Chicago Underground Library: Bury your nose in uncommon works August 27th
Librarians and literary types! Cast off those tortoise shell glasses and don a mushroom cloud of hair for STACKS! Soul Librarian Dance Party, a benefit for the Chicago Underground Library.
This debut get-down for the Underground starts Friday evening, August 27th at Chicago's Late Bar located at 3534 W. Belmont Avenue. Some of the city's best soul disc-jockeys will provide endlessly sweaty dance tunes for a mere $7 for tickets in advance or $10 at the door. Proceeds will fund the CUL, as it is locally known. If you're the literary type and seek out new terrain for the written word, check out and support the one-of-a-kind CUL.
With 2,500 works in its collection, this bit of a hidden treasure unearths and preserves for posterity 'zines, chapbooks, poems, comic books, graphic novels or anything else done by the independent press. Generous in definition, the CUL's idea of indie can be anything from a once posted bill to something written on a napkin. That doesn't mean this library is lightweight. Fast gaining a national reputation for its diverse collection and savvy in knowing the worth of these lesser known works, the CUL is setting a model that is catching the interest of other cities.
"We accept everything from the area regardless of perceived quality of importance," Taylor explained.
Once nomadic, the CUL was founded in by Nell Taylor and her boyfriend Emerson Dameron in 2006. Its first home was in a cardboard box stored in the small apartment they shared. Contents grew and the CUL hopscotched into four different locations before reopening in the lobby of Red Tape Theatre located on the second floor of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in the Lakeview neighborhood.
Replete with second-hand couches, ample chairs and large tables, it is not only one of the most welcoming libraries in the city but is also the only repository of its kind in the country. When you're thinking CUL, don't imagine a typical library, think comfortable living room. Every Tuesday evening volunteer librarians meet at the CUL from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. to help catalogue the collection. So casual are they that a recent electrical flaw led the librarians to gleefully catalogue by lamplight.
Taylor also offers a "Pop Up Library" exhibit, bringing works from CUL to schools, street fairs and other events, and a "Chicago Underground Library Roadshow," where a selection of materials is brought to your neighborhood. The popular "Orphan Works" is a night dedicated to the reading of anonymous literary pieces, Taylor's way of bringing them back to life, light and reunion with an audience.
HelloChicago Tip: Who uses the CUL? Everyone from educators, students, writers, the curious, artists and historians. Although there's much whimsy and creativity involved and housed at the CUL, it is indeed a serious endeavor. Soon to file for non-for-profit status, Taylor said proceeds from the fund raiser will be used to buy "the un-sexy operational things" -- like casters for some of the library's shelves.
Posted by Lori Rotenberk
