2004-11-28 - 2:58 p.m.
Through the Center of It All
This Thanksgiving weekend was filled with pleasant surprises. Hung out with Joey all weekend in our Southeast Side neighborhood. Thanksgiving itself was a wash. Did all the usual Thanksgiving-type stuff. But the REAL fun didn’t really begin until the day after Thanksgiving.
Friday, after my early morning bike ride, Joey and I hung out at his place. The day, like most days hanging out with Joey, included napping, and eating pasta at his mother’s house. In the morning, Joey, his older sister Gina (a psychology major), and I sat around and talked. Gina suggested I take a personality test. The Myers-Briggs test was developed by Carl Jung and, said Gina, these days most companies use it to weed out malcontents. Gina guessed that I am an ISTP and after taking the test, we found that I am an INTP, which stands for Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving (or some such thing). Basically, I tend to stay in my own little world, prefer a small group of close friends, and alienate those around me by seeming self-absorbed. It said I’m good at learning things such as math (which was wrong) or languages (which was dead on!). It also said that I would be good at doing types of work such as writing and editing. We tried to get Joey to take the test, but he’d have none of it. Gina left and then it was time for a nap. (Joey is the king of naps.)
Joey let me shower at his place again (he would all weekend) and once again even supplied a fresh towel (although it took some arguing to get one). We went over to his parents’ place where his mother had made two huge pans of lasagna. After eating and watching the drama involving his neighbors unfold, it was off to get a gift for Papa and Mama Fazul, as we would be eating dinner at their house the next day.
We headed to a flower shop in Whiting, Indiana—home of Joey’s girl, Mrs. DLH. As we headed down 119th Street, Joey suggested we stop off for “one beer” at a place called Center Lounge. So, at about 3:00 pm, we went into Center Lounge for one beer—and then another, and another, and more. The drinking started out slowly and we ate our first of would become several plates of potato pierogi.
The bartender was a woman named “Colleen” and over the course of the night, we would find out that she was from the East Side, and although she is almost twenty years older than I am, we know some of the same people. She even knows Papa Fazul’s sister. Joey started talking to her first—about bar stuff and then about the East Side and the North Side. When Colleen’s sister was 17 years old, she moved to the North Side. For the next 20 years, Colleen, like a lot of East Siders, would make the trip up north and, after a long night of partying, make the drive south.
After Joey found out that Colleen is from the East Side, they began to play East Side Trivial Pursuit. We talked about all the different bars on the East Side. (She used to be a bartender at several of the bars.) She told us what they were like and what they were called two or three names ago.
I often suggest to Joey that we go into a bar on the East Side that looks really seedy. The facade has a huge, cement Schlitz beer logo. Based on that, I think the inside would be great in a scary sort of way. “Dude, I’m not going in there! Dude, we will get our asses kicked if we go in there,” is Joey’s usual response. We asked Colleen about it and she told us she’s been in there.
“What’s it like?”
“It used to be a hillbilly bar. You can’t tell from the outside, but they’ve got this great stained-glass window in there. It’s huge. And, I don’t know if they still do, but, a friend of mine, when she wanted to hear country music—we would go there ‘cause they had nothing but country music on the jukebox. And it was, like, REAL country music, not the stuff you hear on the radio now. But yeah, it was sometimes scary because it was a hillbilly bar and there was always a fight breaking out. People would use pool cues and hit each other with them.”
Joey and Colleen talked about neighborhood people, specifically Italians. Colleen used to live near the park that most locals know as “Dago Park” because it was a predominantly Italian neighborhood. It was great to hear them talk about what the neighborhood was once like. I sat there trying to put the names of the bars together with the buildings that housed the bars. They talked about some of the shadier characters and the some of the rougher, thug types.
A couple of hours had passed and Joey and I went through four plates of pierogi, two bottles of beer, five or six pints, and a shot of tequila. Colleen’s shift ended and she joined us on the other side of the bar. She sat next to me and, as Joey had just come back from the washroom, he stood in between us—a spot he’d occupy for the rest of the night. Colleen ordered a shot of tequila mixed with some weird tequila liquer type thing that didn’t seem like it should even exist.
