M: I was in Brooklyn since 2000, then New Jersey in 2006. But Chicago is home. We were debating it, we were thinking about Brooklyn or Manhattan or even LA. But it made sense to do it at home.

C: How does Black Market Caviar fit in the Chicago scene, if such a thing exists?

M: I don’t know if it really does fit, that’s the thing, that’s why we wanted to do it.

B: I think we fit into what’s new in Chicago. There’s a new movement, there’s been a sort of a renaissance in arts of all types in Chicago. Graffiti has really reemerged here in the past couple years. Fashion, music. The fashion scene we have now in Chicago was not around even five years ago. And the city’s pushing a little budget for it. They have fashion week now in summer time and the Fashion Incubator.

C: Speaking of budget and money, what about the recession? Did it play into the original business plan?

B: Well that’s what’s so interesting. I think it all ties into it. I feel like people get really creative when times get hard.

M: Designers in this country are a dime a dozen. And it’s the same when any over saturated market sees economic decline, people have to ramp it up, step up, and people get hungrier and more creative.

C: How did you twist it then?

M: We came up with a subversive name. Black Market Caviar denotes an attitude towards the economic trend like, “Eff the economy we’re going to live the way we want to live, design the life we want to live.”

And also, looking around, your things are affordable.

M: Things in here are really affordable so its like we’re pushing an aesthetic but not a crazy price. It’s just clothes, it’s stuff. It’s cool stuff, but there’s no need to empty your pockets.

B: And everything eventually ends up in a thrift store. No matter what label it is. No matter what. It will end up in a thrift store, trust me. I think what’s been sort of difficult for us has been finding a balance, and we’re getting there now. Doing so much, we got silk screen printing, where we work with labels and local artists, then we have the store, then the lifestyle approach.

C: How so?

B: We want Black Market Caviar to be a lifestyle brand.

M: It’s more than clothes. It’s an attitude. It’s, “This is how I wanna be.” It’s a subversive attitude towards trends or whatever’s popular.

C: How much focus have you put into branding that way?

M: We keep our branding low. We took an ad in CS, they’re a great Chicago publication, housing a lot of what’s chic in the city. That might be part of why culture in Chicago is reemerging with its own identity. People have a place to turn to. We have a Twitter and a Facebook, but we don’t do anything crazy.

B: We do no marketing for our printing. But we’ve been busy. Word of mouth has been crazy. That’s how Chicago is. I don’t know too many other cities, but in Chicago word of mouth spreads fast.

M: It’s a small town. I mean it’s a city, it’s got concrete and steel but it’s the Midwest and it’s got a small town mentality and attitude. People know their neighbors and say hi. And the scenes are tight-knit and exclusive. Navigating each little subculture you see how tight everything is. Sometimes it’s a little too insular, but people have been really welcoming.

B: People enjoy our approach. The term we hear from blogs and people is “down to earth” and it’s true. It sounds cliché but it is true. When people come in here we try to be as nice as possible, make them feel welcome, engage the customer. We’re interested in what people do, honestly, as opposed to some boutiques where you walk in and they act like they don’t want you to buy anything. That’s not us.

C: What stores do you look up to in Chicago?

M: One store I look up to, though they don’t do what we’re doing, is the Leaders store. They did a collaboration with Ends/Wealth Corp. that we printed and then we did a collaboration with Ends/Wealth that we produced here. That’s what I mean, it’s a small world. For Leaders we came up with "DLRS." Goes with our approach of making fun of the drug game.

C: Yeah like those shirts, the tilos. Where’d that come from?

M: (Laughing) I didn’t call ‘em that. I don’t know who started calling them that.

C: They were like, what, ten bucks?

M: Yeah I mean they’re just a white shirt. It’s our logo tee and we packaged them to resemble bricks of cocaine. And then we would go to parties with a duffel bag of these things and just hand em out. And people would be like, “What the eff is that?”

B: They didn’t know what it was.

M: When you take something that’s everyday and classic and timeless like a white t-shirt and you just add a little something to it, even something as gimmicky as that, it revitalizes how people interact with that product. You add another dimension to the experience of buying and putting on a t-shirt.

C: What about the brown paper 40 oz. Louie bags?

B: You know how it is, people trying to take themselves so serious. It happens all the time in fashion and in art. It’s our way of making fun of culture and trends.

M: I just think its funny.

B: And people do take themselves really serious so we’re here to lighten things up. Make fun of it. But at the same time we are taking a serious approach too because with the name Black Market, it’s something that’s here but it’s not talked about. You don’t hear about it, you don’t see it, there’s a lot of corrupt things going on, really unspeakable things going on all over the world that are part of that black market that you’ll never see in the news, in print, you just won’t see it. So with developing the tilo product—

M: Even with the bag because it goes back to people buying bootleg bags on Canal St. in New York.

B: We’re maybe shedding light on it in some way but at the same time trying to be funny—I don’t want to make too much light of it because it’s serious but still. I think what we’re trying to create here is more than your regular shopping store experience. People want something fun. Especially with the recession, things get really boring.

C: How much in the store is original and how much is bought and refurbished?

