QOVID Operations

04/02/20

by Liz Mason

It happened. The introverted meek nerds inherited the earth. Chris Ware’s comic Self-Isolating: A Pandemic Special nailed it: “Thirty years of avoiding other human beings…VALIDATED! The cartoonists have won!” He adds, “SPORTS have been cancelled! Like, everywhere! Have I died and gone to heaven?”

Agreed. I have always joked about Quimby’s Bookstore (purveyor of weirdo small press zines, comics and books) that I’ve managed for almost two decades in Chicago: “My job would be better if it was just me.”

Well, be careful what you wish for. Since we are closed to the public during this health crisis, that dreaded monkey’s paw I wished on has now has come to pass: not only do I lack any in-person customers to stand in front of me to purchase things, I also lack any other employees, since we’ve had to lay everybody else off.

I come in to make sure we receive the boxes, post stuff on our website, fill mail orders, and generally try my best to make sure the store is still there when this COVID shit is over.

Quimby’s in Wicker Park, on 1854 W. North Ave.

I’ve been encouraging people to shop through quimbys.com. I’ve also been taking orders via phone (773-342-0910) and even video conferencing with people who want to shop that way, via apps like Zoom (at info@quimbys.com). Sometimes I’ll walk around the store and show them things on my phone. We have been offering curbside pickup but most orders are utilizing the mail, even ones within our Wicker Park zip code.

In theory, this would be a good time to get to all the projects I’ve wanted to get to but never seem to have enough time for (just a few examples: return books that aren’t selling, answer the hoards of e-mails that amass faster than I can get to them, produce more episodes of the Quimby’s podcast of which I did a few episodes before emotionally accepting that there are only so many hours in the day, and so on).

The reality is that I have even less time for these projects than I ever did, because as sole employee, I am now spending a great deal of my time hustling orders, posting items and pimping all that stuff on social media.

I’m also checking in all the new stuff. I have less time to sort bills or think about what to order once (if) things go back to normal, whatever normal means to a small business that is perpetually in a precarious position anyway (as small businesses tend to be), even pre-COVID. I am working long days, just attempting to make sure the store is still there after this crisis is over.

But with all the social media that I feel obligated to do right now too, I feel like I’m atop a digital soapbox in a digital Bughouse Square, competing with everybody else doing the same thing, and everybody’s got megaphones that are too loud.

I will say, though, that the video conferencing I’ve been doing is sort of fun, even if it is time consuming for such small sales. It’s poetically fitting that Zoom is a video platform that puts everybody in boxes on the video monitor while we are boxed in at home. Since people always seemed to comment that they feel like “we’re on the Brady Bunch,” I made a screenshot of the opening theme sequence  from the show and use it as my virtual background. I position it so that when I’m on screen it’s as if I’m the center square. Appropriately, the center square is usually Alice, the housekeeper, and that is exactly what I am right now, a housekeeper. I suppose one could make the argument that if I’m in the center box I would also be Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares, but I’m not as good at one-liners.

If I’m going to be on some sort of screen where people are going to see me, I decide that I should dress like a human going to work instead of showing up in sweatpants. One of my goals during all of this is that I don’t want to progress into a sort of wartime-bunker-solitary-confinement craze that would make me feel shittier than I should. Thus, I dress like I would if I was, well, going to work, which of course, I am going to work. Plus, eye makeup stops me from rubbing my eyes. I do, in fact, own a shirt that says “Introvert,” which I sometimes wear.

By and large, I don’t love social media, but it can be a life saver for small businesses now. I post pictures and info about new stuff that’s come in: the new issue of Love and Rockets! A cool reprint of Weegee’s Naked City! All the stuff we ordered for Free Comic Book Day, which I’m sure will be CANCELLED! The buttons we had made for Independent Bookstore Day, CANCELLED! The books I’d ordered for store events, EVERY FUCKING SINGLE ONE CANCELLED! FOREVER!

At first, people wanted to spend money with mail orders to make sure they’re supporting the store, but as the reality of people’s financial situation becomes clear, they are spending less. I chat with Rachel from Atomic Books in Baltimore, and I agree with her when she says that mail order is twice the amount of work for even less money. Joe from Microcosm Publishing tells me he’s going in early at 5am to pack up mail orders, and that it feels like what it felt like to run a zine distro in the 90s. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it does feel like I’m running a zine distro as opposed to a brick and mortar store. I just have a really big warehouse right now. Sometimes I wonder if this virus is just speeding the inevitable move of brick and mortar to on-line shopping anyway. I live in a print-run world, so I’m always partial to the analog in-person experience. The fight between digital and print seems particularly enhanced in the current situation. It also feels like it’s hastening the move from print to digital in general, a loaded topic perpetually in the forefront of my mind as a print purveyor and zine publisher myself.

When I send the owner of the store the amount we sell each day, I tell him how much of that is postage. Sales get less and less everyday. Then I have an idea.

I start a thing called the Qustimized Quimby’s Quarantine Zine Package. A few people take me up on it, but it is mostly my friends humoring me. The entry I make for it on our website says that that you pay $25 plus postage, there’s a place in the notes of your order where you write what kind of topics you’re into. I tell everyone to let us be their mini-comics and zine sommelier. I make videos for the first few people who place orders, as if I’m doing a zine consultation, and it gives me the illusion of having human contact. When I send them the files, they’re so big I have to send the file via WeTransfer. It takes a good ten minutes for a video to upload, and then I have to wait to hear back from the customer, which is a lot of work for $25. However, it’s still better than us making no money, so I’ll take it.

