Look, we live under the crushing boot of capitalism and all that, I get it. But also, it's the time of year where we try and find things for our friends and family that might bring them a little joy, a worthy cause if ever there was one, always, but especially this year.

So I've assembled a little gift guide of stuff I like a lot, largely from independent artists and makers, with an emphasis (but not exclusively) on things that are handmade and small-run. No stinkers in the bunch, these are all rad, no bad.

Stuff from Pals

There's nothing more joyful than getting to hype your pals' incredible work.

Chicago letterpress printer Jen Farrell has built a career on stunning letterpress creations hand-printed on century-old printing presses. One of her truly unique specialties is building urban landscapes from metal type, and she did a beautiful tribute to Chicago's pushback against ICE this fall featuring a quote from Chicago's legendary Studs Terkel. Jen also made a print from something I wrote on this blog earlier this year, which was super cool to be involved with.

My pals Nick and Nadine print under the name Sonnenzimmer, and their playful, inventive, and gorgeous prints evolved from gigposter to works of arts over many years. Their incredible, self-published tome, Per Diem: Graphics in Time by Sonnenzimmer, which is over 1000 pages long, collects 16 years of their work. It's a work of art unto itself, but also a remarkable collection of ideas, of moving in new directions, and of two people's creative collaboration over a decade and a half.

I spent many late-night hours at the Punk Planet office working on the magazine while Dan Grzeca was printing things in the other room. And I spent plenty of time drinking coffee with him in the early morning hours after. And so of course I love his new This Caffeine Kills Fascists shirt, which is also a fundraiser for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. But so much of Dan's stuff is incredible, including this beautiful Cooper's Hawk print.

I shared office space with Jay Ryan at The Bird Machine for years, and I continue to be in awe of his work. Everything he does is joyful in a way that is so uniquely him, and his color palatte is always stunning too. Anything he does is worth picking up, but I'm especially in love with this portrait of 12 wooly mammoths. You can see more of Jay's mammoths at Chicago's Field Museum's After the Age of Dinosaurs exhibit.

My pal Eve Ewing bought a bookstore earlier this year and this fall, when shit was getting rocky in town and we were all out on the street protecting each other, designed this wonderful totebag featuring a red winged blackbird in full attack mode. I love it so much. Plus, a percentage goes toward Organized Communities Against Deportations.

Annalee Newitz is both a pal and one of my favorite authors, and their latest is the cozy little novella Automatic Noodle (that's an affiliate link), about a group of robots who open a noodle shop in San Francisco and build a community among themselves and their human customers. Looking for a nice read about the post-apocalyptic future where basically nothing bad happens? Yes you are.

My longtime podcast collaborator Maureen Johnson, put out an absolutely stunning and really fun book, You Are the Detective, the Creeping Hand Murder (that's an affiliate link), where you get this beautiful little book that's a collection of letters, pictures, interviews, and more to help you solve a locked-room murder from the turn of the century. It's a ton of fun, really beautiful, and kind of shockingly inexpensive. A legit great gift for almost anyone.

Chicago things

Chicago has been through a lot these last few months, and here are a few things to celebrate our great city.

The Chicago Transit Authority gift shop goes so much harder than it needs to. It's hard to pick out one thing, but I think this 60s-era logo beanie could be your new winter look.

It's a Chicago Hot Dog Flag, what more explanation do you need?

Chicago has many iconic buildings but I've always loved the pink towers of the former Edgewater Beach Hotel (now condos), and I was so happy that scrappy third-tier US soccer team Edgewater Castle FC put it on a totebag. And speaking of Edgewater Castle, you can buy season tickets for only $60. Games are super fun. Go Rooks!

Chicago journalist, historian, and photographer Robert Lorzel created a breathtaking look inside the long-abandoned Uptown Theater in his book The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace. When I first saw some images from this book I was stunned at what good shape the theater was still in. It's so fun traveling back in time with Robert and his co-author James Pierce.

Speaking of beautiful books,The Golden Era of Sign Design: The Rediscovered Sketches of Beverly Sign Co is a beautiful tribute to a classic Chicago hand-painted sign studio compiled and written by a current Chicago hand-painted sign studio. Filled with breathtaking sketches from the mid-20th century and assembled with real love and care, this is a gorgeous book you'll look at a lot.

Other Awesome Things

There are so many great things, here are a few more.

Speaking of books on signage, Bryan Yonki's 380 page love-letter to the hand painted signs of Los Angeles, "Hand-Painted in LA: Some Los Angeles Signs" is just an absolute gorgeous collection. Whenever I walk around LA I feel like half the time I'm just jaw-hanging-down agog at the various storefronts and their painted signs. Yonki's book really captures the beauty of them.

My family and I spent a really great week recently playing the wonderful Ministry of Lost Things game. It's less a board game than a series of puzzles to solve together, but the premise—you're helping lost items reunite with their owner—is really wonderful and the presentation, which plays out through opening envelopes filled with little artifacts like letters and calendars, and maps, is so satisfying.

One of the things that truly helped define who I was when I was still an impressionable youth was the artist Jenny Holzer, whose "Truisms" series (think: ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE) changed everything for me. When I discovered that one-woman-print-shop Bread and Water Print Shop does a monthly design dedicated to Holzer's work, I was so happy. You can even subscribe to get a Holzer shirt every month, if you have enough drawer space. Rose, who prints everything herself, has a ton of really cool shirts, including this awesome Royal Tenenbaums/Royal Trux mashup.

On the topic of rad shirt printers, this Garfield "I may be self employed but I can still hate my boss" T from High Desert Debris makes me laugh out loud every time I see it. It looks like they're almost out but they have a few sizes left. But also all their shirts are pretty rad.

And speaking of being self employed, Chicago chainstitcher Vitchcraft makes one of my favorite patches of all time, "Self Employed: Tough Little Bitches." I have one on my favorite pair of coveralls. Jenna also has a ton of really cool things available at her shop, including custom-chainstitched items.

OK, finally, I'm definitely not telling you to spend $65 on a stamp (someone bought this for me because I would never spend $65 on a stamp). But honestly this Japanese modular one-month stamp that you break apart and put back together to create a month-accurate stamp is actually really wonderful. It's transformed my setup for the frontmatter in my monthly journals, and is really unique and fun to snap together every month. That said: It's a $65 stamp, so obviously YMMV.