Woolly Mammoth Chicago Antiques & Oddities

10/22/2026

The Green Mill is the oldest operating jazz club in Chicago. Al Capone owned it, and ran bootlegging and speakeasy operations in subterranean tunnels below the bar, and throughout uptown. I’ve even heard that one of the tunnels was an escape route that led to St. Boniface Cemetery and exited through a crypt.
Thief (1981) is a great Chicago heist movie starring James Cann. Cann takes all his phone calls in The Green Mill….and like I said, it gets blown up in the end.

10/19/2026

We spent the weekend Octobering with VANessa out in the countryside. We noticed Halloween decorations in a random little cemetery we drove by. I turned around and had to go back and take some photos. It’s kind of weird right? What I mean is-historically Jack-o-lanterns were intended to scare away evil spirits. Seems like of all the places, a cemetery would be a pretty good spot to find a spirit. But if you put the jack-o-lanterns there, aren’t you going to scare all the spirits? I’m sure the decorations were put there by family or loved ones….but…I can’t help think that if we are talking brass tacks, the implication might be that the deceased are evil, and need to be scared back into the ground. Right?

The last pic is of place called The Witches Tower in Whitewater, WI. Witches allegedly used to gather at this spot to cast spells, summon evil, and partake in general nefariousness.

10/16/2026

10/13/2026

Congratulations are in order! Our shopcreeper sent me a video of her newborn at the shop the other day! I think she gave birth to the Hull House Devil Baby! Congratulations Taylor Norland! I didn’t even know you were preggers!

10/10/2026

Caught this dude stealing money from Haunted Mary the other day. The part that I found funny was when I was bitching him out, I told him not to apologize to me, but to the ghost. The way he said “sorry ghost” killed me. It’s at about the 35 second mark. Personally, I think how people interact with Haunted Mary is between them and Mary….but I wanted to nip this in the bud so the guy wouldn’t think he can just waltz in and grab a few bucks on the reg.

10/07/2026

This will probably come off as braggadocio, but I’m proud of it dammit!
I have 4 pages of my comic work in the current issue of MAD Magazine!
See, in the early 2000’s I was a regular contributor to MAD, but in ‘08 when we had The Great Recession, my editor got canned, and the publication switched to a quarterly, and they just stopped buying….so I stopped creating- then we opened Woolly Mammoth shortly after in spring 2010, and I got focused on that.
About a week ago I got a message from a stranger who said they had some of my mail. Turns out they live in the same apartment Skye and I lived in when we moved to Andersonville in 2006. I picked up my package, and to my surprise, MAD is still running my stuff from 20 years ago! I couldn’t believe it! I wonder how many other contemporary issues I missed seeing with my work because they still have an old address?…

In case you’re wondering, I would draw and write whatever I wanted, and then send it to my editor, then they would decide if they wanted to buy it. Sometimes they would just buy the idea and I would get a writer credit, sometimes they bought my art as well, so I got both artist and writer credits. I would get paid the most for a whole page, and less for a half or quarter page…
I can’t find any of the old issues I contributed to, so I was thrilled to see this!

10/04/2026

What‘s on your Woolly Mammoth Bingo card?

10/01/2026

Erin Page

09/28/2026

PSA from a squirrel nurse with a busted arm, smoking a blunt, and winking….This outta scare you all straight. Be safe out there!

09/25/2026

I love pumpkin spice witch season!