M: Right now it’s 30% bought or on consignment from other designers. A small percentage is refurbished objects. We have vintage leather jackets that people have been responding well too, mostly guys. Our own stuff, we probably produce about 50% of what’s here.

C: Down the road do you want the store to hold 100% your stuff?

B: No the mix has been working well for us. We have nationwide labels like Trash & Luxury, which is a bigger brand name, and then we have our local labels like Plastic Party Clothing.

M: We don’t want to close the door to young designers in Chicago. I want to be working with young designers. So many people have walked through with this design or this idea and there’s a small group of those people who are actually committed to their ideas and can actually see a project though. We have 10 smaller local designers in the shop right now and that’s awesome. Small runs of everything. We don’t want to be grandscale. We can’t. We have barely 800 sq feet. We want to be able to print for everyone. Keep it small. It creates a sense a pride in what you wear.

B: And now we’re working on some things with Chaz Jordan and Anna Hovet. We have a good mix with national and local labels and our vintage stuff.

M: And don’t be surprised if you see us selling goods out of the trunk of a car.

B: That was the original idea. Marco wanted to get a black van.

M: Crazy black market style. Sell from the van or a trunk of an old Caprice Classic.

C: What’s planned for the spring and beyond?

B: We have good things coming. It’s our first spring, lots of pressure.

M: We’re going to introduce a bunch of new designers. That’s what I’m most excited about. Again, it’s part of what’s so cool about having the production so close to home is that we don’t have to buy a season or two in advance. Our trend forecasting is like a two-week outlook. It’s like, “What’s gonna be hot next week? Let’s do that.”

B: Also we’re putting a lookbook together for spring. And we’re launching our online store on our website.

M: And duffel bags for new tilos, going back to the drug related theme. For one price, I don’t know, probably 50 bucks or something, you get a duffel bag with a few of our t-shirts packaged like tilos.

B: Another thing we’re doing is screen printing workshops.

M: Yeah we’ll do it with myself as instructor. Along with learning how to screen print or becoming more familiar with screen printing, when you’re done with the program you have 24 shirts with your design on them that we could carry in the store and help you market in some way. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Terminating employees with some longevity saves the company money not just because it reduces wages, but also because Wal-Mart has found that bringing younger, healthier workers into the company can save money on benefits. In a memo leaked to the press in 2005, a strategy of eliminating veteran employees and bringing in younger, healthier employees that would use less health care was revealed. "It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo reads. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."

A grocery cooler in Wal-Mart, by ratterrell.

But Linda experienced management's alleged fickle nature first-hand at her most recent review; she was told that she wouldn't get the full sixty-cent raise because of tardiness. “He [her manager] told me all my strengths and all my weaknesses, and that I exceeded his every goal, and said that I don’t need to be supervised because I’m a good worker, and he tells me what all my weaknesses are, and he says to me that he was going to give me the full review, but that I don’t know how to do inventory management. I told him ‘But I do know how to do inventory management’. He says, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right!’ He didn’t say anything. But then he says ‘Well, I want to talk to you about your absenteeism.’ I says ‘What are you talking about?’ He says ‘You have three absences and four tardies.’ I says ‘No I don’t, there’s no way I could have.’ He says, ‘Let’s look at the computer.’ And I says ‘Let’s do that.’”

Linda and her manager went to the computer that tracks employee clock punches. She explained to me Wal-Mart’s policy for clocking in: if you punch in within 15 minutes of your scheduled shift, you’re considered on time. Three lates is an absence. In order for the system to work right, however, the manager has to make sure that he codes the clock punches correctly when they’re uploaded into they system. Linda pointed out to the manager that the punches he was referring to as tardies were coded incorrectly. After she pointed that out to him, he told her that she had a no call-no show on September 2nd. “I knew that was a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and I’m always scheduled off on all Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I says ‘how can I have a no call-no show when I’m scheduled off on Tuesdays and Wednesdays?’ He stared at the computer. They were screwing with me.”

A cosmetics aisle in Wal-Mart, by Clean Wal-Mart.

Shoppers that use their Link card at Wal-Mart include many Wal-Mart employees, which isn’t surprising, given that a large number of them are on public aid. The women claim the company purposely cut workers' hours (and therefore their pay) so workers can remain eligible for the Link card, creating a cycle for the store of less pay to employees and more profits thanks to the Link card usage - the logic being that the employees will buy groceries in their own store rather than go to a competing store. Rosetta told me, “There’s a lot of workers on Link. They [the company] cut their [workers'] hours, because they know when they cut their hours their check stubs is lower. And every time you take your check stubs in to the public aid office you get more food stamps if you got less hours. Then they turn around and spend the Link card in Sam’s Club.”

While there's admittedly only anecdotal evidence to support this alleged exploitation of Illinois's Link program and Wal-Mart is one of many large grocery chains that accepts the Link card, reports and research in other states demonstrates that the corporation does have a history of employing more workers dependent on state welfare programs than other chains. Reliable numbers on the company's profitability from it's employees using public assistance programs are hard to come by, but a look at data reports from other states indicates that public assistance to Wal-Mart employees isn't an uncommon phenomena.

