Leopard Lady: A Tribute to Chicago's Chinatown

The time was two or three years ago and the place was a seedy little shop in the heart of Chicago's Chinatown.  My friend El Lobo and I stood in front of one of the most wonderfully absurd sights I have ever seen in my life: a holographic poster of a scantily clad J-Lo lounging with two feral felines.  The poster was encased in an over sized, elaborate frame.  A handwritten card next to the picture summed up all this weirdness succinctly, "Leopard Lady - $50."  The minute my eyes skimmed over this price tag was the moment I fell in love with Chicago's Chinatown.

When or if you look up info about Chinatown on the Internet, you'll see a ton of reviews and articles praising the authentic Chinese food joints that line the streets.  And honestly the restaurants are pretty awesome.  Heaping plates of rice, shrimp, chicken, and other assorted edibles await your consumption should you choose to step foot into one of Chinatown's many dining establishments.  Also it's a fact that any fruit smoothie you purchase in this town will be killer.  So yeah, by all means you foodies should check out Chinatown.  But with that out of the way I must confess that I don't love Chinatown for its food.  No, I love Chicago's Chinatown because its multitude of small shops provide an audio and visual experience of the highest order.

On Chinatown's main road you'll find dozens of these little shops that sell everything from posters of anonymous babies to pornographic VHS tapes to Hello Kitty memorabilia.  What makes these stores great is the sheer randomness contained within them.  One store contained more anime merchandise than a 14-year old's bedroom, whilst the store's next door neighbor sold antique trinkets and handbags.  In these stores American, Chinese, and Japanese cultures seem to mix and mingle in random and delightfully illogical ways.  One store sold picture frames, but they had inserted pictures of American celebrities into the frames.  Clipped images of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sat inside dusty heart-shaped frames on the shelf.  Next to these frames sat glossy Chinese language magazines.

Perhaps the most delightful culture clash I witnessed in Chinatown came from a bin of $1 "surprise" items.  These items were wrapped in newspaper and the store patrons could pick up an item, take a gamble and buy it, and then unwrap it and see what they had wasted their hard-earned dough on.  In case you can't see where this is going, I was one of the suckers who reached into the dollar bin. Ultimately I don't regret the purchase because while I discarded the contents of the package (a small, stained cloth coin purse) I kept the newspaper it came in.  The newspaper was entirely in Chinese, but contained a large picture of Susan Boyle singing.  The juxtaposition of Chinese characters with a D-list English speaking celebrity cracked me up, and I have kept that newspaper clipping to this day.

With its weird mixing of cultures and illogical store layouts, Chicago's Chinatown is a delight for those who are willing to accept its eccentricities.