My Kind of Town

I thought it might be fun if people posted about various places, events, neighborhoods, festivals, stores, eateries, etc in the city. Today I'm going to cover The Abbey Pub.

A neighborhood feature at 3420 West Grace Street, Chicago, IL 60618 since 1973, The Abbey Pub is a pub and restaurant featuring live music, open mic nights, karaoke, sports events, and an Irish-American brunch on the weekends. If you're looking for your fill of rugby, soccer, and Gaelic Football in a convivial atmosphere, The Abbey Pub is the place for you. They also have a unique bi-level seating arrangement. I like to go onto the second floor, order food, and look down at the band and crowd below while eating.

Then stand to your glasses steady
And drink to your comrade’s eyes
Here’s a toast to the dead already
And hurrah for the next who dies.



Chicago's Whitechapel Club, founded in 1889 and named after the area Jack the Ripper did his killings, only lasted five years. But what an interesting five years those were.

The Whitechapel Club was a private organization founded primarily by young journalists who talked about social reform (even if it was tongue-in-cheek talking, it was still talking), and who couldn't afford the dues --or stomach the company-- of the more respectable (and more expensive) Press Club. They shaved their faces while the Press Club members wore whiskers. They were young while the Press Club members were old. They met in a tavern, ducking in through an alley, while the Press Club members met in cafes and hotels.

The main requirement to be inducted into the Whitechapel Club was "wit and good fellowship," and 3 other members had to testify to your having both. Many members were not journalists, but were literary writers, politicians, police officers, merchants, and others with at least a passing interest in social reform, and an iconoclastic nature. They also, of course, had to be raconteurs, performers. Members would gather, drink, wrestle, tell stories, sing songs, read bits of things they were working on, do a bit of stand up comedy, and insult each other.

They also drank out of human skulls and used human skulls with glass bead eyes for shades on the gaslights. They sat at a table made of a coffin and their walls were hung with allegedly-blood-soaked Indian blankets and ghost shirts. They had a definite taste for the macabre and unusual. And at the close of each meeting, they'd sing the club's drinking song, The Revel:



WE meet ’neath the sounding rafter,
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout back our peals of laughter
It seems that the dead are there.
Then stand to your glasses, steady!
We drink in our comrades’ eyes:
One cup to the dead already—
Hurrah for the next that dies!

Vida Breve...

The National Museum of Mexican Art, in Pilsen, is hosting "the largest annual day of the dead exhibition in the nation" from September 10th to December 13th, with the opening reception on Friday, September 10th, from 6:00pm-8:30pm. Check out their web page for more details!

The 32nd Annual Chicago Jazz Festival will be September 2nd-5th, a free event spread across 3 venues and 4 days. Don't miss the city's longest running lakefront music festival!