She told us about a bar that was frequented by cops (both on and off duty) and how at any given time, one could walk around to the back of the place and see tons of cop cars parked back there. The building is famous in the neighborhood because in the middle of it, on the left side, there’s an alcove that houses a statue of a man who appears to be holding up the building. When we were kids, whenever my father drove past it, my brother, sister, and I would each try to be the first to point at it and shout as quickly as possible, “Man holding up a building! Man holding up a building! Man holding up a building!” Turns out, two men once tried to hold up the bar. As usual, it was filled with cops and when the guys drew their guns and announced, “This is a stick up!” all hell broke loose. The cops pulled their guns, people hit the deck, and shots were fired. The guys tried to escape and were shot before they reached their getaway car, which was parked about a half block away. (Saturday, Papa Fazul gave us an ending to that story.)
The movie “Barfly” came up and I told Colleen how I’d loved that movie as a teenager and how I eventually hung out at a dive bar in South Chicago because the people there reminded me of that movie.
“Did you ever know a guy named Jacques that lived there and a guy name Edward?” she asked.
“Yes! I knew them very well!” I told her. “Edward was my best-friend for a while. We would hang out and he would come to my house for the holidays and everything. How do you know them?”
“I used to tend bar at Banner and they used to come in there all the time. That’s when Edward was living with his uncle Slim.”
“Yeah. I met him after that though. Maybe it’s ‘cause I looked so weird as a teenager, but I always attracted the street people. They would always talk to me. But Edward never did. When I’d see him walking down the street, he’d just stare at me. I thought he looked so cool because he used to wear these 1950s glasses—”
“With the tape on the sides and in the middle?” she asked, demonstrating with her hands where the tape was placed.”
“Yeah and he always wore a suit—”
“The same old suit and it always looked too small.”
“Yeah. I thought he was weird, like a serial killer or something, but he looked really cool.”
“Yeah, I liked him,” she said. “He was harmless, but when he didn’t take his medication, he could get out of control.”
“Yeah.”
“I remember one time, he was so drunk that he leaned back in his bar stool and fell backwards. I had to pick him up off the ground. ‘You’re not mad at me, are you Colleen?’ he’d say.”
“Yeah. Out of all the street people, he was the only one who never talked to me. Then one day, my friend JC was talking to him and I said, ‘You KNOW that guy?’ ‘Yeah. That’s Edward,’ he said. ‘He looks like a serial killer,’ I said. ‘Naw, man. Edward’s cool,’ he said.
Joey was standing there in disbelief listening to the two of us talk. “Dude! This is so weird that the two of you know some of the same people. I can’t even believe this! You used to hang out with some crazy guy named Edward and your mom let him in your house for holiday dinners!?”
“Yeah. He was my friend.”
“I can’t believe the two of you, who seem to have nothing in common, know the same people,” Joey said looking at Colleen and me. “This is just—I CAN’T believe this!”
Colleen went on and we talked about the gay, or semi-gay, bar that used to be on the East Side. At one point, the owner had his own cable access show.
“Yes. That’s right!” Colleen said.
“I can’t think of the name of his co-host.”
“Miss Buttercup!”
“Yeah! That’s it! Miss Buttercup.”
Turns out we also knew people who played in a band that played covers of New Wave songs.
“So did you know Skafish?” Colleen asked.
“Yes, I knew Skafish!”
Joey stood there in wide-eyed disbelief. “What!? Who!? Wait! Who’s this Skafish guy?”
“He was this outrageous musician,” I said. “You know the DJ Bobby Skafish?”
“Yeah.” Joey said.
“Well that’s this guy’s cousin.”
“Oh. I thought the name sounded familiar.”
“So you knew Skafish,” Colleen said.
“Yeah. I actually took a couple of piano lessons from him.”
“You took piano lessons from him?” she asked.
“Yeah. But really, only a few. He even let me play in his band once.”
“Yeah. He was something else. I remember once when we were out, he wanted me to drag him across the floor. I guess he liked to be tortured or something. But we went to see him all the time. I guess I was a Skafish groupie. I had all his records too,” she said.
“Yeah. Did you ever see the movie Urg! A Music War?”
“What?!?” Joey asked.
“He was in a movie. It was this movie that had a bunch of different bands in it and he was in it too,” I explained.
Joey stood there shaking his head.
After a few more beers and two more shots of tequila, we decided to call it a night. We thanked Colleen for a good time and she let us know her work schedule so that if we’re in the area then, we could stop by.
Joey couldn’t believe the evening. “Dude! I just can’t believe that you, a little Mexican dude from Slag Valley, knows the same people as this Irish woman who’s almost, like, twice your age.”
“Yeah. Isn’t that strange?”
“That’s totally weird dude. Dude. I can’t believe this, dude. This is just too weird. You’re gonna have to write this down.”
And so I just did.