“Plus,” Anna Jo Beck (Biff Boff Bam Sock zine), my neighbor and friend, says, “You’re community building.”

So I think of it as an experiment and enjoy where it leads me.

I wish I could find the stamp that we used in 2008 during the financial crisis that said “Quimby’s Economic Stimulus Package” because then I could use it again.


When multiple orders come in for the Quarantine Packages, I realize it’s taking too long to do the videos, so I downgrade it a little bit. A number of people write notes to the effect of, “This is what I’m into but honestly, just send me something you like and I’ll probably like it too because I love Quimby’s.” The show of support is so sweet in that life-saving notes section of each order. With each of those notes, mixed with merely the arrival of an order through our site, I am touched by kindness from each individual and thankful for each order. Multiple times a day, when I see these notes and orders, I let out uncontrollable sobs from the back of my throat followed by tears rolling down my cheeks. Thirty seconds later I get back to work. I’ve been calling these moments of gratitude mixed with sadness “Microseconds of Saditude.”

I have moved all the shipping material upstairs so I can just pack everything up there. Also, speaking of letting it all hang out, since I’m by myself 90% of the time I’ve been going to the bathroom with the door open. I guess it’s not all bad.

What strikes me as particularly unsettling is that I haven’t seen our post person very often, though I am not surprised. There’s a lot of pressure on delivery folks right now, and I’m sure they’re having a hard time hitting everything on their routes. Because of this, I’m trying to mail packages in the public mail boxes nearby, but those are full with everybody else’s stuff. Some of the packages I need to mail are too big to fit in those mailboxes. When the owner comes on Wednesdays he takes the bigger boxes to the post office. Interestingly, the mailman gives zero fucks about the 6 feet thing. He’s just trying to get shit done quickly. I step back as he sets the mail down. He snaps at me, “What’s wrong with you?!”

I respond, “Oh. I’m trying to, you know, er, six feet…?”

He rolls his eyes, snorts, and before I can set packages down on a flat service for him to pick up he grabs them out of my hands. Most people are slowing down during this crisis and are being really nice to each other, but civil service workers like him don’t have that luxury, and my heart goes out to him. At the same time, I feel like he’s underplaying the danger and making me feel like I’m a hypochondriac.

Some people who have been buying stuff are artists that sell stuff at Quimby’s. They tell me when they’ll come pick it, curbside-style, and while they’re there they drop off more of their own zines to sell. We do a weird trade at the door. It’s as if we’re pretending to send items through pneumatic tubes. Really we’re just awkwardly handing each other bags in a choreographed selection of moves that involve both of us hiding our faces on opposite sides of the door. We both stick our hands out and we exchange packages, like world’s jankiest illicit drug transaction. 

Folks walking by come to the door and forlornly look in, noticing that we’re closed, though confused because they see me in there. I give them a pouting look through the glass. They shout at me, “Quimby’s, we love you!” Normally, people pulling on the door when I’m there but not open and doing stuff, it grates on my nerves. Now it just feels supportive.

So much of this makes me feel like an emotional pre-teen right now. For one, the sobbing. But also, every situation is so emotionally loaded. Plus, everybody’s all pre-teen Anne Franked locked up in their homes like they’re in an attic having food delivered to them from someone on the outside. And you know what else makes this feel like we’re teenagers? All these video apps — I’m a middle aged woman but I get the feeling that this is what it must be like to be an adolescent who communicates with fucking Snapchat. It doesn’t help that it’s like we all have to be social distance apart, like we’re dancing to a shitty power ballad in Catholic middle school, with a chaperone making sure we’re six feet apart.

I picture OCD hand-washing people shouting, “Do you fucking believe us now?!” And I joke to my dad that Lady Macbeth behavior has now been sanctioned — scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, outing that damn pandemic germy spot, fighting over hand sanitizer and antibacterial soap. A lot of my friends and customers have shared with me how gloriously slovenly they’ve become, bragging to each other in message apps about how late in the day they’re still in their pajamas, how much Bailey’s goes in the coffee every morning, how it takes them “a couple days to work up to taking a shower.” We’ve turned into a nation of slobs during a pandemic about cleanliness. 

That is, everyone except me. I shower everyday, go to work, and I pass nobody on the way there. I see the animals taking over now that the humans have all but disappeared. (I saw a rat in the middle of the six corners last week). I’m busier than ever, at work 10 or 11 hours at a stretch, and then I come home and write. My schedule used to be Tuesdays through Saturdays, but now I’m Monday through Friday so I can be there when the packages show up. I touch base with the owner on Friday. He snarkily texts, “Have fun in your home,” replacing the word “home” with an emoji for house.

“I stay at home all the time anyway,” I text back. “Going out is for extrovert chumps.”

Liz Mason has been self-publishing for over twenty years. Recent published works include Caboose #12 and Awesome Things #3. Her work has also been printed in such publications as The Chicago Tribune, Broken Pencil, Punk Planet, The Zine Yearbook, Third Coast Review and more. Currently, she is the manager of Quimby’s Bookstore, home of wild and weird reading material in Chicago, where she has worked since 2001. She once appeared on the reality show Starting Over to provide instruction on publishing zines, which NBC executives referred to as “pamphlets,” as if they were Marxist propaganda. LizMasonIsAwesome.com