• Helping Urszula and Mitch, the owners of 20th Century TV & Stereo, a frozen-in-time electronics repair shop in Chicago, move equipment to their new storefront. After 50 years at one location, their landlord (and a host of other circumstances) is forcing them out.
    • The empty toilet paper cardboard rolls they use as cable organizers (a tip they picked up from a client).
    • The amazing design of old faceplates, vacuum tube boxes, and fuse tins (see also [1-29-20]).
    • The back work room covered in multicolored shag carpet (floor to ceiling).
    • Transporting a turntable needle sales display that I first saw, and admired, when I came into the store at sixteen to get a reel-to-reel tape machine repaired.
    • Shining a flashlight in the corner of the basement to find a life-size blow mold of Christmas Jesus.
    • The movie-worthy story they told me about a fraudulent check, a violent gangster, a stereo with a bullet graze on it, and a shop dog who saved the day. Prompted by picking up the aforementioned stereo.
    • Being confronted with the classic, much-written-about conflict between two totally different economies: the local, diffuse, mom-and-pop-based one and the global, largely consolidated, corporate-based one. I’m partial to the former but I admit that there are beautiful and ugly parts to each.