I scribbled a few last notes in my small notepad, something about prohibition, or ghosts, then stuffed it in my bag. It was still early, on a chilly autumn afternoon in Chicago. I sat in an alley patio space belonging to an inconspicuous coffee shop on the north side that sat adjacent to the Irving Park brown line train stop. I had just finished wrapping up some final bits of research on six particularly historic drinking establishments in the city. The goal today was to visit these places, have at least one drink, and take in its history. Is there a better way to engrain Chicago within your own fabric than to set off on a journey through its modes of public transportation, bars, and history?

            My roommate, Bre, would be joining me for a few stops before she splits off with her own group of friends later. Bre and I had known each other from around 15 years ago when we shared similar friend circles in Arizona. It wasn’t until a string of circumstances led us to share a house that we became close friends. She took a sip of her cider and asked about the journey, “So, why are you doing this again?”

             “Because I don’t want there to be another situation where I live in Arizona for 10 years, and then I have to also explain to every single person why I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon,” I explained. As I finished my sentence a train came screeching by and we both sat staring at each other while we waited for it to pass.

            When the train was no longer audible, Bre asked, “Is that really the same thing though?”

            “It is to me. I’m not too worried about someone knowing I’ve never been to a Bulls game, but people know us as bar people,” I said, “I just want to be able to say that I’ve been to these places at least once.”

            “But does it have to be in one day?” she asked.

            “No, that part I added in just for fun.” I replied. We both laughed.

            I finished my coffee, and we set forth on our journey by taking the brown line south toward downtown. We got off at the Adams/Wabash stop, a stop I’m all too familiar with. Just east of it was the Art Institute of Chicago, an art museum that might have already made me its single-person attendance record holder had they tracked that sort of thing. West of the Adams/Wabash stop lied our destination: The Berghoff.

            The establishment was named after its original owner, Herman Berghoff, a German immigrant who brewed his own beer. Berghoff took his beer to the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 and sold it at the entrance to people entering and leaving the fair. His venture at the World’s Fair was so successful for him, he decided to sell his beer in Chicago permanently and opened up The Berghoff in 1893. During prohibition, Berghoff instead sold soda pop and German food, but once prohibition was lifted, Berghoff was able to snag Chicago’s very first post-prohibition liquor license. It has now become a yearly tradition for the city of Chicago to ensure that The Berghoff always receives the city’s first liquor license.

            I was amazed at how grand The Berghoff felt. Bright lights in drinking holes are usually a big “no” from me, but the bright lights provided a warm inviting yellow light. It was a mix of elegance and large family get together at grandma’s. Along one wall hung what looked to be early 20th century portrait paintings. I asked the bartender who they were and she told me they were all the previous owners. I turned around and looked again and spotted who could have possibly been Herman Berghoff himself, but it was a generous portrayal. Berghoff may have told the artist to shave off a few pounds. The cocktail area felt like a grand ballroom. I grabbed my beer and decided to roam. On a wall next to the bar, I spotted an old photo that was dated 1937, four years after prohibition was lifted. It was taken from a very high angle looking down toward the many men with their trilbies and fedoras, dressed neatly in suits in a very full, tightly packed Berghoff bar. Not much has changed, in fact the same chandeliers in the photo were the exact same ones there today.

            “It’s cozy,” Bre said.

            “Right? But it also feels… important… I guess.” I struggled to find the correct descriptor for what I meant. In hindsight, I meant historic, but I didn’t say that because it was too on the nose. I suppose I was still in awe at that point, but “historic” was the correct word. It was accentuated by the dozens of old photographs of the World’s Fair that lined The Berghoff’s walls. It felt like I was drinking in a museum. I guzzled down my beer and walked north to my next destination.

            It was around 4pm and I had already started to feel a bit more Chicagoan after such an experience. The city complimented my efforts by picking up the wind. As I headed north on State Street, I was greeted with the city’s soundtrack; the CTA trains on the elevated tracks would roar by periodically, police sirens wailed, and peoples’ conversations overlapped. On one block, a street performing pianist began to warm up and skipped his fingers across the keys, as I crossed onto the next block, a trio of drummers began to beat on flipped over buckets, and on another block a guitarist made his guitar croon a melancholic melody. I took it all in and prepared my liver for drink number two, located just across the river, sitting comfortably next to the Tribune tower, under an overpass: The Billy Goat Tavern.

            The Billy Goat Tavern is rife with history. From regulars Don Novello and Bill Murray  being inspired to write the famous “CHEEZBORGER” Olympia Café Saturday Night Live sketch, to its roots in the infamous Chicago Cubs curse of the Billy Goat, the humble tavern under the overpass has cemented itself within the city it resides in. SNL sketch, and sports curse aside, The Billy Goat Tavern is a writer’s bar. Legendary Chicago columnist Mike Royko was one of many great regular writers that drank here after a day and night of writing at the Sun Times or the Tribune. Historic regulars recall Royko loudly giving his strong opinions on politics and daily news, calling the attention of the entire bar.

