Jerry Springer has a very clear memory of how he furnished his apartment.
“I’d had lunch at the Third Coast (a Near North Side restaurant) and I had a taping at 3 (p.m.), so I had an hour and a half to spare. I thought, `OK, I need some stuff, a place to sit,’ so I stopped at Crate & Barrel and bought all this.” He gestures vaguely around his six-room apartment with 1 1/2 baths and laughs.
“That saleslady could probably send her kid to college after that day.”
In 1 1/2 hours? A sofa, chairs, coffee table, dining room table, all the things that go into one’s living space?
“Well, hey, I’m a guy. It’s just a guy’s place, a place to hang out,” he says.
It becomes even more of a guy’s place in the kitchen. There are four glasses and a few dishes in the cabinets. The refrigerator holds a half gallon of semi-solidified milk, a candy bar and bottled water.
“Step back, this may not be pleasant,” he says, taking out the milk and pouring it down the drain. His prediction is correct.
Springer, 50, formerly mayor of Cincinnati and, for the last two years, the host of the Jerry Springer show (1 p.m. weekdays, NBC-Ch. 5), moved to Chicago in February after several months of commuting between Cincinnati and Chicago’s NBC Tower, where the show is taped.
His description of how he found his apartment, in the North Michigan Avenue area, is similar to his search for furniture.
“If I had to pick the defining block in Chicago (the street that best describes the city), this would be it. So I walked into this building, because it was on the block, and they had this apartment for rent. See, I can look out the windows and see part of my life. There’s Northwestern (University) over there, where I went to law school (1965-68), and up there is NBC.”
Having a ball
Springer, at home in his “guy’s place” apartment, is very different than the well-dressed, fast-moving persona of television. Here, on this particular day, he’s casual to the point of laconic. Dressed in blue Levis and a blue shirt over a white T-shirt, with glasses that he frequently pushes up on his forehead, his enthusiasm peaked on the subject of baseball-specifically the New York Yankees.
“Only the Yankees, there’s no room for anyone else. I love just browsing through this book, all the baseball stats,” he says, thumbing through a hefty tome of baseball statistics that shares space on his coffee table with several political books, including one about Robert Kennedy, for whom he worked as an aide in the 1960s.
“Look at these scores-that 7th game in the 1962 series, that was when righteousness was in the world.”
The order of things
The other subject that arouses passion is his daughter, Katie, 17, who was born blind and mostly deaf. She lives in Cincinnati with his wife, from whom Springer has been separated for four years, and he has a bedroom ready for her frequent Chicago visits.
“Katie is what’s important in my life,” he says. “Television is only television, it’s not real life but it’s a fun way to make a living. I think Katie was the reason I was given these resources (for making a good living), to be able to help this kid.”
But the importance of furniture, of his home?
He laughs.
“I buy things in clusters, like I did all this stuff. Let’s be honest, this is how I live. I don’t care about stuff. I don’t cook, I eat out every night, so I don’t need anything in the kitchen. The Restaurant Association (a trade organization for the food service industry) should give me an award. When I get home, I usually take off my shoes, lie down on the sofa and watch television or read.
“No, I don’t watch my own show. Why should I? I do it. I watch sports and the news.”
Picture this
Even though he’s lived here since February, there’s definitely an atmosphere of not-quite-moved-in. Price stickers still adorn the toothbrush holder and soap dish in the bathroom and only one shelf in the linen closet is filled.
Unhung pictures (including many sports scenes) are propped against the wall of Katie’s room, which has a functional dresser and bed covered with a white spread. His own bedroom is equally no-nonsense functional-a king-size bed, dresser and an armoire containing a television set and no curtains at the windows.
The pictures that have been hung fit into the buy-things-in-clusters mode. “I walked into some galleries and looked around and then bought these,” he says, pointing to the four reproductions in his living room and hallway. The colorful Parisian scene over the sofa and the three pictures hanging in the hall, showing different seasons, have all recently been in the window of a Michigan Avenue gallery.
He shrugs when asked what’s next in his life.
“My love has always been politics. That’s why we’re (the show) more issue-oriented than some of the others, and why I like to do a commentary at the end. But what’s next? Who knows? I never map anything out. I’m living proof that anyone can get lucky.”
