine named my hometown, Rockford, Illinois, one of America's most dangerous cities in America, a Gallup poll named the city America's fourth fattest, which brought to mind Dean Wormer's infamous words to the members of the Animal House fraternity: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son," but fat, drunk, stupid AND violent does seem to be the Rockford way. In 1996 Money Magazine rated Rockford the 300th and worst city in America, an honor which elicited exactly the response you'd expect from people who are fat, stupid, and violent... they started a big fire and burned Money Magazine. Which is, I suppose as good a show of civic pride as one's likely to see around here, but what might be a better response to being called out for being woefully inadequate is to try and get better. But that shit ain't going to fly around these parts. The outrage over Money Magazine's appraisal of our worth soon dissipated, but what didn't go away was the blight, ignorance, and resignation to failure that caused the ranking in the first place. I was born in Swedish American hospital 43 years ago. I currently live two blocks from Swedish American Hospital, where I was born 43 years ago. Is there something wrong with me? Maybe. But maybe I just like an underdog. Maybe I like a lost cause. Call me nuts, but maybe I like Rockford. I live on a block with five restaurants, any one of which you could go in and get a really good meal any day of the week. I create poetry and art in a community with other artists I have great respect for. Every day I walk amongst great architecture and pass by shops where people with a deep commitment to this community are trying their best to bring the Downtown area back from the dead. What's more, you get a mile outside of Rockford and you're in the place that feeds the world. It's beautiful. So, what's the problem? Well, last week I heard sirens and I look out my window, not because there are sirens because that happens hourly, but because we'd been having an unheard of streak of beautiful weather, and I saw the emergency vehicles had coalesced on the next block, also not unusual, because there is a huge, historical hotel there that is now used to house the elderly and if a crane isn't tipping over while workers are repairing the building someone is calling for an ambulance every thirty minutes. But this time it wasn't the Faust, it was the equally historic theater across the street, The Midway. The roof had fallen in. Problem is no one will admit to owning the building. No one knows who owns the Midway. Over the past decade several groups have tried to raise public awareness about restoring the Midway, but no owner could be contacted to even talk about selling. So, it sat. And it rotted. And it sat. And it rotted. And eventually the roof fell in.
The roof of the Midway theater collapsed
I contacted the mayor's office that afternoon to inquire why a landowner would be allowed to let a structure on a very busy street sit and rot until it became a public danger, but of course I received no adequate explanation. A week later I have seen no effort to stabilize that building. No one has stepped forward to take responsibility for this symbol of our collective decay and collapse. My guess is whatever powers that be are conspiring to relieve whatever slum lord who allowed this to happen to abrogate his responsibility for fixing it. Hell, that person will now probably make a profit and the city will be left holding the bag for demolishing the building. Rockford. I like it here. But I also like boxing, cheap whiskey, and the poetry of Charles Bukowski. I'm far from being shocked by any act of corruption, ignorance, or hatred I see, so all that's left are the good surprises. The times when the underdog wins. Instances of the forsaken and condemned defying expectations and doing the right thing for the right reasons. It happens. It happens here every day. Sometimes a place can be rotten but the people as decent and honest and willing to change for the better as anywhere else. A good power clean of the filth and sewage that's piled up over generations in this city's places of influence and power might be all that's needed to give Rockford, Illinois a new lease on life. Too many parasites and blood-suckers in this city feeding on the carcass of the past and fending off anyone who wants to make a change with a blind rage to think it will be easy, but it has to be done. Too much federal money simply being poured into a trough for hogs to feed on while no one seems to be offering the oversight to how those funds are allocated to think anyone really cares or wants to make an effort. There's apathy and there's learned helplessness and there's cynicism here. Maybe this city will never get up off its knees. Maybe there are forces that benefit from a city and a workforce and a populace that has been trained to expect less than nothing. Maybe we all just feed off of each other's sense of helplessness like the Ouroboros, but I'll tell you what, and maybe this is just a spurt of three a.m. bitterness: when the roof collapses on a building in the geographic center of your town, get off your ass and either put the fucking roof back on or at least show enough backbone to make someone get their ass down their and show some sense of civic responsibility. Someone wanted to profiteer from holding that building hostage until it became profitable, and now I want to see that person down there taking responsibility for yet another embarrassment to a city that is too often embarrassed by this type of invisible leadership.
The first nice day of every year I like to repost this blog.
