Wednesday night in Chicago.
It`s standing room only in the basement of Club Lower Links, where five actors are doing Shakespeare`s ”Othello.” This is Shakespeare without the words, if you can imagine that. Instead of iambic pentameter the audience hears space-age music performed by three musicians as the actors, in big-tie
`40ish garb or `80s punk get-ups have slow motion sword fights.
Meanwhile, upstairs at the Holsum Roc Cafe on Clybourn Avenue, a half-dozen ”musicians” are singing, dancing, chanting and pounding on a variety of instruments (many of them children`s toys) in their weekly free-form ”Harmonic Convergence.”
And up north in Rogers Park, poets are taking turns at the microphone for the weekly poetry reading at the No Exit Cafe while customers linger over coffee.
The No Exit event is part of a 30-year tradition there. The other performance art/poetry events are relative newcomers that have blossomed in the last year.
But whether it`s a decades-old standby or an upstart business, one thing is for sure: `50s-style coffeehouses, with their resident beat poetry, performance art and jazz, are back in force-with an `80s twist, of course.
The movement is even spilling over into the clubs, bars and restaurants that are sponsoring cabaret-style poetry readings, performance art and avant- garde music happenings.
And all over the city, new coffeehouses are springing up.
There are metaphysical coffeehouses, theatrical coffeehouses, art gallery coffeehouses, dessert coffeehouses, literary coffeehouses, student coffeehouses, folk music coffeehouses, politically inclined coffeehouses, European-style coffeehouses.
A cafe of one`s own
”Coffeehouses, more than restaurants, or any other business, reflect the personality of the owner,” says Sharon Ragir, one of the co-owners of the new Nightcrawler`s Cafe, a coffeehouse next door to Ragir`s Live Bait Theater on North Clark Street.
”It`s like coming into someone`s living room. Besides the coffee, the thing you`re really selling is the ambiance,” she says, explaining that she and her husband, John, wanted to open the cafe next to the theater as a sort of social center for theatrical people and and other artists. ”Besides the coffee, the thing you`re really selling is the ambiance.
”Artistic people need that stimulation of hanging around their peer group and exchanging ideas. And we also wanted to have a nice place for theatergoers to relax and discuss the play afterward over a cup of coffee or glass of wine in a place that`s not a bar atmosphere. So we`re unique in that we have a liquor license. Most coffeehouses don`t-although we don`t play up the liquor very much.”
Indeed, the lack of liquor and the chance to avoid intoxicated people is a reason many give for the new popularity of coffeehouses.
Healthy attitudes
”If you stop drinking and drugging, you don`t really want to be hanging out in that atmosphere,” says painter Will Northerner, a former heavy clubgoer. ”Look, you can only do the bar/club scene so long. It`s a terminal phase. Because if you really do it, you`re going out every night. You`re drinking a lot and most probably doing drugs. I think coffeehouses are popular now just because people are just more health-conscious in general.”
Carley Squire, the owner of Hamsah Cafe on North Halsted Street, agrees.
”I hope the day is over that people think they have to numb their senses in order to have a good time,” says Squire, whose restored Victorian mansion cafe is just a few weeks old.
”The good thing about coffee is that it gives people a license to sit and relax and be somewhere and meet people,” she says. ”I also have a theory that if we appease the conscious senses such as taste, then our subconscious can appreciate and enjoy the visual expression in front of us.”
Squire, whose interests lean toward the metaphysical, also sells
”visionary art” and crystals in her art gallery/cafe and gives meditation classes.
She says opening a coffeehouse has been a lifelong dream.
Ditto for Brian Kozin, who washed dishes as a kid at the No Exit Cafe. Kozin and his wife, Sue, now own the 30-year-old cafe, which they say is the oldest folk club in America.
A coffee addiction
”Having a coffeehouse is a disease,” says Kozin, who purchased the No Exit in the late `70s when it and Caffe Pergolesi were just about the only coffeehouses in the city and were frequented only by loyal neighborhood regulars.
”Back then there were some pretty rough years, but now coffeehouses are coming back strong,” says Kozin, who lists several reasons for this resurgence.
”Besides the whole 30-year cycle thing, when the economy gets bad people turn to coffeehouses because they`re cheap entertainment,” he says. ”And people are also nostalgic for the `50s because enough time has gone by that they forget how horrible the `50s really were. It was a time of great ignorance and fear with the McCarthy era. But now people remember the `50s as a so-called time of innocence before the Vietnam War and they want to return to that.”
No Exit, which features folksingers, poetry readings, jazz and art, is decorated in classic bookish `50s coffeehouse style, with burlap-covered walls, wooden tables and lots of clutter in the corners.
A place to relax
And of course, not everyone who goes to a coffeehouse is there for the poets, folksingers or avant-garde art events. Most coffeehouses provide ample reading materials-sometimes whole bookcases full of books and magazines-and many patrons find the casual atmosphere perfect for reading, studying or chatting with friends. And some just stop in for a simple cup of coffee.
