The space into which Jenny Zervas moved last August and in which she operates a store called Pandora’s Box, at 4363 W. Irving Park Rd., used to be a bar. It was “Amber Lounge, or something like that,” says Zervas. “It was the perfect size.”
The demise of the neighborhood tavern was recently chronicled in these pages by Pat Reardon. That story reminded some of the observation once made by New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling about Chicago saloons: “New York bars operate on the simple principle that you want a drink or you wouldn’t be there . . . Chicago bars assume that nobody likes liquor, and that to induce the customers to purchase even a minute quantity, they have to provide a show.”
Pandora’s Box has shows, in the form of exhibits by local photographers, that change every six weeks or so.
Go for a show but also to see (and maybe even buy) all sorts of interesting items, from handsomely made furniture to plants, flowers and candles. Much of the big stuff comes from estate sales on the North Shore and in Wisconsin.
“I like to call what I offer domestic eclectic,” says Zervas, who adds that many of the people living in the fine homes of the Old Irving Park neighborhood are regular patrons.
Zervas, who previously ran a shop called the 11th Hour in Athens, Ga., came to Chicago in the mid-1990s to seek fame and fortune as a comedy writer. She enjoyed studying at the Second City but found that comedy, much like crime (and poetry), didn’t pay.
She became a real estate agent, met and fell in love with an investment banker named Andy and had three children: George, now 5; Socrates, 4, and Antigone, 2. “What sort of names do you expect from an English major?” Servas asks, when complimented on the choice of kids’ names.
Zervas and family live in Wilmette but she is in love with her store’s neighborhood.
“It’s really wonderful for me to have some of the folks who live around here come in for a visit on their daily walks,” she says, a hint of the South still in her voice. “Most of them never buy any-thing but just look around. They’ll say, ‘Thanks for giving me someplace to go.’ I know this sounds corny but that makes this all so worthwhile.”