A study by the University of California Berkley's Labor Center found that a disproportionate number of the mega-retailer's employees rely on the state's public health programs, compared to other retail workers. The previously mentioned internal company memo, (PDF here) reported by the New York Times, validated UC Berkley's findings (PDF here). More specifically, a recent study conducted by the state of Massachusetts found that Wal-Mart topped their list of companies with 50 or more employees using publicly subsidized care (PDF here) with a total of 40 percent of their employees in the state relying on state aid for health care. And the company topped a similar 2004 study in Washington state which found that nearly 20 percent of Wal-Mart employees received state-subsidized health coverage, either through Medicaid or the state's Basic Health Plan, more than twice that of competitor Safeway, who at the time employed roughly the same number of employees in the state as Wal-Mart.

I asked the women if they knew workers that are on Link. “Yeah!” both Rosetta and Linda replied. “Everybody got Link,” says Rosetta. “They sell it to each other in the store. They sell the Link card to the ones that don’t have it. All the workers got the Link card, mostly."

In part three on Monday, we’ll look at how Wal-Mart keeps their employees from unionizing, and why people stay.

Tommy Batchelor rehearses for Billy Elliot

Tommy Batchelor: I actually didn’t go through as many auditions as most of the boys. I had one audition by myself, and then I had a call-back with six other boys—they told me right after that [that I got the part].

C: Were you a little nervous?

TB: Yeah, I was nervous! I had to pick out songs from the show to sing, and we did lots of improv in the audition, actually. I’d done improv on my own, but never in front of anyone else!

C: Did Elton John, whose music is featured in Billy Elliot give the Broadway Billys any words of advice?

TB: He’s really nice and sweet. He’s awesome! He said ‘don’t worry if you are nervous, it’s good to be nervous, because it adds to your energy level on stage.’

C: The Oriental Theatre is such an amazing facility. Are you excited to be performing here?

TB: I am amazed by it. The theater in New York [City] is so much smaller than this one. The Oriental Theater is a lot bigger, and the backstage is humongous!

C: So much of Billy Elliot is about how dancing makes “Billy” feel. Describe what it feels like when you’re dancing, Tommy.

TB: It’s hard to put into words. I always think of the song “Electricity” from the show, when Billy sings, ‘It’s like when you’ve been crying, and you’re empty and you’re full.’ There are a mix of emotions going through your body all at once.

C: I understand the finale consists of 16 grand pirouettes followed by a series of passé pirouettes—that sounds exhausting just saying that! How do you prepare for it?

TB: Yeah, the dance we do at the end is for “Electricity” and the whole show has built up to this part, this moment. You put all of your energy into it. We rehearse every day, and I always think about the notes and corrections the instructors have given me—and that helps me stay balanced and to stay focused.

C: Have you had a chance to explore the city yet?

TB: I went with a few kids in the show to the Shedd Aquarium, which was really cool, and we’ve been to the Field Museum, and I think we’re going to the Museum of Science and Industry soon—I’m really excited about that. I really liked Millennium Park and that big fountain. What’s it called? Buckingham Fountain? That was really amazing.

C: Do you ever get recognized in public?

TB: In New York, like sometimes after a show we go out to eat, and people will come up to me and say ‘I think I just saw you in Billy Elliot,’ and they’ll ask me to sign something for them or take picture. One time outside the stage door, somebody asked me to sign their shoes, because they didn’t have anything else to sign. That was pretty funny!

Preview performances for Billy Elliot begin March 18th.

Orange Flower Water is staged in the round, with the set (designed by Jessica Kuehnau and Brandon Wardell) consisting only of a bed on a rotating platform. Whenever a cast member is not in a scene, s/he sits in a chair on the periphery, facing the action. This choice both solves and presents some difficult issues: Although staging everything in essentially one place keeps the show from being mired in furniture, thus keeping up a nice pace, it also limits the actors' ability to take advantage of the space. When Beth (Shelley Nixon) and Brad (Tony Bozzuto) have a blow-up fight, she is constantly forced into sitting on the bed in order to speak to him face-to-face. Nixon does an admirable job keeping her energy up, but her power is diminished by her placement. We were ecstatic when Bozzuto, in the throes of a character-appropriate childlike temper tantrum, jumped on the bed in attempts to release his energy.

The other issue we had is an obvious one: In-the-round performances mean part of the audience is always missing something, and we don't think it works for this play. Blocked from some potentially powerful moments because we couldn't see the actors' faces, we often felt disconnected and suddenly aware of our surroundings. There is one particularly intense scene between Cathy (Maggie Kettering) and David (Jason Huysman) that takes place on the bed - and it needs to - but at the scene's heartbreaking apex, we were staring at Kettering's back. Physical action and emotional despair should have collided with reverberating impact. Instead, the moment was quiet and sad. Yes, it worked - but it could've worked so much better.

Despite frustrations with its unfulfilled potential, we enjoyed Orange Flower Water - and at the very least it's deserving of a larger audience than the handful that attended our performance.

Orange Flower Water, through March 27. Tickets $18-$20 (student/group rates available). Backstage Theatre Company at The Chopin Theatre, 1543 W Division.