Letter

Pleasant House used to be in Bridgeport but is now in Pilsen. They serve savory pies, so of course I was a regular at the old location—a cramped converted pizza shop next to Maria’s Bar at 31st & Morgan. In fact, I did a painting of the intersection where the shop used to be as a Kickstarter reward a few years back. The new place is a couple doors down from the Skylark, so I often see people who work there on Sunday nights after they’re done with their shift. The first time I ever walked in there, my friend Brian (who was a bartender at Nightwood, the restaurant which occupied this storefront previously), was at the bar as if he’d been there the whole time, just waiting for the doors to open again. 

Unlike their old spot, this space is opulent, and they spent a goodly sum redecorating, down to actual old-world-style plaster walls. For the first few months they were open, a series of black-and-white photos decorated those walls, but the last few times I’ve come in all but one or two had been removed. Tuesday, the day after I hung my bar paintings show up in Humboldt Park, I asked Iggy, between bites of mushroom-and-kale pie, who was in charge of the artwork. After a series of emails with Art, the owner, I was back the following morning to hang a bunch of my pictures. 

I chose all black-and-white pieces which I think go best with the decor of the place. Because they serve beer, I hung a bunch of bar-themed illustrations from Hack near the taps. Most of what I brought were portraits. You’ll find the one of Henry Miller I did last summer for The Scofield, but also the one of my friend Claire from years ago, as well as the one of the old grizzled cabbie who told me about the sci-fi epic he’d been writing for years while we were waiting to pick up late-night drinkers at The Continental.

The great thing about hanging old things in new places is that they sometimes get a bit of new life to them from the novel surroundings. They certainly have a better chance at survival in a room which fills and refills with people every day than on the walls or in the closets of my apartment, where the only person who will look at them will likely destroy them sooner or later.

It feels good and right to have them out of the house.

So these are the places around town where you can currently look at my paintings and drawings:

1.) Hume Chicago

2.) Pleasant House

3.) Jackalope Coffee

4.) Gold Star Bar

5.) Flying Saucer

6.) Skylark

7.) Bernice’s Tavern

p.s. I saw a great production of a Brecht play set in 30s Chicago, written in 40s Germany, but all about the US today.

March 18—April 16, 2017 Hume Chicago, 3242 W. Armitage, Chicago, IL 60647 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 18, 6-10pm Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 12-5pm or by appointment 

I’ve been drawing in bars since before I was allowed to drink. Like coffee shops, subway cars, and any number of other public gathering places, taverns allow an artist to observe without necessarily being observed. Bars are neither home nor work, they are third places, where people gather to make community. Because they are engaged with others or with their own thoughts, people in bars make for great subject-matter. But what of the rooms themselves?

Over the past five years I’ve been taking my paints to my favorite haunts. I set up in different parts of the room each time and try to catch some of the atmosphere and feel of these places which play host to so many different kinds of people night in and night out. The three taverns portrayed in these paintings are ones I know well. Each has played a part in my personal history and there’s no way that bits and pieces of that history don’t make it into the pictures in some way.

The Rainbo Club has been an artists’ and musicians’ bar since back when creative people could actually afford to live within walking distance. Today it is a lonely holdout in a neighborhood glutted with strollers and sports bars. I’ve been a regular for over twenty years. My wedding pictures were taken in its photo booth, I’ve put up art on its walls many times, even worked the door a few nights. It all comes back every time I go through the door.

I’ve worked at the Skylark for a couple years but coming in since it opened some fifteen years ago. Like Rainbo, many artists have darkened its doorstep; unlike Rainbo, some can still afford to live nearby. Pilsen is well along in the gentrification process which swallowed up West Town years ago. One of the bitter pills of this transformation is that the very reasons which attract people with money to these neighborhoods are destroyed by their arrival. It’s one thing to dig the way artists make do with what they’ve got and quite another to live without the comforts and amenities one’s wealth has made one used to. Soon dry cleaners and sushi shops sprout like mushrooms and bars like the Skylark are but a memory.

