Harold Rubin: 1940 - 2007

Oft-arrested `King of Chicago pornography' always enjoyed tweaking authorities about his right to free speech.

Harold Rubin was stuck with his nickname well before he opened the pornographic bookshop in the South Loop that kept police and prosecutors busy throughout the early 1970s.

Never a shy man, Mr. Rubin had gone to pick up a date for a costume party wearing only a helmet, and carrying a shield and sword.

"She opened the door and said, `You're weird, Harold,' and that was it," said Mr. Rubin's son, Jules.

Mr. Rubin, 67, onetime proprietor of Weird Harold's, an adult bookstore, massage parlor and nude modeling studio, was found dead in his home in Galena on Jan. 30.

The death appeared to be from natural causes but an autopsy report has yet to be completed, said Bill Miller, coroner for Jo Daviess County.

Weird Harold's, 541 S. Wabash Ave., featured all manner of pornography and also offered shapely young models for amateur shutterbugs. Police said these sessions sometimes veered into prostitution, and they regularly hustled Mr. Rubin off to be booked on an array of obscenity charges.

The press had great fun with the outspoken Mr. Rubin, whose run-ins with the law date at least to a 1969 arrest after he was caught behind the camera for a blue movie being shot at a Mannheim Road motel.

Authorities in subsequent years tried a number of novel approaches in their effort to squelch Mr. Rubin's penchant for pornography. In 1975, after pleading guilty to an obscenity charge, Mr. Rubin was ordered by a Cook County judge to distribute more than 1,000 "non-sex" books to inmates at the Cook County Jail. He cheerfully accepted the sentence.

Mr. Rubin never apologized for his line of work, reveling in stories that dubbed him the "king of Chicago pornography."

"I'm an entrepreneur," he said in a 1974 Chicago Tribune story. "My girls make money and I make money also."

He also rallied behind his 1st Amendment rights to free speech. "That was his cause. He believed in the 1st Amendment," Jules Rubin said. "It's people's right to have [pornography], he believed that."

His lease was canceled in 1975 after city inspectors found numerous code violations in the building that housed his store. That shut Weird Harold's for good.

But the demise of the bookstore was not the end of controversy for Mr. Rubin. A native of Berwyn who attended Morton High School, he regularly found trouble with authorities in that city.

In 1975, a large pile of horse manure was dumped on the steps of Berwyn City Hall. Immediately a prime suspect, Mr. Rubin never owned up to the prank, although he told reporters it was "an ingenious idea."

"Yes, he did do it," his son acknowledged Wednesday.

Mr. Rubin engaged in a long-running battle to open a newsstand in the suburb, which apparently feared he'd stock his shelves with something other than the local papers. After numerous court hearings, he was allowed to open a stand on Cermak Road, which his son said he operated for several years.

A collector of antiques and organized-crime memorabilia, Mr. Rubin was a scavenger who in the early 1980s helped discover a concrete vault in the basement of the Lexington Hotel at Cermak Road and Michigan Avenue, Al Capone's onetime headquarters. Geraldo Rivera swept in and the vault was opened on live TV, with disappointing results.

"He was a card, very outspoken," said his son. "He always had a zest for whatever he went after."

Moving to Galena about 15 years ago, Mr. Rubin became well-known around town for videotaping City Council meetings and even a local fair, for reasons that were never clear. That kind of behavior raised eyebrows in the bucolic community, but he was pretty much left alone.

"The town kind of got used to him," said Galena Mayor Tom Brusch.

Mr. Rubin was divorced. In addition to his son, Jules, he is survived by three grandchildren.

Services have been held.