Broadway Avenue is one of the definitive streets in my life: I gorged myself on sushi—regularly—with my friend Shana, and will do so again, just as soon as she gets back from Germany, or as soon as I get back over there. She’s found an all-you-can-eat sushi place and so I must visit and eat my way through the menu. I purchased a number of books on Broadway Avenue (when I wasn’t eating sushi) and as I think of this street, I think, among other things, of Shana, of sushi, and of books. It remains a vibrant and exciting street, even as the rest of Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood has become a neutered version of itself. There are still great restaurants along the street: places for cheap, endless sushi and comfort foods at places like the Melrose…on—you guessed it—Broadway and Melrose. It’s a slightly dangerous restaurant as it’s a block away from Unabridged Books—one of the few independent book stores in Chicago. It’s a small store, snazzy in its way, and filled with all of the latest stuff, as well as well-loved “classics.” It’s a wonderful store. You can find Borghes and beefcake in close proximity…heck, you can even purchase a book, simply for the chance to get a good look at the tasty check-out guys, or the rockster-hip lit-chicks who know a good book and have probably written a couple themselves. It’s that kind of a store. I’ve wandered the length of Broadway, with friends like Shana and others like Jeremy, and of course the members of The Thursday Club. I’ve wandered it (and still do) with Corey, and as I snapped this capture, I was with Corey, though for once, I wasn’t spinning and stopping traffic. I was hypnotized…entranced…infatuated (as is common for me) with the moon. It was warm on the night that I wandered with Corey, in search of nocturnal photographic subjects. It was warm on the night that I remembered buying books and eating spinach omelets at the Melrose, or inhaling sushi (and sashimi) with Shana and washing it down with nice, perfectly-warmed Sakē in a porcelain bottle. It was good to simply wander, pause, snap a shot here and there, and wander some more: all while talking about whatever it was that Corey and I talked about. Some of everything, I suspect. We have an ongoing conversation regarding books, Battlestar Galactica, literary trends as typified by short story collections in Porguguese, Russian, Czech, or Finnish; I’m quite sure we at least glanced over that particular subject, or maybe just that funny episode of The Rockford Files involving the evolutionary forerunner of identity theft and a computer the size of a U-Haul with twiddly knobs and blinking lights. James Garner, we both agree, is a vastly under-appreciated actor. I took this shot on the corner of Broadway and Belmont partly because it has appeared (twice) in Corey’s gallery. I was surprised that for as much of a history as I have with that intersection, I have precious few photos of it. In all honesty, however, I think I might just have taken this picture, because it has the moon in it, and it was all nice and cool amid so many hotter colors. Well, that’s my story at least, and I’m sticking with it. As always, thank you for viewing and reading and commenting, and I hope you’re all having at least a reasonable amount of fun. It’s sweltering in Chicago as I write this, so I’m going to mimic a cat right now, and go find the darkest, coolest spot in the house and take a nap in it.