- Glitter Guts
- Thomas Loconti in 2012
Though Thomas Loconti, the street artist known as Plainwhite Tom, danced or mimed or wrote poetry for thousands of Chicagoans, I never saw him perform. We met only over the phone, when I interviewed him in 2012. Because he didn’t own a cell phone for philosophical reasons, he had to borrow a friend’s phone. He was my favorite kind of interviewee—warm, talkative, and insightful, supplying wonderfully specific details without being prompted. And then we never spoke again.
And for whatever minuscule scrap of comfort they might offer, here are some excerpts from our conversation that didn’t make it into print the first time:
“Chicago, that’s what it is for me. It’s my one and only love. She is my everything. Sometimes I just take sack lunches, and I have special places I don’t tell anybody about where I sit and we just talk. This city has given me sanctuary. I have midwest values through and through. I will always come back to Chicago. I will make my last stand in the Windy City. Plus the Bears, come on. How am I gonna go root for another football team?”
