About a year after Aaron Lippelt and Mary Gibbons opened Pilsen Community Books on 18th Street, things finally started to fall into place. They had a solid customer base, who were starting to make the store feel homey. They had no plans to open up a second bookstore.
Lippelt and Gibbons took over the four-room space in June and started renovating. The old bookshelves, which Peterson had brought from Selected Works’s previous location in Lakeview, were rickety and had to go. Once the shelves were gone, Lippelt and Gibbons discovered they’d been blocking magnificent views of Congress Plaza. They vowed never to block the windows again, even if it meant sacrificing three walls of display space. Peter Hopkins, a carpenter from Pilsen, built new custom shelves with wood reclaimed from the bleachers at Dixon High School in northwestern Illinois, alma mater of Ronald Reagan. (“Yes, Ronald Reagan’s ass touched that wood,” Lippelt confirms.)
