Over the gurgling swan song of sinking fries and the hissing of burgers on the grill comes a low rumble that grows louder until it sounds as if something has landed on the roof of the Blue Sea Coffee Grill.
And that’s because it has landed on the roof of this fast-food eatery tucked under the Berwyn stop of the elevated’s Red Line.
The grill, which serves unapologetically greasy fast food, is one of 27 businesses in the shaded nooks directly below the CTA Brown and Red Lines. (Other lines may have businesses adjacent to the tracks, but only these lines have CTA-owned property built directly underneath.)
And while the politically connected Demon Dogs, beneath the Fullerton stop, has been getting all the ink and airtime because of the controversy surrounding its closing at the end of July, there are 26 other businesses operating in these peculiar noisy nooks.
“I actually despised it in the beginning,” says Kelly Cheng, owner of the Wye Trading Company, which sells porcelain goods (that she says have never been imperiled by the frequent vibrations thanks to “solid, custom-built shelving units”) and home furnishings in the shadow of the Argyle “L” stop. “It is just one of those noises that was annoying for a long, long time, but after a while you get used to it and you say, `Oh, the express train just went by. It’s time to go home.’ Plus, my customers think it’s kind of fun.”
Other businesses include dry cleaners, clothing stores, grocers, home furnishing shops and record stores, but mostly it’s restaurants that cater to the busy commuter. Diners and doughnut shops dominate the under-“L” eating scene and most are owned by first-generation immigrants who faithfully whip up “American” favorites such as burgers or bacon and eggs with weak, diner-y coffee to go. At least one (Sun Sun Snackshop) also serves the kind of commuter snacks one might eat for breakfast in Beijing: hot soy milk and savory fried dough sticks. But they all have a few things in common: cheap rents to the CTA (about $10 per square foot, whereas most other rents in Uptown are between $13 and $20 per square foot) and employees and clients who don’t mind thunderous interruptions of noise every few minutes.
“The train going over has a tendency to shut the door and screw up the computer monitor for a second,” says Bradley Frank, a drum ‘n’ bass deejay and part-time volunteer at E.Q., an underground hip-hop store beneath the Berwyn stop. “But if it gets too loud, we just turn up the music.”
Providing revenue, service
In the early part of the last century as train lines were being expanded to the North and Northwest Sides, the separate companies running them at the time (before the Chicago Rapid Transit Co. bought and merged them in 1924) decided that creating storefronts in and around the structure could generate revenue while providing service to the riders. Some of the nicest and earliest were ornate structures at the Wilson and Sheridan stops.
“In Chicago a man may have all kinds of racket beside, before, behind, under and above him without anything getting on his nerves,” said a Sunday Tribune article from Sept. 12, 1909, about the construction of stores beneath the Wilson “L” tracks. “Noise is no barrier to business; the more racket that is kicked up the more business is transacted apparently.”
Well, not exactly. Although many places seem to survive for years beneath the tracks, turnover in ownership is not uncommon and businesses sometimes are obscured by their location.
“Actually I get missed a lot because people walk by and don’t see the store,” Cheng says.
On the plus side, she says, “I save quite a bit on air conditioning because it stays cool under here in the summer [due to the shade from the train platform] and we are almost never out of electricity. The entire block could be gone and we are still running because we are on the CTA power line.”
But during the winter, Cheng says, heating bills can be high [because it gets so little sunlight] and rain sometimes leaks through the ceiling and pillars of the nearly 100-year-old structure at Argyle.
Across the street from Cheng in another shady under-“L” nook is the Apollo Restaurant, where an ancient sign declares “Restaurant: We serve the best of food.” There, cousins and co-owners Guillermo and Salvador Garcia dish up cheap and tasty plates of eggs, ham and buttery grits for a regular clientele while the manager and his mother oversee the dining room of five tables and a counter. The smoky little cavelike room possesses a certain coziness as folks stop by to catch up, gossip or just nurse a coffee and a cigarette as they contemplate the day ahead.
Says Salvador of the business he took over six months ago, “I like this location. We are busy for breakfast with people from the neighborhood and people who ride the train from between 7 and 9 in the morning. We’re used to the noise and the rents are low. I think the best thing is the rent.”
Two stops south on the Red Line at Wilson, John Stathakis has been serving ham and eggs (and, of course, doughnuts) to Uptowners for 25 years at Wilson Donuts.
“I don’t like the noise of the train because sometimes you can’t hear on the phone,” Stathakis says. “But when I’m busy sometimes I don’t even notice it.”
At Fig Media under the Granville stop, the young multimedia types lounging with laptops on knees don’t seem phased by the trains rolling overhead either, “except that our monitors lose color for a second from the magnetization,” says graphic and Web designer Justin Schnor.
Another Figster planted in a designer chair nearby says the trains are most noticeable during company meeting at this office decorated with original bronzy tile art. Specializing in event management and digital photography among other things, Fig, like E.Q., seems to represent a new breed of under-“L” businesses that is not disturbed by the funky location and yet doesn’t have much to do with commuters either.
Downside to gentrification
Like Stathakis, Greek restaurateur Dino Poulos is also a veteran of the under-“L” dining scene. And although the neighborhood around his New Victoria Restaurant under the Belmont “L” has also changed over his 30 years at the location, his customer base doesn’t reflect the yuppification.
“The neighborhood here has changed about four or five times since I have been here,” says Poulos, who says his most popular item is his gyros sandwich. “Now you see more young people and rich people. But things have not changed in here because I don’t really do business with the rich people. I just get the transportation people. Most of my business is the transportation people. I get a few others but not too much.”
