Looking to get away from Chicago’s miserable weather and the January blues, I took the opportunity last week to visit Yo’s home office in sunny Pittsburgh. Ok, maybe it isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but the junkets to our offices in Barbados and Honolulu already had been spoken for. Say what you will about Pittsburgh, it has a certain charm, which derives in no small part from embracing its working-class roots and its heritage as one of the great drinking towns in the U.S.
The same can’t be said of Chicago these days. This city, which also ranks high, some might say tops, for drinkability, has tried to deny its identity as a drinking town under the leadership of Mayor Richard M. Daley. He’s led an assault on taverns and liquor stores since taking office, his Liquor Commission denying or revoking licenses in heavy handed manner, sometimes even when nearby residents, the alderman and competing businesses give their stamp of approval to a purveyor of booze (witness the death of the BC Tap). Somewhere Mr. Dooley is turning in his grave.
Which brings us to Rogers Park. Ald. Joe Moore’s 49th Ward Land Use Advisory Committee held a community meeting last week to consider a new gourmet wine and food shop that wants to open at 1506 W Jarvis Ave. The property is being rezoned from B-1 to B-3 as part of a zoning re-map that would allow for such a shop. But the 49th Ward has a moratorium on licenses for packaged liquor in this area. To get a license for their proposed “Flangelato” store, entrepreneurs Eric Aubriot and Jamie Evans need the moratorium temporarily lifted from that two-block stretch of Jarvis.
My prediction is that once the committee reconvenes to make a recommendation to the city, Aubriot and Evans will get their way, and I see no reason why they shouldn’t. The corner of Jarvis and Greenview, which is being packaged as “Jarvis Square,” offers a glimmer of light in Rogers Park’s otherwise bleak landscape for retail, restaurants and bars.
The Jarvis el stop on the CTA’s Red Line – the center of the Square – makes the businesses readily accessible to non-locals, and residents who live nearby are thrilled and a little amazed to see a small cluster of businesses opening here nearly simultaneously. “It sort of feels like a college town,” one nearby resident said, half ironically, but half seriously too. Dan Sullivan of LAMS Real Estate can take credit for the momentum. He’s the chief landlord on the strip, and when he hasn’t been able to find the sorts of businesses he wants – a deli and a coffee shop, for instance – he opens them himself.
A used bookstore recently closed shop on the southeast corner of Jarvis and Greenview, but used bookstores are pretty tough propositions in any location these days. A massage studio, The Lumbar Lounge, appears to be thriving at 1505 W Jarvis Ave, and next door, Rogers Bark, is meeting strong demand from local dog owners. Next to these two businesses is the new Side Project Theatre space, where during our recent visit, Dream Theatre Company was running a play called “The Baby Killers.”
Kitty-corner from these new businesses, is the terribly named Dagel and Beli Shop, a new deli at 7406 N Greenview, and Charmers Cafe, a coffee shop at 1500 W Jarvis Ave, located in the same building as the sandwich shop for spoonerists. West of Charmers is Poitin Stil (a reference to making moonshine in Irish), a charming new pub, and next door to the bar, is Gruppo di Amici, an excellent new Italian restaurant with gourmet pizzas, pasta and surprisingly good lists for both wine and beer.
Gruppo di Amici sits in the old Jarvis Liquors space, which brings me, circuitously, I’ll admit, back to my original point. You can open a new bar or a store selling wine and liquor in Chicago, but your odds seem to be much better if you also sell $8 blocks of gouda, or if the lights are suspended from the ceiling by thin chrome wires. I wish Flangelato the best – it will probably be a great addition to the strip – but would a shop called J.J.’s Liquors, selling Slim Jims and pork rinds instead of pate and camembert, as well as booze, be any less likely to serve the needs of surrounding residents? Is a fancy-sounding foreign name now a requirement for opening a bar or liquor store in Chicago? And is alcoholism any less troubling in someone who can afford truffles?
Speaking as someone who once drove from Kentucky, where alcohol sales were forbidden on Sundays, to Ohio to buy a case of beer, the logic of closing liquor stores to prevent drinking seems to me flawed at best. But if we’re going to take this paternalistic approach with The BC Tap and Dave’s Liquor Locker, we ought to take a harder look at Rush Street and some of the gourmet shops in and around the Gold Coast. It’s the guys who can afford to drink the most – and have enough cash left over to buy Volvos – who worry me.
