When Mike Bush was 12, all knees and soft eyes, he won a scholarship to attend youth classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was summer 1968, hot and angry and hopeful, and while it would end with young anti-war protesters getting beaten with billy clubs by Chicago police at the Democratic National Convention downtown, it began with Mike, a young Black aspiring artist from the Wild Hundreds by way of Memphis, slinging his bag of paper and pencils over his shoulder and stepping out into the sun.
By day, Louis uses the room as his studio; by night, he blows up an air mattress and sleeps on the floor. Other rooms contain other wonders: pothos vines trailing out of water-filled jam jars; carefully constructed miniature trains lined up on tiny tracks; a family of black and brown belts, still pinned with their security tags, that slink over the back of chairs like snakes. Some of the rooms on this side have windows, some do not. The price ranges from $400 a month to $450, with the higher end providing air conditioners and, perhaps, a sink. It’s quieter in this wing, where only five men live on each floor and where all the rooms have ceilings.
For 22 years, Mike has arbitrated fights, administered Narcan, arranged flu clinics and holiday meals, coaxed residents into taking their meds, connected those looking to outside housing, and, for some, made sure their bodies were properly cared for after being carried out the door. This year, he’s leaving.
In his two decades on the job, the number of elderly, disabled, or ill residents has increased so much that Mike has a collection of abandoned walkers and wheelchairs piled three high in the crawl space above one of the lobby’s vending machines.
Bob has lived at the hotel, on and off, for 20 years. He calls it a flophouse, an “old-fashioned 1960s dive.” “They used to have a lot of them,” he tells me, they meaning the city. “And they’re necessary, they still are. But they shut ’em down.” If the hotel didn’t exist, Bob tells me, he’d be back out on the street, with Jason in his park, building careful shelters on the nights when the falling petals switched to rain or snow. But the park’s been sold by the owners and will be a parking lot soon.
During every hotel check-in, residents-to-be are asked if they take any medication, and if so, what kind. Their answers are carefully recorded on sheets of paper Mike can refer to “in case somethin’ happens” and the paramedics get there. Mike notices when they’re not taking it, too. A few times, he tells me, he’s had to ask people to leave when the time they’ve paid for is up, “because of their behavior, getting aggressive, not taking their meds.” Over the years, Mike’s had men return and promise to stay on their meds. They show him bottles. “‘I’m taking it now, I’m alright.'” In that case, Mike says, “I give ’em a second chance.” This man Mike cuffed to the radiator, though, didn’t come back, he tells me.