            From under the overpass, I flung the door open to The Billy Goat Tavern and was immediately greeted by loud sizzling ground beef cooking on the grill. The cook looked up from flipping a patty and greeted Bre and I with a welcoming grin that stretched from ear to ear, “Hey welcome folks!” We waved.

            Bre turned and looked at me, “Okay, I’m starving, I’m gonna get a burger, are you good?”

            I nodded, “I’m good, I’m gonna wander then find us a seat at the bar.”

            We separated and I thought about where to even begin. I started by visiting a large wall to my left that held large letters that read WALL OF FAME. Under the letters were photos of legendary Chicago writers and under them, yellow tinged articles and columns belonging to the respective journalists. Mike Royko featured around the center of the wall, as well as famous Chicago sports columnist David Condon. At the other end of the Tavern was a Long “L” shaped bar. Above the bar, more writers, although here they were displayed more appropriately in letters spelling out their names rather than photos. The wall featured prolific Chicago writers names such as Royko, Ebert, and Roeper. There wasn’t a single blank space on the wall as they were filled with photos of famous visiting celebrities, and article cut outs of Chicago columns and Chicago sports news.

            I finally took a seat at the bar where Bre found me a couple of minutes later with a messy burger.

            “It’s one of those poorly presented burgers that taste really good,” she said. Funnily enough, that also worked as a great description for the essence of the bar. It wasn’t fancy, and there wasn’t a particular order to the photos and articles hanging on the walls, but the chaotic presence of it all seemed perfectly appropriate.  What the bar lacked in meticulous design, it made up for in its abundance of character.

            “Sunflowers!” A voice called out to us just beyond our peripheral view.

            We turned our heads to see our happy smiling bartender resting one hand on her hip and the other on the bar. She was in her mid-fifties and gave off a warm aura. Her hair was curly, wild, and eccentric. Had she straightened her curly hair and wore it flat, it’d fall around her knees, instead it was volumized, and rested around the middle of her back. Bre and I glanced at each other, confused, then back at our bartender.

            “Your earrings,” the bartender pointed at Bre’s ears, “I like your sunflower earrings!”

            “Oh, thank you! I forgot I was wearing them,” Bre blushed then replied, “Oh my gosh, I just noticed yours!”

            The bartender tilted her head and placed her fingers behind her ears to show off her own sunflower earrings. I ordered a beer and as Bre and our bartender conversed I looked over to a spot at the bar tucked away in a corner. On the wall, beside the corner, a sign read “WISE GUYS CORNER.” I read later on the bar’s website that that particular corner was “a spot made famous by people who make other people famous.” Two men sat at this corner, one larger man with gray hair wearing glasses, and dressed casually in a long sleeve t-shirt and jeans. The other man wore an expensive blue suit, an expensive beige scarf, with an expensive gold watch, and was clean shaven with a sharp combed haircut. I imagined the larger gentleman to be a writer having a conversation with an expensive taste politician maybe. I then couldn’t help but picture in their place a younger Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper arguing about a movie they just saw. Ebert possibly ranting about the valuable themes while Roeper criticized certain technical aspects. Roger Ebert once recalled a time when Mike Royko called him a “doofus” for not knowing the difference between a hockey highlight reel and an actual hockey game over multiple shots of blackberry brandy. I placed an image of that story in that corner of the bar and finished my beer.

            Bre left to meet with some of her friends, and I took the Grand bus heading west to Franklin, where I would walk north to my next historic bar. When I made a right on Franklin from Grand, I could already see in the distance the brightly lit sign that read “GREEN DOOR TAVERN.” The Green Door Tavern was a speakeasy during prohibition run by Al Capone’s rival gang, “The North Side Gang,” ran by Dean O’Banion. Today, the secret speakeasy is hidden downstairs next to the bathroom. A nearby wall holds a grid of cubby holes with each square holding different tiny little trinkets: a chipped mug, porcelain ducks, tiny little plastic bears. In one of these cubby holes is a doorknob in which one can turn to reveal that the wall is actually door.  

            When I stepped into the speakeasy, now called “The Drifter,” I was transported back in time. Large velvet drapes covered sections of the walls. On another wall hung what looked to be a large fabric tent entrance opening with words that read: “CHINESE WONDER: Adults Only.” There were only about 20 available spots to sit at any time and only about four were available, so I quickly sat at an open space at the bar. As I sat, the bartender greeted me and quickly ran through some rules with me, “No bright lights, turn down phone brightness, 90 minutes maximum, and if you’re here when the show starts, we charge you an $8 cover charge.” The show was often a modern burlesque or magic show. She then handed me a menu and eight tarot cards. “These are specialty cocktails,” the bartender said pointing at the cards.