A mixed crowd, that leans heavily toward Edgewater’s East African community, hangs out at the smoky little Lake Breeze diner under the Thorndale stop. Specialties include Korean barbecued beef (a legacy of a previous owner) cheap steak dinners ($7 for skirt steak with soup, bread and butter) and the popular Abdul’s Delight ($6.30), a mixture of rice and vegetables that “the African customers like a lot,” according to Maria behind the counter. Also available are phone cards and the incendiary Ethiopian berbere spice mixture.
Demon Dogs owner Peter Schivarelli is the only under-“L” proprietor to have built his own structure under the tracks — on CTA property — at a cost, he says, of about $150,000. He later deeded the building to the CTA and put it on the tax roles. He says he pays about $30,000 a year between rent, property tax and utilities.
When he built the restaurant in 1983, he says that vibration was his main structural consideration, “So we dug down and laid the building’s foundation on the same massive concrete pylons that the `L’ was built on.”
Twenty years later, he reports that he has never had a crack in the walls of his restaurant, which incorporates more than a dozen pillars from the station above in its design.
“The way it is built, you can hardly hear the trains go by after a while,” he says. And it is true that between the non-stop music of the band Chicago, the thick walls and the hustle and bustle of the busy restaurant, the passing trains generate little more than a low rumble inside the eatery.
“I like the noises that come from being under the tracks because it makes it more real, like they are not trying to hide anything,” says Shane Smith, 19, a communications major at DePaul as he orders a hot dog with mustard only explaining, “I’m kind of a plain guy.”
Although the CTA board ruled 5 to 1 earlier this spring to end the restaurant’s lease, they say, to make way for platform expansion, Schivarelli holds out hope that the CTA will allow him to remain in the location during construction on the other side of Fullerton Avenue and then allow him to relocate across the street.
CTA spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler says that is not going to happen.
Future uncertain
The fate of this under-“L” institution remains to be seen, but in the meantime it will keep serving up its Vienna dogs to the cross section of students, celebs (like Bill Cosby, who, manager Judy Sanford says, “Always orders six chili dogs” when he’s in town) and commuters who don’t want to pay high Lincoln Park prices. “It’s like a place where rich and poor don’t matter,” Schivarelli says. “And you can still get an affordable meal around here.”
South Sider Mike Donavy, who was finishing a hot dog and fries on a recent rainy day before he went to work, agrees.
“I come here every time I have to do some work at DePaul,” the caterer says. “It’s cool to have a place where you can get some cheap eats and a good hot dog really fast. I love the location because it is right under the train and I can get off, grab me a hot dog and get to work in about 10 minutes. I don’t think there is anything like it nearby.”
Sony Javad, who owns nine mostly thriving cafes and coffee stands in the city (most on college campuses) has found little success at his sleepy little location at the Morse stop of the Red Line. His Cafe Descartes, which is drenched in sunlight and the aroma of roasting coffee, may be the fanciest of all the under-“L” businesses, but at 9 a.m. on a recent weekday morning the java joint was not exactly jumping.
“People are not used to having such a nice cafe under the train tracks and so my business here is very bad,” says the Pakistani-born philosophy and art major who roasts his own coffee on the premises, has designed the Italian-style interiors of the cafe and is an admirer of the Descartian philosophy (the cafe’s logo says, “I drink therefore I am”). “They don’t expect Italian furniture and custom roasted organic coffee here. But it adds to the quality of the neighborhood and I am going to keep trying.”
Capital improvements
Soon upscale proprietors such as Javad may no longer be alone, though. In an effort to improve the quality of services under the “L,” the CTA will in the next few months solicit bids from current and potential vendors that will require them to propose out-of-pocket capital improvements to the infrastructure in exchange for five-year leases. Currently they rent month-to-month. Their new rents will be negotiated on the basis of the proposed improvements as well as basic real estate factors.
“We are not dissatisfied with the types of business our current tenants run or the services they provide,” says Ziegler. “Our purpose with this is to make available the opportunity for tenants to have a long-term lease in exchange for capital improvements. Without the security of a long-term lease we think they would be unlikely to make these kinds of physical improvements. Currently we have 50 storefronts on `L’ property. Twenty-seven are operating directly underneath the tracks and 13 are vacant.”
Most storefronts are on the North Side, where train lines were elevated in the 1920s, creating room for businesses under the tracks. The storefronts don’t include the 70 concession stands which sell newspapers, magazines and candy inside CTA stations throughout the city.
Although current tenants have heard rumors about the upcoming requirements, they have not been given concrete details. Still, what is known doesn’t seem to bode well for those who are just making ends meet, no matter how long they have been in the spot.
“Of course, when they make their decision [about who stays and who goes] they are looking for the highest bidder,” says Stathakis of Wilson Donuts, which has been operating under the “L” for more than 20 years. “I can’t say, `Hi, I am John from the doughnut shop and I am doing this.’ They tell me that I have to wait and go through papers and other offices and use union people. And then the CTA tells you to fix all of these things and it costs more money.”
Little information
Others are less sure what they think. When asked about the upcoming bid for these proposals, James Poulos, who has worked for his father at New Victoria Restaurant at the Belmont station for three decades, says it is hard to comment at this time.
“We have read a little bit about it but nobody has the details,” says James Poulos who has worked for his father, Dino, at Belmont’s New Victoria Restaurant for more than three decades. For those who are thinking about opening a place under the “L” tracks, Cheng says, “If you can get the lease, I would go for it. But if the CTA needed me to move, I would.”
“Absolutely,” says Schivarelli despite his disputes with the CTA. “It has been a great place for me. I would recommend underneath the `L’ to everybody. It’s close to transportation and easy for people to find. We just tell them we’re under the Fullerton `L’ on the DePaul campus.”
Frank advises prospective renters to decide first whether or not the noise would bother them, saying, “If they are opening a store that sells relaxation and feng shui goods I wouldn’t suggest it but if it is a cleaners or a fast-food place it might be good.”
