Chicago Artist Designs ‘Parka the Hutt’ from Expired Parking Stubs: MyFoxCHICAGO.com

Chicago Magazine’s Jeff Ruby disdains parking meter receipts.

Ruby opens his story about his loathing for these little receipts in the May issue of the magazine this way:

“Suddenly they’re everywhere. Nestled in gutters, clogging up dashboards, swirling around alleys and avenues like ticker tape after a parade. I unknowingly spent an entire day with one stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Nobody’s sure what to call them. Parking stubs? Pay box receipts? Beelzebub’s confetti? Three years ago, they didn’t exist, but today they have become as much a part of Chicago’s fabric as kielbasa and bribery.”

Hatred for the meter receipts turned those little white and green slips of paper littering Chicago’s streets into artistic inspiration for Ruby.

The writer began collecting as many of the receipts as he could find in order to create some museum quality artwork that would serve as social commentary on the spectacle of Chicago’s parking meter lease deal fiasco.

Parka the Hutt comes to life in John Belonio's basement

But then Ruby, an accomplished veteran writer, realized he actually had no artistic talent. This inspired him to contact a real artist and that’s where Jon Belonio enters the story.

Belonio, a 30-something elementary school art teacher out in the western ‘burbs, was able to transform Ruby’s vast piles of expired meter receipts to create something.

That something was a paper mache monster dubbed Parka the Hutt, which bears a striking resemblance to the loathsome and disgusting slug like Jabba Hutt from the original Star Wars trilogy.

Read about the genesis of Parka the Hutt and the creative odyssey Ruby and Belonio to create their little monster, in their story in the May issue of Chicago Magazine, “The Parking Sticker Monster.”