            This was where the original Green Door Tavern resided. Once prohibition was lifted, the owners moved the bar upstairs where the general crowd now drinks. It’s your standard Chicago bar, with walls lined with sports memorabilia and old tin ads for various products like chewing tobacco. It was around this time that I started to notice the effects that my alcohol consumption was having on my body. I downed two all-liquor cocktails in the speakeasy (which regrettably ran my bill to $40 dollars) quickly, in order to avoid paying the cover fee for the burlesque show and then ran through two beers at the main bar upstairs. This brought my drink total to six, but we’ll call it eight when factoring the alcohol contents and speed at which I consumed the two cocktails. I persevered and hopped on the Chicago brown line stop going north and got off on Sedgewick toward my next bar: The Old Town Ale House.

            Roger Ebert once called The Old Town Ale House, “The best bar in the world that I know about.” That statement even got Anthony Bourdain to become a regular and also to follow in Ebert’s footsteps in reading the current owner of the bar, Bruce Elliott’s blog, a blog he still writes in to this day. In his blog he writes about the regulars of his bar and everyday people of Chicago. His blog is a direct reflection of his bar. It is one soaked in alcohol, unapologetically genuine, and viscerally human. Like his blog, Elliott’s bar is a tribute to Chicagoans. Outside of a mural of some of the first regulars of his bar, the walls are covered with Elliott’s own amateur portraits of his regulars, celebrity friends, and political satire. His most famous painting is of a nude Sarah Palin standing on a polar bear rug while holding an assault rifle. Clearly, Elliott was critical of conservative politics. The jukebox is a carefully curated selection of jazz and classic 60’s and 70’s rock music. Only music that Elliott wanted to hear will be played in his house.

            I glanced at maybe just over a hundred of Elliott’s painted portraits on the wall. All regulars at one point, come and gone. I’d imagined each regular in these portraits hold this bar close to their heart. To be painted and memorialized in your home away from home must be a great feeling. It reminded me to stay present, because nothing gold can stay.

            When I left, I considered myself to be officially drunk. I went into a McDonalds and ordered a cheeseburger and ate it like a little goblin while I drunkenly scurried down a few blocks east to catch the Clark bus north to my next destination. Early on the bus ride I dozed off. When I woke up dazed and still drunk, I panicked and pulled the stop cord and immediately got off the bus thinking I was probably in Milwaukee by now. When I reassessed my situation, I learned that not only was I still short of my destination, but I was on the wrong bus altogether. To make matters more fun for myself, it had started to rain. I walked east until I found the nearest red line station and took it north where I got off at Lawrence where my next bar was: The Green Mill Tavern.

            The Green Door was Capone’s rival gang bar; The Green Mill Tavern was Capone’s bar. I was just sober enough to hold myself together but drunk enough to remember very little while at The Green Mill. When I walked in, I was greeted with a live quartet playing the jazzy sounds of Charlie Parker’s “Steeplechase.” I didn’t notice the bouncer at the door at first and walked right past him. The next thing I knew, he had his hand on my shoulder and his face was in mine.

            “I NEED YOUR ID, AND THE COVER IS $20!” He was yelling, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I walked passed him or because the band was playing so loud. I collected myself and handed him both requested items. I felt like my inebriation was taking away from my true, historic Chicago pub crawl experience. It was hard for me to focus on Capone at a time like this, when things are a bit blurry, the live band was on point, and the drink was cold. But I realized shortly after that maybe this was the Chicago experience. I felt amazing drinking a cold beer in a bar where Capone would spend his nights listening to jazz and sometimes avoiding police raids and escaping through trap doors. I stopped thinking about writing, and the details of history and instead took what I learned from The Old Town Ale House and just smiled and became present. Before I knew it, I blinked and suddenly I was at my final bar: Simon’s Tavern, my home bar.

            I was relieved to be at Simon’s because it’s only a few blocks from my house. There’s a ghost story here somewhere, but I was too drunk to focus on it and ignored it and instead went through my notes on the day. The combination of my intoxication and illegible handwriting forced me to call it a night, so guzzled down my final High Life and stumbled home.

            “You survived,” Bre said from the couch as I opened the door to our house.

            “Yeah, barely.” I replied. I took my shoes off and sank into my bed.

 I started my journey carefully researching each bars’ history, taking careful notes of things that I need to pay attention to when I see them. In the end though, I completely abandoned that task, yet I still met my goal of incorporating Chicago history with its drinking scene. To drink in Chicago is to relish in its history. The historical journey can provide you with an array of wonderful experiences, whether it be understanding the importance of a particular establishment, or drinking in a seat that Mike Royko may have rambled about politics in, or reflecting on fellow Chicagoans who’ve come and gone. To drink like a proper Chicagoan is to acknowledge the past and drink in the present. The next time I go out drinking, I’ll make sure that the next glass I raise will be to the ghosts still occupying our drinking spaces.