Little Shop of Shit
He currently runs a resale emporium on Division just west of Damen that he calls the Shit Shop.
He spray painted the words SHI SHOP on the building’s side, so as not to attract the wrath of the city. He wasn’t entirely successful. “A police asked me one time, when I was across the street, what does SHI stand for. I told him, ‘Shit.’ He said, ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said, ‘Shit, you know, crap, like when you go to the toilet?’ He said, ‘You’re gonna go to hell.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll meet you there, man.’”
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“We cooperate over here,” Baghdadi said a few weeks ago. “We have our own world, we protect one another. We send each other customers. Nobody can get hungry here. If you get hungry, you go to Kind Mart. If you get broke, come to anyone who has money. If I have it, sure I’ll give it to you. If not, someone else will. In other words, there are no worries here. Not to me anyway. I don’t have worries. The only worry I have is whether I’m gonna get screwed at night or not. But that’s usually not a problem. Heh-heh.”
Afterward we sat at a table outside the shop, drank peppermint tea, and ate baklava, which Baghdadi had made himself. A guy came out of the Kind Mart and said, “Good falafel.”
“It was the toughest week of my life,” he says. “But everything is all right now. Everything is under control. I want to put the whole thing behind me. I’m gonna run it the way it was before. Everything will be shitty again. And I’m gonna rename the place, too. I’m gonna call it Still the Shit Shop.”