“And is alcoholism any less troubling in someone who can afford truffles?
It’s the guys who can afford to drink the most – and have enough cash left over to buy Volvos – who worry me.”
I can’t tell if the author is being sarcastic here or just uber-PC. On one hand, alcoholics who aren’t destitute may have better access to resources for recovery. On the other hand, an alcoholic who can afford a car (much less a luxurious and powerful Volvo or enormous SUV) would seem to be more of a danger to society if they get behind the wheel.
Wouldn’t an alcoholic on Rush Street be more likely to cab it home to their Gold Coast high-rise condo?
I don’t know which neighborhood deserves more bars or how much gouda a barkeeper needs to sell to turn a profit these days or whom should be driving a Volvo, but I do know that Rogers Park is on its way up, a warm body brimming with life. The Gold Coast, as my buddy Spooner once pointed out, is nothing but a cold ghost.
are the crack rocks you can buy at the Jarvis stop gourmet also?
At least in the Eastern portion, Rogers Park is a lot like Edgewater. High-density and similar architecture. I’ve always liked the area – reminds me a bit of NYC. But I’m not always sure that the area can make a complete turnaround. Changes, yes. But complete turnaround, I’m not sure.
I’m in favor of this store. The discussion of alcohol here seems to reflect a limited understanding of the problem.
Alcoholism strikes across all the societal boundaries: race, income, education. However, when combined with underlying mental illness, poverty, and homelessness, the misery alcoholism causes is vastly increased. Among very poor alcoholics, child and spousal abuse is greatly higher, among many other specific problems. Reducing easy access to cheap alcohol does help the poorest alcoholics and their families.
On the topic of liquor, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. No one claims that fighting cheap liquor stores can fix all problems – it can’t. But we can decrease some of the problems, and that is worth doing.
Just a few weeks ago, I caught a liquor store in Rogers Park selling cheap alcohol in forms they had committed not to sell. I’m looking at a 24 oz can of “Camo Black Ice,” which cost $1.75 and is 10.5% alcohol by volume. No one drinks Camo Black Ice for the flavor. The only purpose of such a product is to serve poverty-stricken alcoholics.
Here’s one alcoholic’s tally of the cost of his habit:
http://raanch.com/2006/02/unexpected-windfall.html
Here’s the story of catching the liquor store in bad deeds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93RoKJUQse8
I hope they sell foie gras. It’s impossible to find in Rogers Park. Mmmmm.
I’d like to see the proof that:
“Reducing easy access to cheap alcohol does help the poorest alcoholics and their families.”
Speaking as someone who is close to a number of alcoholics, I’d say reducing easy access to booze does exactly nothing to help the poorest alcoholics. Or the wealthiest. And again, I’m really bothered by the condescending, paternalistic attitude that we need to worry more about poor alcoholics. It smacks of the double standard we created by sentencing crack users to longer jail terms that powder cocaine users. Next you’ll tell me this is ok because powder cocaine snorters don’t beat their kids as frequently as crack heads.
The only drinking that “reducing easy access” will cut down on is that of casual drinkers considering a glass of wine, which they can take or leave, with dinner. The hardcore drunk will take a train and three buses for a single can of beer, and he’ll be more likely to drink it in public (if that’s your real worry) if he has to travel farther from home to get it.
I don’t know about that train and three buses thing, Pearce.
The hardcore drunks I knew would look around for some Nyquil and read the after-shave labels long before they hit the train.
I think you’re far more off base though with your sorry liberal cant about crack versus powder cocaine users.
You can’t really believe the sentencing disparity is simply a matter of poor vs affluent. The types of behaviors engaged in by crack cocaine users and their rap sheets differ pretty radically from those of powder cocaine users from everything I know.
Hey, the poor can by and large get along just as well without the paternalistic pomposity. It seems to do a lot mmore for the concerned than for the poor.
The liquor license moratoriums for package goods stores is not necessarily meant to keep people from drinking but rather aimed at areas where they are congregating on corners and harassing pedestrians. Granville in Edgewater being a good recent example. The area containing two liquor stores which had very troublesome customers was voted dry in hopes that the customers would no longer be on the corner in front of the store.