Ron Ellingson, who opened Aspidistra Bookshop on the 2600 block of North Clark 26 years ago, got a rough start. “I had under $1,000–I was broke in two weeks,” he says. After a year, however, he was on his feet, and in 1977 he found a partner, Darrell Simmons. Together they built up the store’s stock. “New arrivals is the name of the game. They sell right away and keep people coming back.”
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By 1988 they were doing so well they opened a second store on Lincoln Avenue, but that shop didn’t attract customers the way the place on Clark did. “That was a big mistake,” Ellingson says. “We lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” They shut down that store several years ago, and now they’ll be closing the shop on Clark as well. Sunday is its last day of operation.
After being discharged, Ellingson went to Southern Illinois University, where he earned a history degree. He started a graduate program in literature, but then moved to Chicago and found work at Texaco’s credit department. Three years later he left that job to open Aspidistra.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Ron Ellingson photo by Jim Alexander Newberry.
