Letter

Ask for Rose. The last line of many classified ads in the Chicago Daily Tribune from the 50s and 60s. Rose Podulka advertised for bartenders, waitresses, tenants, cigar girls, and piano players for her bar, the Rainbo Club. Rose’s grandson, Howie Japlon, remembers:

I would pretty much have the run of the place and spent a lot of time on the bowling game and checking out the barstools and climbing up onto the stage behind and above the bar. My mom and Grandma would converse in Polish. Sometimes we would go around the corner to eat at Brown & Koppel’s.

There was a craps table near the entrance and a dice roller cage thing. And Grandma would often sit in the far corner reading the paper at a table under one of those iconic police interrogation style lamps. On our visits, Grandma often kept the front door locked and would peer through the diamond shaped window to check out who wanted to enter. She wouldn’t let you in if you didn’t look “right”.

Bartenders had to speak Polish, be sober, have a personality, and were not expected to make mixed drinks. Waitresses needed to be white and attractive. Their work shifts ran from 7pm to 4am. Ads for pianists and guitar and accordion players specified girls who were able to play requests. Often in German or Polish. 

In the mid-60s ads to sell the bar began to appear. 

WBBM reporter Alan Crane, who owned the bar for some years in the 80s, recalled in a Trib item that the distinctive Art Deco clamshell stage was a reproduction of one that Ziggy Podulka had seen in San Francisco. He had it built for his wife, Rose, to play the polka music she loved. Another article tells of a fellow WBBM broadcaster taking the stage to sing. By 1985 Crane wanted out of the bar business.

Since 1985 the bar has remained mostly unchanged, while the neighborhood outside its door has become unrecognizable. Today’s Rainbo has more in common with Rose Podulka’s 50s and 60s polka bar than with any of the current establishments along Division Street. The Rainbo’s bartenders no longer have to speak Polish, but they’re still rarely compelled to make mixed drinks. It’s a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood. 

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When I was packing to move to my new place I threw away a lot of artwork. It was stuff I’d been lugging around for no discernible reason for decades. It felt good to be rid of it. But now, digging through my flatfile and sketchbooks, I see that there is still a lot of old stuff taking up space. I didn’t have the heart to part with it, though there’s little chance anyone will ever want it. More fodder for the scrap heap for whoever’s unfortunate enough to dig through my belongings after I’ve checked out.‌
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‌ I’ve been reading Luc Sante’s forthcoming book (which you all should order immediately) in which he mentions his recent return to the art of collage. it was something he did a lot of in the 70s and 80s but had abandoned until the last couple years. He’s gotten so into it that he put up a (virtual) exhibition at a gallery. The idea of a show of art made of scraps of ancient printed ephemera only viewable via digital screen is some kind of irony/sad commentary business my brain isn’t big enough to handle. But trying an old medium again after a long break was very attractive.‌
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Stan Klein, the proprietor of Firecat Projects, gave me a huge roll of heavy paper which once belonged to the minimalist painter Kenneth Noland. Stan was his assistant during his last years. The paper was too big to tape to a drawing board, so I taped it to the wall. It hung there for a week or so, the corners occasionally pulling the masking tape off the wall, while I decided what to do with it. I bought some acrylics, thinking of attempting a painting of what I could see looking to the left and right when up at the wall, but the thought of stitching the two views into one gave me a headache. So I dug through the flatfile.‌
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I took out some figure sketches from my stint going to life-drawing classes a couple years ago. I chose a couple quick ones and taped them to the paper on the wall. I cut out a part of one body, a face of another, then started adding faded color construction paper, then took a marker and scribbled over some of the places where these fragments met.‌
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‌ I “finished” the big one over a couple weeks and hung it on a different wall. It was big enough that this necessitated moving some furniture around. now when I come through my front door it’s the first thing I see. Don’t know what to make of it yet, but it was fun to do, so I kept going.‌
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I have no big ambition for this new thing. The trouble with taking up something late in the game is an awareness of that thing’s long history. Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Hoch, Romare Bearden, the list goes on and on. It’s best not to think of it too much, otherwise it would be paralyzing. For now I’m happy to rip up old pictures and glue them together, then paint or draw over the seams. It reactivates old, unused work and keeps me off balance. The worst thing an artist can do is make work they know how to make; there are machines which do that much quicker and better. The thing is to make yourself feel like a beginner. Collage definitely does that for me.‌
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‌ It’s a relief not my own work for a change. The results may be crap, but at least it’s not stale old crap.‌
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‌ —First night of Night Music went well. I’ll be back sketching at night two. You’re welcome to come too. A few tickets left last time I checked.‌
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—A few more jazz heroes for my show.‌

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—This is Wallace. He lives in Hyde Park.‌

I’ve finally made it to Michigan Avenue. It ain’t the Art Institute but it’ll do for now. These ads went up a few days ago in the windows of the late, unlamented Artist’s Snackshop on the ground floor of the Fine Arts Building. 

They’re promoting an eight week music series which starts Wednesday in the building’s fourth floor Venetian Courtyard.

I’m scheduled to draw the musicians as they play. The guy who’s putting on the series has a music studio up on the eighth floor. We met after he saw my Chicago writer paintings at the Dial Bookshop on the second floor. He wanted me to design his album cover. He gave me some money and I tried it a bunch of different ways but it didn’t work out. Then we ran into each other when the building reopened at the beginning of July and he asked me to be part of his music series. We’ll see how it goes.

A couple weeks ago I went to my first live concert since the shutdown. It was at Constellation on Western near Belmont, across from where the overpass used to start. Each of the very spread apart seats had a long-stemmed rose on it, the lighting was dim. About fifteen of the fifty seats were taken when Helen Money came out with her cello. 

Ms. Money, whose real name is Alison, thanked us for sharing the special night with her. “We’re in a club!” she repeated a couple times, to underscore how an ordinary thing like that has become a precious rarity. She said she’d play in a mask out of solidarity with us rather than out of fear of infection. Her solemn, sometimes delicate, sometimes hectic sound felt like the right soundtrack for the moment. With the low lighting, flowers, and mostly empty room there was a funereal feel to it all. But I did what I’ve done at shows for decades—I drew to feel closer to the music. About halfway through, it came to me that though concerts are thought of as a communal experience I rarely take them in with anyone else. My communion is a solitary one. I hope to be back to this temple soon to worship again.

—I reviewed Fuckface and Other Stories and wrote about visiting the Art Institute the first day it reopened.