Homeless Man Perfects Invisibility
Today was one of the most beautiful days I've ever seen. Sun everywhere, a light breeze cooling off the 75 degree temperature. Magnificent. It's hard to imagine a better day anywhere. I even met a man who invented a cloaking device today. I wanted to call the military because I know this technology is something they've been trying to perfect for a long time. But this man had it. Let me tell you about him. What a great day I must repeat. The Cubs were kicking butt against the Pirates. The game was going so well, in fact, that I decided to make the walk to the Hilander to celebrate this beautiful day by eating. I got out there on my feet and crossed the street and there I saw the invisible man, sitting right there on a bench in Martin Park, just like he had been for most of the winter and into this spring. I know he was there because I have this special radar that detects invisible people. It's called humanity. I'd seen him on some pretty awful days and in some pretty brutal weather toughing it out on that bench while I made the short walk to the Hilander to get milk or soda or whatever luxurious foodstuffs I could afford. He was there. He existed. Ten feet away from one of the busier streets In Rockford and Loves Park this man sat on that bench all winter while traffic passed him by. I know it did because I can see it from my window. I could only think of one reason all these nice people in these nice cars would pass this man by all winter… he was invisible. He had accomplished what great minds like Da Vinci and Copernicus and Einstein and Newton and Tesla couldn't…. he had perfected invisibility. This man was a genius I thought. But late this afternoon his genius ran out. His cloaking device mysteriously ran out of fuel and he materialized right there on that park bench on the most beautiful day I've ever seen. Now magically, nice families with nice little kids and dogs and bikes and grandmas and grandpas could see him. I thought to myself: this is great, now someone will help him. And you know what? I was right. Three Loves Park police cars and an unidentified squad showed up at five p.m. and after a long strategy meeting decided a man so brilliant shouldn't be wasting his life on a park bench. And they took him away. Feeling some sort of bond with this man I called to find out what beautiful place they were taking this genius. And they told me to mind my own business and the Loves Park police don't have jurisdiction in Martin Park and nothing was happening. I said I know this man possesses the ability of invisibility and who knows what else he's invented during all that time no one acknowledged his existence, but I'm as we speak watching three Loves Park police cars and an unidentified squad take this man away. They assured me this hadn't happened. What a relief. I thought I was seeing things. Invisible things. Ok, enough smart alec. Here's what happened. A homeless man spent part of the winter and spring on a bench in Martin Park and as far as I know no one helped him. Then on the first nice day of the year when there was a lot of foot and bike traffic people decided it was inconvenient and uncomfortable to have a homeless man littering their beautiful park and making their fairy tale day somewhat less Disney. So they called the goon squad and hauled him away like a sack of garbage. Now let's get one thing straight: I'm a bad dude and I've done some nasty things and no one is going to give me a humanitarian award any time soon, but I got on my phone and I called both local newspapers and the Loves Park Police and the Park District. And do know what: this isn't a story. Either it didn't happen or it's not a story. That's where you're wrong. This IS a story. That man existed. And you let him freeze and starve his ass off all winter and wouldn't help, then the second it warms up and "real" people see him there(like they couldn't him from their cars) he becomes a nuisance and has to go. Then you tell me it's not a story. What is a story? A reporter standing outside a gas station every day pointing at a sign to tell us gas prices are up? Thanks for the update, Einstein. Were you aware that in the past week there have been food riots worldwide? I bet you aren't. And it's not because you're a bad person it's because if you weren't watching Public TV, listening to NPR or reading an alternative news website they didn't tell you. These weren't small riots and they weren't confined to small, insignificant nations. So, I called. And no one cared. I'm not evaluating the response I got I'm telling you what they said. They didn't care and it's not a story. And I need to re-evaluate my priorities. Well, let me tell you what my priorities are. The truth, mother fucker. You will never, and I repeat, never, no matter what you do, make me say black is white and white is black. We will all be evaluated by the way we treat the weakest among us. I think God said that. I'm pretty sure Allah and Siddhartha and Brahma said it, too. But even if they hadn't said it isn't a certain level of humanity and decency called for? I'm worn out from this place. The corruption and the stagnation and the apathy. Keep good track of this incident, downtown ass-lickers, because if they ever do succeed in transforming downtown from a war-zone into a tourist attraction, you'll be the first to go. Maybe I'll even try to speak up when it happens. Of course maybe I won't. Not that it would make any difference. That's all I have the stomach to say without vomiting. A man spent the winter on a park bench and no one helped then when it was inconvenient for apathetic fuckheads to bear the burden of witnessing another human being suffering he was hauled away. You justify that however you want in your brain but you keep in mind your Gods and your prophets and your philosophers and your poets warned you: whatever happens to the weakest among you will eventually happen to you. I'll try real hard to give a fuck. I'm far from an organizer but I think we should have a homeless Sit-In. Pick out a day or a week or a summer and just sit on that bench with signs letting people know a homeless man spent a winter there and he's not the only homeless person around. Raise some money. Shame the corporations and wealthy developers and vultures of Rockford into donating to the homeless and food pantries. By the way, no one try to fuck with me and say the man wasn't there because I walked by him every day. In winter. Hating myself because I'm too weak and poor to help him. Then he disappeared. And I did nothing. I stood in my window watching. Being the great person I am I even tried to write a poem. But I DID nothing. Maybe they took him to a better place. But what they can't take away is all the nights and hours he spent on that bench. I'm constantly aware of the paradox of my blog. I'm preaching to the converted. The people I know are the good guys. My rants and raves are misplaced. But what else can I do? It seems the burden of humanity is on a few. If you tell me poverty and injustice and human agony aren't a story then I tell you that maybe your inhumanity is the real story. And I'm going to tell that story. And I'm going to call on all of you to tell the story. Being human is great. We can't let them steal that from us.
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