Bernice’s Tavern has been run by Steve Badauskas’ family for over fifty years. Bernice is his mom and she still lives in the apartment behind the bar. Before Steve’s father bought the bar, another Lithuanian immigrant ran it. When I moved to Bridgeport the place drew me in as if it had been waiting for me to come in for years. The regulars are a mix of neighborhood old-timers and kids just out college and still figuring themselves out. It’s a place which welcomes all comers.

The paintings in this show may not directly address themes like gentrification but they definitely record specific places at specific times and thus cannot help but reflect the changes which make themselves felt nearby. The three taverns portrayed in these pictures are in three neighborhoods which are each at a different point of transition. Whether bars like these survive will determine whether these neighborhoods continue to be their own places or become cookie-cutter subdivisions no different than any other. These paintings are a way to pay tribute to particular places in particular times with the hope that they don’t disappear anytime soon.

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I told Alex at the coffee shop jokingly that I was going to see a play called “Straight White Men” because I wanted to see something about people just like me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As the audience walks into the upstairs theater at the Steppenwolf, a hiphop tune blares and two transgender actors in bedazzled jumpsuits shake their hips to the booming bass when not showing people to their seats or handing out earplugs. When the show begins, the same pair go up on stage and explain that the music was meant to make us uncomfortable the same way that people like them—neither he nor she but they—often feel in the larger culture. Then they reassure us that the rest of the evening will only concern normal men who identify as men so we can all rest easy. I was hoping they’d turn the music back on after they were done talking, but no such luck.‌
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‌The set is a typical American living room. Our host/ushers escort two white men onto the stage and place them on and behind the centrally-located couch. The one sitting down starts to manically jab at a video-game controller, aiming his efforts out at us, the fourth wall, while the other one harasses and distracts him, trying to get him to stop playing and pay attention to him rather than to the game. They are meant to be grown brothers lapsing into childishness on a Christmas visit to their childhood home. The father and third son arrive and more horseplay ensues. Just so us rubes in the seats don’t miss the message, the sons play a customized version of Monopoly renamed Privilege. I get up and leave after twenty-five minutes.‌
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‌Walking down Halsted in the pelting rain toward the shelter of the Apple Store’s overhanging roof to wait for the bus home, I wonder what pissed me off so much about the play. The characters seemed based on sitcom archetypes rather than living people. Judging by the hearty laughter of the rest of the audience at their antics, this was not a problem for anyone but me. The abrasive intro set up an expectation of something that might challenge but what I sat through was a tired pastiche reenactment of scenes from TV shows. I wondered whether the playwright had met any actual people in her life, let alone the titular straight white men.‌
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‌In an interview I found online the playwright talks about challenging herself to write about what she dislikes and makes her uncomfortable. She wants to write the play she herself least wants to see. Well, she certainly succeeded in writing a p[ay that one straight white guy couldn’t sit through. I wasn’t shocked or offended during my twenty-five minutes at the Steppenwolf. Straight white men in this country have reached our nadir at this point; a glance at the news any given day will convince any idiot of that. I have no problem with critiques of the patriarchy or knocking those in power off their pedestal; I just didn’t see anything on that stage which reflected any sort of lived experience or had anything meaningful to say. ‌
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‌In the couple reviews I read when I got home there’s mention of conflicts between the brothers about life-goals and direction later in the story; some kind of critique of capitalism as well. I didn’t stay long enough to see any of that. Ideas are fine in a play (or in any art) but they can’t be delivered without first selling one on a premise. If you’re gonna write a polemic you better be damn clear on what it is you’re haranguing about. The magic of theater is its capacity to take us into another world—be it kitchen-sink or flight-of-fancy—but this night I was just left fidgeting in my seat. I kept thinking back to the booming music before the play started and those two actors in jumpsuits dancing up and down the aisles. I wanted to watch more of that. Instead, what I got was a failed attempt at a dramatized lecture on the hollowness of the dominant culture. I would’ve been glad to’ve had my assumptions undermined or to’ve even been offended a little. Some of the reviewers of this play wondered whether the playwright was on the side of the white guys or making fun of them. My confusion was more fundamental: I couldn’t believe a single thing I was seeing before my eyes.‌

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