The customers themselves are as diverse as the various coffeehouses they frequent. For instance, Speedy Ennui, near Loyola University in Rogers Park, is a favorite study spot for college students, while the Broadway Coffee Bar in New Town draws a real neighborhood crowd, including shoppers and workers from the various Broadway boutiques.
Most of the coffeehouses, whatever their inclinations, feature good bathroom grafitti (some even provide chalkboards and giant writing pads in the restrooms), healthy foods and a selection of caffeine-free beverages.
”When we moved from across the street a couple of years back we tried to lighten the place up and painted the wall light tan,” Kozin says. ”But no one liked it. So we went back to the brown walls, burlap and clutter.”
Oldie but goodie
A coffeehouse with similar styling is Caffe Pergolesi, the city`s oldest coffeehouse under single ownership.
For 22 years David Weinberger has run this vegetarian coffeehouse, which stands in contrast to the newer coffeehouses that usually are painted stark white and have streamlined interiors.
Take the Holsum Roc, the art gallery/cafe located at the top of a steep narrow staircase above the Prop Theater on Clybourn.
Opened nearly two years ago by Simone Bouyer and Stephanie Coleman, the Holsum Roc is a converted apartment whose various rooms serve as separate salons or art galleries. The cafe tries to give new artists a place to show their work for free.
”I guess it just grew out of my frustration to get an art show,” says Bouyer, a graphic artist and oil-portrait painter.
Besides gallery openings, events at the Holsum Roc include free films, performance art, the monthly Poetry Tostada and the weekly ”Harmonic Convergence,” a get-together of musicians and others who improvise chanting, instrument-playing, moving and singing-however the spirit moves them.
Although it was also created out of a converted apartment, the Broadway Coffee Bar has a totally different atmosphere. Opened a year ago by Polish immigrant Richard Brozek, it has an Old World feel, with quaint tablecloths, flowers in bud vases and pierogi on the menu.
”In Europe, coffeeshops are almost on every corner, the way bars are here,” says Brozek. ”A lot of young people go to Europe now and spend time in coffeehouses and want to do that when they come home.”
Why it`s happening
But the theories people put forth for the comeback of coffeehouses and all other `50s-style beat art movements are as varied as the types of cafes that now exist.
”The entire entertainment demographic is aging,” says Tom Doody, events coordinator and former manager for a variety of cutting-edge Chicago clubs.
”For me, personally, I`ve gotten older and I perfer conversation to loud music. Now when I go out it`s with my wife or friends I already know, as opposed to seeking out strangers. In general the club scene is dead because there`s the whole element of sexual politics-people are flirting more and picking up less.”
”It`s not fashionable to go to the clubs anymore,” says the poet and former editor of the Letter eX poetry magazine, Debbie Pintonelli. ”Before, the clubs weren`t as widely known to everybody. They were actually threatening to some, but now they`re boring and safe. The people going there are people from the suburbs or people who don`t do anything but stay out until 4 a.m. There are really no new places opening up-and who wants to go back to the same bar to dance for the millionth time?”
”It does get down to the AIDS thing,” says poet Jean Howard. ”People want to meet somebody of quality and get to know them and talk to them. Five years ago, no one came to hear poets but other poets. But now all sorts of people are comimg to readings. It`s not because they care about poetry. It`s because it`s a real social thing to do.”
Howard is a frequent performer at Club Lower Links, the acknowledged performance art center in the city. Lower Links is a basement cabaret-style bar with low ceilings, red lights and red velvet bunting. Although it does serve alcohol, Lower Links, owned by Leigh Jones, is known more for its events, which range from regular poetry readings and avant-garde music to puppet shows.
Slams, too
”There`s Lower Links and then there`s the Green Mill`s Uptown poetry slam, which is very successful,” says poet Marc Smith, who then rattles off a list of other cafes and bars now sponsoring poetry nights: ”Weeds, the Get Me High, the Heartland Cafe, Sheffield`s and the Randolph Street Gallery.”
”It`s all happening here because this is where people can be real,”
says Smith, explaining the current poetry renaissance and booming coffeehouse business. ”Chicago has always been the place to get things started in the arts-poetry, painting, acting. There`s real humanity here that`s not on the coasts.”
Smith also credits the poets with helping make poetry more entertaining and accessible.
”Poetry used to be a stifling, boring thing like a lecture, but now the poets are turning it into an enjoyable evening for everyone,” Smith says. For example at Lounge Ax`s Monthly Milly`s Orchid Show, where Milly, alias Brigid Murphy, is up on stage reciting her latest poem/love song: ”I`m a Sucker For a Trucker.”
”Society women like a man with a crest,” she wails, ”but I want a man who will tattoo my name on his chest.”
And the beat goes on. –
