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Thomas owns The Alley, the collection of punk/kitch/whatever stores on the corner of Belmont Ave. and Clark St. in Chicago that have attracted generations of suburban teens on their first pilgrimages to the big city.
After minding hell’s gift shop for three decades, Chicago’s godfather of alternative culture has enough keepsakes to fill four offices and stories to fill each one of his many shops. High above the driving music and scent of leather in the main Alley store, he reminisces about the toys in his attic.
1. ONLY A TEST
“This one here is just an amazing poster. It’s like an acid trip on paper.”
His favorite find among one of his first investments was a stack of black light poster test prints. They’ve fetched him up to $500 a piece today – the price he paid for the entire warehouse of aging psychedelic memorabilia in 1985.
“Every one of them is different than the one before it. And they were mistakes … obviously whoever was printing these in the 70s decided they had some art and beauty on their own.”
2. MY FIRST HEARSE
A small, black and white photo of a hearse (the first in his fleet of four) parked in front of an early Alley billboard sits propped up on the floor with other frames waiting to be hung. An ever-changing version of that ad has watched over the corner of Belmont and Clark since the 80s.
Ever the businessman however, Thomas points out that this picture is now on a t-shirt and available for sale downstairs.
3. “DO OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY”
“Star wars to me is the story of life.” An actual Yoda used in the filming of the saga unassumingly guards Thomas’s office from the corner, sporting an Alley hat of course.
“Yoda is one of my favorite characters just like Darth Vader because there are a lot of people who don’t like me and there are a lot of people who love me. I have my dark side and my other side. Darth Vader is my dark side and Yoda represents my light side where I try to be very caring of my employees and my friends and my neighbors and my neighborhood. But I do have a dark side and I recognize that.”
4. PRESSED PRESS
Much has been written over the years about both Thomas and The Alley, and by the looks of it he’s framed every word. According to Thomas, his self-described outspoken business practices and the misfit image of the store has garnered as much fascination from the press as it has occasional conflict with the neighbors.
5. BOSS’S BOSS
“Al’s a good friend of mine,” he jokes about a small, bronze bust of Al Capone. Capone’s legend has been a guiding force for Thomas since his family purchased the gangster’s former farm when he was a boy.
“We’ve actually dug up places around the farm because there are rumors of vaults full of money. We figure if we ever hit it, we’d stop, call Geraldo and say ‘we’ve got the vault. You’ve got 24 hours or we’re calling someone else to give them a chance.”
Apart from the obvious mob references in his nickname, “Da Boss,” Thomas’s affinity for the Chicago way is apparent in his shrewd opportunism, outlaw attitude and constant emphasis on family. (Just try to get him to stop gushing proudly about his daughter.)
6. MASTER OF PUPPETS
“I love to travel.” Thomas has drawers full of knick knacks from markets in every corner of the world. The Alley manufactures many of its wares from scratch inspired by his souvenirs.
Out of all the international clutter in the room, he singles out a small, grainy photo of a South East Asian master puppet maker. “Because of my travels that was given to me and it’s special because in that culture they believe that to photograph someone is to steal their soul.”
Leave it to the owner of The Alley to have the soul of someone he’s never met tucked away on a bookshelf.
7. THE DEVIANT’S ADVANTAGE
“I didn’t go to college and I found out through reading over the years that a lot of lessons I learned the hard way were actually in books all along.”
Thomas loves this book because to him, it validates what he’s been trying to do for years via his shops and the way he runs them.
“All culture comes from the left; everyone else is trying to keep up. People always ask, ‘is it punk, or rock, or what are you trying to do here?’ All I know is if it scares someone’s parents, I’ve got it.”
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Notes:
This was a story for Magazine Writing at Medill. We needed to design a department story based on something from a magazine we read, so I took the story from every edition of Spin profiling a subject based on objects in their personal space. I figured, who probably has the most cool stuff in one space in Chicago but the owner of The Alley.
