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08 Jun Tina Stormberg

“What I’m probably going to wake up and do tomorrow is work on a muscle girl mural to go on the side of the store,” Tina Stormberg told me as we sat in her LA studio in March, taking turns petting a small dog named Stix she’s puppy-sitting.

“And I’m not quite finished with the Tina sculpture yet. She’s going to have a big ol’ ponytail, and I’m going to make her bikini sparkly. And I bought all of this clear tape because I’m going to make Lucite heels for her out of packing tape.” If that all sounds like beautiful, glittering madness, then you’re just beginning to experience the wonderful and surreal world Tina creates inside the storefront that used to be Dog Show—a mind-blowingly gorgeous shop that Tina and her best friend Anna Dewey Nance created and ran for four years. Today, 1361 Sunset Boulevard now hosts an even wackier enterprise.

26 May Lost Girls Vintage

“It’s our four year friendaversary!” Sarah Azzouzi of Chicago’s Lost Girls Vintage exclaims, looking to her partner in crime, Kyla Embrey. Raising her travel coffee mug in celebration, Kyla declares a toast. “Let’s cheers! And drink our coffee…because that’s what we do,” she says.

We clink our mugs together and Sarah sighs, “We need this. I wish coffee was hydrating.” The three of us are soaking up one of the first nice days in Chicago, and I’m about ready to chuck my recorder off the balcony of The Goddess and Grocer onto Damen Avenue below. Can we just go get margs and hangout? I want to be the third Lost Girl! Friend crushes are very real, and I have a major one on these two. Sarah and Kyla have made their dreams a reality, something very few of us have the guts to do. Their business, Lost Girls Vintage, is essentially a vintage clothing store that operates out of a 1976 Winnebago RV named Winnie. But if you dig a bit deeper, you’ll find out that it's so much more.

11 May Leah Ball

Leah Ball is a Chicago-based jewelry maker, ceramicist, printmaker, feminist and advocate. Leah is many things, but above all, she is an artist dedicated to empowering others, promoting sex positivity, and creating ways and spaces to talk about difficult yet important topics.

“I didn’t necessarily mean to delve so deep into feminism,” Ball says as she sips on a champagne flute. “I mean, I thought I knew what it was, but I had no idea. I knew things were bad, but I had no idea how bad.” We’re at Lula Café, a cozy restaurant in Chicago’s Logan Square. Ball has smiled, waved, or chatted to at least three different people in the five minutes we’ve been there. “Are you still doing yoga?” she asks as she rubs a pregnant friend's belly. People gravitate towards her. Hell, they practically light up when they see her! As we get deeper into our conversation, we laugh a lot. This babe has a contagious smile and an even more contagious laugh. Her hands, clay residue from earlier ceramic work still present on her fingers, wave through the air as she speaks. No matter what topic we discuss, a humbled wisdom shines from behind the lenses of her large-framed glasses.