An Alcoholic Evolution

How the drinking environment of a Chicago neighborhood seemed to change over a generation

Rogers Park Social, Chicago

I took a chair on the sidewalk last week outside a bar called Rogers Park Social and ordered the special of the day, the Gin Tonica. A big snifter arrived, containing tonic and gin, nectarine slices and blueberries. It was backed by a half-shot of Gummi bears.

I have been to this bar before. It is operated by nice people who run a clean joint and know how to make money. The Gin Tonica cost $13 and change.

I used to go to this bar regularly after work, when it was half the size and twice as dark. None of the drinks had any fruit in them, with the possible exception of lemons and limes or grapefruit and cranberry juice. And if you got one of those kinds of drinks, you took the risk that people would think you weren’t being serious enough about your drinking anymore.

That was two ownerships ago, when the tavern was called Helen & Gabby’s. Helen was a friendly,  street-smart Southerner, and Gabby was a Japanese guy who seemed scary to everyone except his friends. 

I was, of course, Gabby’s friend. I visited his joint several times a week and didn’t pick fights. That was all it took.

Helen and Gabby didn’t hang a television set on the wall. It was a matter of pacing. If you watch TV, you might occasionally forget the reason you came in was to drink.

Rogers Park Social does have TV sets. The first time I went there, about five years ago, I was looking for a place to watch the second half of a Bears-Lions game while I waited for my kid to finish some activity or another. I don’t watch a lot of football, but I find it fun to do in a crowd.

The sets were on, but they were tuned to a home-improvement program. People in the bar were having animated conversations about pets and lawns and zoning codes. They were a gentle, relaxed, diverse bunch, and no one seemed to miss football, so I quietly moved on.

As I left, I considered how unusual such relatively high-brow conversions would have been in the 1980s version of this 6920 N. Glenwood Ave. tavern that I was more familiar with. There was a gent who used to bring the Tribune and the New York Times to read while he sat at the bar, and he had a tough time finding anyone to talk to about what he read.

No one bothered to learn his name. Everybody just called him “Newspapers.”

I remember walking north on Glenwood Avenue that football Sunday and seeing two signs on the next establishment. One said “WHISKEY BAR” and the other said “CLOSED.”

Nineteenth-century drunks fought in the streets to keep the saloons open on Sunday, I thought. The least you could do is show up.

At the third or fourth tavern, I found the game on. I sat down to the right of two guys, one of whom was from Detroit.

Having witnessed the rage of intoxicated Michigan sports fans, I offered an olive branch up front, commenting how fondly I remembered the World Series in which the Tigers beat the Cards in seven games. 

“I don’t know,” the guy from Detroit said. “That’s baseball, right?”

He and his friend gabbed their way through the third quarter. The young lady on my other side walked over to turn on the jukebox. I told her if she didn’t play it, I’d buy her a drink. 

“No, thanks.”

I didn’t argue. What’s so bad about someone who doesn’t want to drink her way through four quarters, and would rather listen to something she can dance to? Nothin’.

In the old days, most of the neighborhood’s taverns were populated by people whose lives revolved around alcohol and drugs. Sometimes, you could tell how much by how they were known.

“Is that really his name?”

“Well, not at birth … ” Jimmy Warner replied.

“Let me try. See if he turns around.”

“I wouldn’t.”

I did. “Hey. Ratboy.”

He turned around.

One time, Jimmy asked me to come with him to an apartment where his ex-wife was dying of liver failure. I saw her through the crowd around the bed. She was yellow as a dandelion.

Most of the visitors were drunks, Jimmy told me. None of them seemed worried about their own livers.

I forget the name of a nice old man who used to frequently drink at H&G. We’d take turns making sure he got home.

One night, he insisted on leaving on his own. I found him in the alley, sitting up against the wall.  

“C’mon, pour yourself into the car, and I’ll ride ya home,” I said. 

“No, go on ahead,” he said. “I can’t get up yet.” 

I sat down next to him on the rain-slick pavement. “Lemme know when you think your legs have come back.”

They eventually came back enough for me to drag him to his feet.

That was the last time I saw him. He died after I stopped coming in.

Gabby drank more than Helen. He had an argument with her one Christmas Eve, and he stayed behind at their house while she visited relatives for a few days. When she got home, she found him at the bottom of the stairs. She sold the tavern a relatively short time later.

After I gave up on the Bears game that Sunday five years ago, I excused myself and walked to the grocery store on Morse Avenue. Along the way, I passed what used to be the Top Hat lounge.

I remembered going in there one night, asking for my usual, bourbon rocks. The owner was tending bar, wearing a starched white-on-white shirt with neatly-folded sleeves. His shiny black receding hair had been recently trimmed.

“Do you always drink like that? A guy like you?” he asked. “Why don’t you have a drink with me this once.”

He dropped three ice cubes into each of two glasses, and pulled a bottle of kummel off the top shelf. “Watch the glasses after I pour,” he said.

Smoky oil seemed to rise off the ice cubes, swirling through the clear liquor. He raised his glass. “Salud,” he said.

“You taste a little anise, right? What else?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It almost tastes like rye bread.”

Exactly, he said. “It’s made with caraway seeds, the seeds that bakers put in rye bread.”

He slipped a coaster under my glass. “Drink something special, or don’t drink at all,” he said. “Don’t drink with the intention of turning off your mind.”

His was good advice, and I actually accepted it. It’s not easy to appreciate advice, good or otherwise. Everybody told him, for instance, not to trust the hard young woman he would later let into his life. He didn’t take their advice. That was the end of the Top Hat.

Many of the customers of Rogers Park Social seem to respect the concept of drinking special instead of hard. They buy a lot of Gin Tonicas. 

They’re different kinds of people, of course. For one thing, they seem to have more dogs than children, which can definitely cut down on the number of glasses you raise.

And most of them don’t seem broke.

Of all the people who came into the H&G, I only remember one who had what I’d call a good job: Civil engineer, retired. We used to drive cabs, shovel asphalt, wash windows, carry bricks. The kinds of things that shorten your life, luckily, because you’ll be left with no money to retire, anyway. Funny how things work out.

When I was finishing up the Gin Tonica, the bartender came by and remarked that this was the first time he had seen me come in alone. I nodded.

“I didn’t start out alone tonight,” I said, shaking my head with a wink and a smile. “That’s why I needed a drink.”

He smiled back. “I know how that is, darling,” he said. 

Darling, he called me. Not the person I really need to hear that from, I thought, but then again, if we all heard that more often, they’d probably sell less cheap bourbon.

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