"We going honky-tonkin tonight, babe?" is the question, around 4:30, just before I crawl out of whatever soft piece of furniture I've been ensconced in for many hours, reading thousands of vitriol-filled comments about the U.S. political process, and wipe off any bad-vibes slime that might have stuck to me. My job, you see. But that's another story...
Hooray! I think. Hooray, I say. I love the Empty Bottle, its dive-bar exterior, its late-afternoon sunny pool room, its adorable doorperson, its funny little hand stamps (bunnies, spiderwebs), its bony black cat (who prowls the poolroom, settles magisterially into the single couch by the bathroom door, or crawls into people's laps), its huge beer list, its camaraderie, its hooks under the bar for your outerclothing (winter in Chicago, you know), its almost-but-not-quite-dark bar and music room, its ancient hand-written signs and photos hanging around the bar, referring back to days gone by (when you could smoke in a bar), its occasional video loop played on the lone television at the end of the bar of men walking into the men's room and turning the light off.... I could go on and on.
Most of all, though, I love the Hoyle Brothers.
Mike's friend, Lefty, a man famous throughout the city, a man I have grown to love, first took Mike there, back in the days when I lived in another city. I remember Mike telling me about the place, and the Friday band, on the phone. Back when we used to conduct our relationship in brief bursts of in-person interaction peppered with long spells of many many telephone interactions. I wanted to go honky-tonkin back then, and I was dying to go once I got here.
So, hooray!
We drive over, and as the days have lengthened, so has the probability of catching some sun when we get there. Usually, one of Mike's musician friends is lounging outside, smoking in the late afternoon rays, when we show up. So we all stand outside and smoke (do you see a pattern weaving in and out of this post yet? hmmmm) and then we go in through the double glass doors and say hi to the door guy (adorable) and walk through the light-filled poolroom (not smoky grrrrr), past the couch and the cat, into the back room, where the band is rockin and the bar is packed.
And there's a reason for this, let me tell you. This band is great. These guys are all accomplished musicians, they play Bob Wills and Dale Watson and Patsy Cline, they play their own stuff, they play blues occasionally, people dance, people drink, people laugh, it's great. They pass the hat (actually, the beer pitcher) once or twice during the show, and I sure hope they get lots of cash...
They've got a guitar player who is spectacular, and a pedal steel guy who is also. The singer reminds me of Robert Gordon a little, kinda rockabilly with a small neat dark pompadour, fresh blue jeans and an acoustic guitar. I mean, really, where do you get a band of this quality and skill for free on a Friday evening? These guys are really accomplished musicians and they play fun, foot-stomping, beautiful music.
I look around and all kindsa people are hanging out -- the barflies, the musicians, the older couples, the young hipsters, people prowling for members of the opposite sex, the occasional out of towners, the locals, everyone is here. And everyone is loving it.
The band plays from 5:30 to 7:30, taking a coupla breaks. The place gets more and more crowded. We talk to folks, we dance a little in our corner, we drink... Toward the end of the show, the tamale guy wanders through the bar, selling plastic bags of cheese, chicken or pork confections, $5 a bag, out of a cooler. If we have space at the bar, we open the bags and pull out the little containers of red and green hot sauce, and eat the tamales, cleaning up afterward. The bartenders are great, I get the feeling they really don't care so long as you make it the way it was before you ate.
Sometimes, when the band is finished and the band that's gonna play later is setting up, I have a rush of sadness, that there is nowhere to go now, nowhere where this can just continue, no immediate gratification/continuation, a place where we can keep rockin and rollin, eat a little, drink some more, listen to more music. But no, in order to continue you have to wait a coupla hours and that has been our downfall many a Friday. Either we go home with plans to go out later (you know how that ends up -- in bed, snoozing, or simply too mellow to get it together to go anywhere), or we just give in to the inevitable, stopping off somewhere for dinner on the way home, ending up in bed, smooching and snoozing.
Back to the bar, though. Back to the Empty Bottle. We go outside to smoke. Again, grrrrrrr. But now, as spring approaches, it's not so bad. Still, last night when we got there, as we walked into the dim back room, the band, the music, the packed room with its beat-up wood floor, I turned to Mike and said, "I wanna light up so bad, right now, right here." I wanted to drink my Irish, smoke my cigarette, jump and dance, kiss my guy, listen to my music, all at one time, in one place.
