Karl Klockars

It’s probably a bad thing when you have to advertise your bar with the following:

BRAND NEW BEER LINES, CLEANED PROFESSIONALY

But then, not all bars are the Concertina Bar.  Last time I was in there, the only sound was the tick-tick-ticking of the clock, second by second as the patrons waited to die.  The only movement was the 90-something mother flicking her lighter to ignite one of her 100-length cigarettes, as her devoted son bought her another Point draft.  It was magical.  We haven’t been back since.

Since then, they’ve been bought out (the owner apparently was just getting too damn old, and wanted to get out of the biz) and changes have been made.  Like, for example, putting some asses in the seats that aren’t eligible for social security.  Just for starters.  And new bands, new beers, new life.  New TVs as well, which I can only imagine a complete anomaly – the bar is comfortably set in early 1940s decor, dust and all, so I can only picture it akin to dropping Marty McFly into 1954.

But do bars ever change for the better?  Very rarely.  Most bars, in my experience, are like people – once you get that first impression in your head, you have a hard time shaking that perception.  Duffy’s on Diversey might be the most awesome bar on the planet, but they’ll need a lot of luck to shove out the idea of hundreds of barely-graduated backwards-hatted DMB fans, swilling draft beer and screaming MICHIGAN at the top of their lungs.

Sometimes it seems that at a certain point, every bar you’ve been to has a new owner, a new scene, a new reality to wrap your head around.  Maybe this is why people like dive bars – everything has been shitty for so long, what’s the point in trying to keep up with it?  Just let it collapse around you, and let the clientele do the same.  There’s a certain march towards doom that all the best dive bars have going for them, and the few bars that remain the same decade in and decade out either thrive or don’t.

But even the shitholes sometimes shift.  One of the first bars I ever hung out at on a regular basis has gone from being the scary “townie” place, to being mostly deserted, to picking up the “hey isn’t this ironic we’re at a shithole bar let’s take pictures of it with our Blackberrys and order Jaegerbombs,” to being the place where fights always broke out, to being some sort of metal bar.  I don’t recognize it anymore.  Not since they got rid of the $5 bottles of 32oz. Becks, at least.

Which makes sense.  I barely recognize myself sometimes, and certainly the 22-year-old shithead ponytailed version of me would probably sneer at me as PresentMe was leaving the bar at the same time ShitheadMe was just getting to it.  That’s fine.  In late night bull sessions, the kind you only have when you’re high on rum and 20 years old, I most likely blithered that I’d be happy being the same person and nothing would ever change.  Ha-ha.  What a dummy.

And when I choose to hang out with that particular underaged dummy, I know at least I can always find one reliable shithole, progressing further south as each day goes on.  The only bar in the old hood that still serves the people that no one else will serve, because let’s face it – they’ve found each other.  The last resort of alcoholics across town – the bar in the strip mall.  It’s so depressing, that I haven’t been there in the daylight.  I take this as a sign of hope – I still have somewhere further to fall.  It would be a step up if they’d advertise:

BRAND NEW BEER LINES, CLEANED PROFESSIONALY

I wouldn’t even criticize the misspelling.  Much.  The world moves on, and us with it.  And whatever way you need to use to define your progress in life, so be it.  If I choose to amuse myself with the fact that I’ve only purchased one 40oz. this year, then I’ll see that as progress, thank you very much.  But in the event that I decide to pick up that Old English 800 on the way home, I’ll see that as nostalgia rather than a desire to be impoverished.

When I moved to Chicago, my main criteria for living space was the same as just about every suburban white kid that tries to make it big in the city.  Somewhere off the Red Line, preferably in Lakeview, within walking distance of some particular dive.  I found it – a shoebox of a place where I could walk to the L&L Tavern.  If the time ever comes that I live in a city that doesn’t have the L&L Tavern, I’ll admit that I no longer know the world around me.  But I haven’t been there in months, when the former soused incarnation of myself would have sworn I’d be living down the block from there by now.

If one can use surroundings as a reflection of their inner self, one would say I’d made some scant progress.  My carpets are still stained, but it’s not with vomit any more.  My closet has more shirts with collars on them.  I drink Oberon, not Busch Light.  (Well, the ratio leans very heavily towards Oberon.)  My beer lines have been, for better or worse, professionally cleaned.  Maybe even replaced.  And this is the type a place that I’m okay with being a regular at.  If only they’d be able to make some decent wings closer by.

I did a little looking into the Concertina bar that has left time in the dust.  They cleaned the walls.  Decades of cigarette smoke, all that progress, gone.  It looks…human.  It’s practically unrecognizable.  Sometimes the past needs to be just that, but with some places it’s nice to have it stick around for a while.  All that I’ve left behind can stay there, with the occasional hourly trip back, but is it too much to have a place to visit?    It’s good to have a couple.  But not too many.  Otherwise, from the looks of the patrons…some never get out.