'Like you wouldn't believe': The sociable soup kitchens of Chicago:
Some free dinners for the homeless in Chicago use a number system. A placard at each dinner table has a number on it. When the number is called at random, the folks at that table line up buffet-style for the grub.
Bio: Steven Boone is a freelance film critic and video vandal based in New York. You can find his work at places like Keyframe, Roger Ebert's Far Flung Correspondents, and Big Media Vandalism.
At Fourth Presbyterian Church's Monday Night Supper, they don't go by numbers but by famous authors. I was sitting at the Maya Angelou table. A substitute teacher and I talked politics and education to distract from our rumbling guts while waiting for our author's name to come up. At one point, a tablemate blurted, "Diamondbacks? Did they say 'Diamondbacks'? In fuckin' Chicago?" More
Posted on May 15th, 2012 1:37pm
Most film festivals can be summed up as a party, a marketplace or a platter of cultural fruit and vegetables. Ebertfest, now 14 years old, is a love-in.
Chaz Ebert presides over the film screenings the way my mother used to usher people into her kitchen and fix them a heaping plate. Chaz's famous husband Roger selects the films they show with an emphasis on love and understanding. The characters in Ebertfest films are motivated by love, hobbled by obstacles to understanding. More
Posted on May 2nd, 2012 2:45pm
ATLANTA, Ga.—Outside the Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, I ran into John Carter, "not of Mars," he said with a grin.
This was John Carter of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. His parents brought him from there to Warner Robins, Georgia 30 years ago, when he was three years old. Now the clean-cut case manager said the move had been "a blessing from God." More
Posted on April 12th, 2012 11:19am
MACON, Ga.—At Macon Rescue Mission, they're turning away the locals. It's too nice outside, and the facility space is too limited. But I'm from Warner Robins, the town next door, so I got a bed. More
Posted on April 4th, 2012 4:13pm
One freezing winter night in a Toronto Burger King, I couldn't get on the internet. The restaurant's free wifi simply wasn't working. Another guy a few booths over was having the same trouble on his laptop. We commiserated, but he told me not to worry. More
Posted on March 28th, 2012 10:57am
I remember the first time I saw D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), in a film history class. The film’s climactic sequence, which cuts between a cabin full of white people holding a gang of black thugs at bay and hordes of Klu Klux Klansmen riding to the rescue at full gallop, kicking up dust clouds, is exhilarating. Just as one of the trapped whites makes a move to bludgeon a child to death rather than let her fall into the clutches of the dastardly negroes, the Klan comes tearing through the bush, firing, sending the black militiamen massed outside the cabin on the run. Victory. More
Posted on March 12th, 2012 10:41am
Chitterlings are pig intestines, prepared as a meal. They have been a delicacy all over the world, the precise preparation varying according to culture. But in America they are almost exclusively known as an African-American dish—chitlins, in the vernacular. More
Posted on February 29th, 2012 3:32pm
The Walmart in Warner Robins is a fortress. Inside a complex spacious enough to house a good portion of the local air squadron, there is everything one would require to survive and even flourish in the coming apocalypse. From home furnishings to hunting gear to fresh produce to $8 Blu-rays. More
Posted on February 15th, 2012 11:10am
WARNER ROBINS, Ga.—"This was just before Obama got elected. I was taking my youngest one to daycare one morning. We lived in Cartersville, Barstow County. It's predominantly white. This guy would every day hold the door for me. He was white. We'd have a conversation: 'How you doing,' 'Good morning,' the weather or something. And the day that Obama got elected, that next morning, we ran into each other again. He was coming in as I was coming in. He was in front of me. That man opened the door, made sure his son got in the door, and closed it. Right in my face. More
Posted on February 2nd, 2012 8:12am
I was leaving the Trinity Church soup kitchen last Wednesday afternoon when I heard a guy yelling across its courtyard, “…and they hand out free snacks!”
He was calling out to a woman on the sidewalk near the church gate. She was tapping her head and mouthing his words to herself, trying to fix them in memory as she crossed the street, heading into Tompkins Square Park.
“Tomorrow night!” he said. “And they’re showing Arthur this time!” More
Posted on August 4th, 2011 11:54am
