Once on the brink of closure, GroceryLand is celebrating a comeback this Thursday, reuniting with longtime partner Sidetrack during its 43rd Anniversary Party for a personal care donation drive.
The donation event marks GroceryLand’s first major public event since February, when the long-running HIV/AIDS-focused food pantry nearly shut down after losing institutional support. GroceryLand had operated for years under the umbrella of Heartland Alliance Health, which announced this winter it would be closing its food pantries as part of a broad restructuring and leadership change, according to a Block Club Chicago report.
“I didn’t think, after all these years of nourishing the AIDS community, that it would end like this,” said GroceryLand organizer Lori Cannon.
Founded at the height of the AIDS epidemic, GroceryLand has served low-income Chicagoans living with HIV for nearly 40 years, offering not only food but also dignity and community.
“But on Feb. 22 I was to turn the keys in,” Cannon said. “It was madness—the cruelty of it, the coldness of it, the disgust. But thankfully, a donor stepped up in the last hour before I was to submit my keys, and everything turned around. It was like whiplash.”
Now that the dust is settled and GroceryLand lives on, Cannon and her team of volunteers are preparing to collect personal care items from 6-8 p.m. June 12 outside Sidetrack, 3349 N. Halsted St. Items could include soap, shampoo, toothpaste, dish soap, paper towels, toilet paper and more.
“To me, this represents the resurrection—the official comeback of GroceryLand,” Cannon said. “And who better than the Sidetrack family to partner with on this? They’ve been at the forefront of every major success, movement and opportunity for us—and they’re doing it not just for GroceryLand, but for countless others, too.”
The partnership between Sidetrack and GroceryLand goes back decades, Cannon said.
“The late Chuck Hyde, who was the manager, was our biggest champion. He created the concept of collecting personal care items during Pride and the winter holidays. And [current general manager] Brad Balof of course has honored that tradition.”
The drives began in the early 1990s when Cannon raised concerns about how little aid existed for everyday hygiene and household products, she said.
“People on food stamps can only apply food stamps to food,” Cannon said. “And so the necessities—toilet paper, soap, shampoo, laundry soap, paper towels—they have to buy them. I was trying to save my clients a few pennies.”
Cannon described how the donation drives were seamlessly woven into Sidetrack’s festive celebrations.
“People will come and enjoy the bar, catering and merriment,” Cannon said. “The idea is while celebrating Pride or Christmas, let’s help GroceryLand, too.”
Cannon said Thursday’s donation drive is not just about restocking the shelves, but it’s also a way to honor the legacy of those who helped build GroceryLand from the ground up during the height of the AIDS epidemic.
“It’s a ‘thank you’ to the boys who were part of the early stages of Open Hand in the mid-1980s,” Cannon said. “Victor Salvo and I, with Arthur Johnston [Sidetrack’s founder] as our main sounding board, and so many other volunteers who made this happen. Now, 39 years later, we’re still at it and doing the right thing.”
Many of the original GroceryLand volunteers were people living with HIV themselves, Cannon said.
“A lot of the volunteers who signed up to deliver food were young boys in Lakeview who were diagnosed themselves,” Cannon said. “It was a daunting challenge they were looking at. They were looking at their own future as people were slipping away.”
Cannon said she always tried to meet volunteers with compassion. She said the personal connections she made on the job mattered just as much as the logistics.
“I would go inside and chat with our clients to see how they were doing,” Cannon said. “Mostly, I wanted to see how the apartment was being kept up. Because if I saw a decline, I wanted a caseworker to make a house visit.”
Cannon said the volunteers are GroceryLand’s backbone.
“They’re the eyes and ears of the program,” Cannon said. “They’d report back on what they were seeing and what people needed in our community.”
Thursday’s donation drive feels bigger than just one event, Cannon said.
“This really represents a comeback,” Cannon said. “And I’d like to think of myself as having more comebacks than Liz Taylor.”