Larry was a devotee of the old Maxwell Street Market who fought dearly to save it. He helped to found "Friends of the Market" and was its President. After the destruction of the market in September 1994, he had stroke and died a few months later.
by Steve Balkin
I learned a lot from Larry; but I wasn't always sure what it was I learned. Besides his printing work, Larry told me he was a singer; that he studied voice. I'm sorry I never got a chance to hear him sing.
He was earthy, cantankerous, exuberant, and sometimes a pain in the butt. He was a real Chicago character who was up against a system he did not quite understand. The system was slick; Larry was not. He tried to be helpful and organize people -- he cared for the common guy. I remember him testifying at the City Council and he lost his cool -- swearing at the aldermen. He almost was ejected forcefully from the Council Chambers. Many of us wanted to swear too but didn't. In commenting on the failed attempts to save Maxwell Street, David Whiteis (Reader, September 2, 1994) wrote, " In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have mattered if Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, and Moses had returned to organize the masses..." I am glad at least that the aldermen, who railroaded the old market, got cursed out by Larry. Larry cared. He cared about people; he cared about Maxwell Street; and he cared about Chicago.
- Steve Balkin , Roosevelt University <mar@interaccess.com>, is creator and webmaster for OPENAIR-MARKET NET.
by John Miles
Larry was a fellow printer and I've known him off and on for around twenty years. I first ran into him through a mutual friend when he ran a Emergency Instant printshop in the sub-basement of a building on Michigan Ave. It had to be without a doubt the wildest printshop in Chicago, where because of lack of funds or for the Hell of it, Larry would buy odd lots of paper, ink, equipment or whatever he could find, and most of the equipment either didn't work or was in such a state of disrepair. Simply put, Larry was a collector of printing junk. I think he also collected people to that were also pretty much messed up in the head, I was without a doubt one of his collections, because of our mutual love-hate relationship in printing. His customers were a complete trip to, in bringing in copy to be typeset on the back of a matchbook, or badly scrawled in a poorly educated hand. Larry would throw something together, and I do mean throw something together, and bang it off on one of the presses that was working at the time. Using whatever materials that were at hand. He was finally forced to move over to Lake Street by Halsted and the last I heard of him had a shop on Randolph street near Halsted. As far as I know, he was always dodging customers, he owed jobs to, and bill collectors he owed money. His standard operating hours were early evening till the wee hours of the morning, which is when most of his customers would show up anyway. He was without a doubt a truly friendly guy and a hell of a gentleman and I will surely miss him. For without a doubt I have a lot of fond memories of his antics and his modus operendus.
John Miles <jmiles@tezcat.com> operates Big John's Chicago Jazz Happenings web site.
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S. Balkin. November 1995. OPENAIR-MARKET NET