It was nearly 2:30 a.m. when the lonely figure armed with a garbage bag appeared on the street and began picking up trash. The neighbors just sneered at him.
Richard Navratil, one of the owners of the Oak Leaf Lounge in Forest Park, meandered down the 800 block of Thomas Avenue, picking up the garbage that his customers had left behind.
Gayle Fahey, one of the residents who had been roused by the noise of departing bar patrons, sat on her front porch, glaring at Navratil and trying to calm down.
She has accused him of being irresponsible. He has accused her of racism.
So it goes in this usually tranquil neighborhood, where dozens of African-Americans have gathered each Thursday night since late last year for a popular weekly dance party hosted at Navratil’s bar.
Sixty-four residents have signed a petition calling for relief from what they say is the intolerable noise and mess that patrons make when they leave during the wee hours every Friday morning.
On Monday night, the Village Council will conduct a hearing on whether to revoke the tavern’s entertainment license.
But Navratil, who has co-owned the bar with his brother for a dozen years, insists that the dispute has nothing to do with noise.
“I never had no problems here all these years, until I started renting the room to blacks,” said Navratil, who is not black.
Navratil has filed a federal lawsuit against the village, charging that village officials have singled out the Oak Leaf Lounge for harassment because of its black clientele. The lawsuit says that the village has not taken similar action against taverns with white patrons, despite similar noise complaints from neighbors. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Chicago.
The dispute has raged for months without resolution. It could all come to a head during Monday’s hearing.
It all began in October 1994 when Navratil agreed to rent out his bar every Thursday and Sunday night to Idol Men Productions, which charges a $5 admission fee for the dance parties. The Thursday night events have become very popular, attracting more than 100 patrons each week.
“It’s disgraceful what’s going on there in that neighborhood,” said Lorraine Popelka, the village mayor. “The police department is out there every Thursday night. It’s a very unruly crowd. They won’t listen to the police. They won’t disperse in an orderly manner. There’s constant screaming, yelling.”
Popelka and others insist that race has nothing to do with their concerns.
“If these people were white, we’d be putting up the same kind of objection to it,” said Evelyn Adams, 68, who lives in a ground-floor condominium near the bar. Navratil “keeps saying it’s racist, and it’s not,” she said. “It’s about noise.”
Last Friday morning, Thomas Avenue was still quiet at 1:15 a.m. A police squad car passed regularly in front of the Oak Leaf Lounge. But the noise grew slowly as patrons began to leave 10 or 15 minutes later.
By 1:30 a.m., Rick Jones, 21, who said he lives near Hinsdale, was the only bar patron standing near his car parked on Thomas Avenue.
A few minutes later, Katina Alexander, 22, of Chicago’s Northwest Side, was among the patrons who were walking down Harrison Street past Thomas Avenue.
“This is a regular thing in the city,” Alexander said of the noise that bar patrons were making as they left. “This is nothing big, and I like that it’s in Forest Park. I feel safe walking to my car.”
By 1:35 a.m., it seemed as if everyone was leaving the bar, and the noise increased dramatically on Thomas Avenue, where many patrons had parked. It took at least 20 minutes for them all to get in their cars and drive away. But by 2 a.m., they were gone.
“You can’t stop noise,” said Van Cox, president of Idol Men Productions, as he supervised the exodus. “How can you just tell 140 people, `Hey, shut up?’ “
Cox said that he has four paid security guards and four volunteer security guards who patrol the neighborhood for three blocks to control the noise as much as possible. Despite this, he said he and his customers have been the target of racial slurs from neighbors.
But critics such as Fahey and Popelka contend that Cox’s security measures are ineffective.
Longtime neighbors recall that they had similar problems 12 years ago, after Navratil opened the Oak Leaf Lounge.
“When he opened the lounge, it was the same thing, but it was nothing but white people,” said Fahey’s husband, Jack. The couple has lived in their Thomas Avenue house for 25 years.
“We got on the police department. We got on the mayor. We had meetings,” Jack Fahey recalled. He said neighbors are not reacting any differently now than they did 12 years ago, when the noisy bar patrons were white.
Popelka admits that the village has responded differently to a petition signed by residents in a neighborhood a few blocks north who are upset about noise created by mostly white patrons leaving bars. But she said the different treatment is not motivated by racism.
Rather, Popelka said, the owners of the taverns farther north have fully cooperated with village officials by paying for foot patrols and implementing effective noise control.
Not all the residents share the same views. Freddie Joyner, who lives in the 900 block of Hannah Avenue, not far from the Oak Leaf Lounge, said he has never been bothered by the noise.
But he said he can understand why some neighbors might be disturbed by the departing bar patrons.
“They might look out their window and see one little thing, and it makes them upset,” Joyner said.
But Jack Fahey, who lives closer to the tavern, said it goes way beyond that.
“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “I sleep in the back of the house with my air conditioner on, my door closed, and I come out of a sound sleep. People call me a bigot. They call me a troublemaker because I call the police. But I just want to sleep.”