And so, at last, we get to the the secondary theme of this post. What the fuck is the deal with the spreading smoking ban, a plague of government nannyism that is creeping around the world, with officials wagging their fingers at citizens, treating them like bad little children while refusing to suck it up and just ban cigarettes if it's really all about health.... I'm so sick of it. When Bloomberg did it in New York, it completely changed nightlife for this night owl. And day life, and cafe life, and bar life... The list goes on and on.
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And for those of you who say, "Well, I didn't want to be in a bar with those nasty smokers, so I'm happy," all you had to do was make it a 50/50 split: half bar licenses with smoking, half bar licenses without. Then all of us, as grownups, could have decided which bar we wanted to go to. I think it's all a petty jealousy thing. You nonsmokers, who've been bitching about the stinky smoke, wouldn't want to be in a bar where we, the disgusting smokers, were NOT, because wherever we were, it was fun. That's where people were partying, that's where people were listening to great music and dancing in dark barrooms, where love and laughs and raucous misbehavior made for memorable nights out.
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I really believe this is a massive conspiracy to crack down on fun. A sign of the times. I suppose fun isn't patriotic.
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So I've been through it in New York, where my whole going-out life changed. The low point was one horrible cold spring day when I was wandering in the East Village, after doing some errands, wanting to just sit down somewhere outside (since inside was no longer an option) and drink a cuppa coffee with a smoke, and I couldn't find any place, no place, not one cafe or bar where I was allowed to sit OUTSIDE and smoke. I thought longingly of Paris, of my neighborhood cafe, Chez Prune, where I would go every morning for coffee and talk and company and good music, and I could sit outside or inside, with food or without, with alcohol or without, with caffeine or without, sitting inside looking out the long front window at the canal under the young spring green trees, or sitting out front, looking at the lazy ripples on the water, the swing bridge up at the next street, daydreaming, drinking coffee or wine, smoking.
Yes, smoking in Paris. Which has now gone the way of all things.... New York, Ireland, Italy, California, now Chicago... And, of all places, France. At least in Paris, it's never so cold that you can't sit outside on the terrasse, with the terrible inefficient mushroom heaters that only work if you're sitting on top of them, bundled up, granted, since it is a kind of gray bone-deep damp chill that never seems to end. So in Paris, you could, as they seem to be doing, still sit outside.
But alas, in New York, my once dangerous seedy edgey fun exciting hometown that wasn't regimented like a finely tuned army of kindergartners playing follow the leader, it's way too cold in the winter to sit outside. And, as my anecdote above demonstrates, one cannot even sit outside and smoke anymore, as sidewalk terraces have been deemed dangerous second-hand smoke areas.
And alas, I have discovered in these past months, one cannot even think about sitting outside in a Chicago winter. Brrrrrr. No way, no how. Even going outside to smoke is a serious drag.
So here we are, sheep who have been told we can't smoke a legal substance that is sold almost everywhere and provides a huge revenue stream for almost everyone involved in this fiasco -- except, of course, the victims of the smoking ban, who continue to pay higher and higher prices for tobacco products, which continue to be sold legally -- sheep who must now go to bars where we can't use said legal product. Sheep who have to stand outside in little huddles, bundled up against the fierce freeze, hopping and shuffling in little packs outside all the bars. Mike always points out that those people are not inside, spending money on drinks.
Of course, whenever a smoking ban goes into effect in a new place, there's an underground, under-the-radar rebellion that goes on, sooner or later, that leads to the development of a kind of smoke-easy mentality, where select bars allow patrons to smoke late at night, discreetly, putting out Altoid boxes, or paper cups filled with water, to act as ashtrays, where word spreads that this place or that place is tolerant, and the grapevine passes it along. I know that in New York there were a few places near my house that were like that. One can only hope that this kind of liberal-minded thumbing of noses will also occur in this city.
But for now, if it weren't for great bars like the Empty Bottle, and great bands like the Hoyle Brothers, we would just stay home and party alone, or with our smoker or smoker-tolerant friends, yummy food cooking, strong drinks flowing, excellent music blasting, windows open if necessary, having a grand old time.
As Mike says, "Fuck it, babe, let's just stay home. You can smoke, you can drink, you can eat, and there's no line for the bathroom."
yes, indeed, here we are (at st. alphonso's pancake breakfast). opening day has come and gone once again. and once again, zambrano did not get the win, wood looked shaky, at best, and the cubs lose by one...stinking...run. 
