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Chicago’s Blues Clubs face uncertain future:
Three clubs
vandalized while pandemic, protests and looting threaten re-openings
By Linda Cain
DATELINE: June 6, 2020
On March 16, 2020 Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker ordered all bars and
dine-in restaurants in the state to close in order to help stop the
spread of the deadly coronavirus.
Nearly three months later, the state is slowly allowing re-openings, but
not for indoor music clubs, bars and restaurants. Musicians were the
first to get hit the hardest with all of their gigs into the foreseeable
future being cancelled. Chicago’s internationally renowned blues clubs
closed their doors, leaving the owners and staff to face a multitude of
financial problems as well. The Chicago Blues Fest was to be held June
5-7, and it was cancelled, depriving the clubs and musicians of their
busiest and most lucrative week of the year. The future for them all is
uncertain.
The long period of shelter-in-place ended with the cruel murder of
George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.
Black Lives Matter protests swept
the nation and the world to demonstrate against inequality, racism and
police brutality but were marred by violence and looting that broke out
among the mostly peaceful marches.
Chicago was not spared from the crime wave and neither were our famous
blues clubs. We spoke with the owners and managers of some of the city’s
top blues clubs to find out how they fared during the chaos on the long
weekend of May 31-June 1, 2020.
Rosa’s, Kingston
Mines and B.L.U.E.S.
on Halsted remained safe. Buddy
Guy’s Legends, Blue Chicago and the
Water Hole did not.
Buddy Guy’s Legends,
700 S. Wabash (at Balboa), is a music venue, a restaurant and a shrine
to blues history with a wealth of photos, memorabilia and autographed
guitars on display. Manager Marc Maddox reported that looters only broke
windows. “A couple of windows were damaged but no one entered the club.
We are happy that the damage was minimal. We are looking forward to
re-opening when they allow us.”
The Water Hole, 1400 S.
Western (near University of Illinois, Chicago) was broken into. Lori
Lewis, a.k.a Low-reen who leads the Maxwell Street Market Blues Band and
has been hosting weekly Wednesday blues jams there, told us what
happened. “The Water Hole sustained damage Sunday night. The plate glass
windows in the front were broken. Two men entered, went to the back of
the building, and then tried to leave out the doors near the back. The
doors are a little quirky, have odd locks and often stick. So while the
alarm was going off, the police showed up. The young men were still in
the place trying to get out. They were arrested. One young man is from
the western suburbs and the other is from the southern suburbs. No real
damage except for the windows. All the booze is there, untouched. And
things are boarded up now.”
Blue Chicago,
536 N. Clark (at Ohio) met a worse fate, as did much of River North.
Owner Gino Battaglia relates what went down at his club Saturday night,
“They broke all the windows. They had a field day. A neighbor in the
high rise across the street shot a video of it. He saw somebody with a
bottle of liquid who tried to light it and start a fire so he called the
police and fire department. They came right away since they are right
down the street and chased him away.
But then later looters came back. They took all the booze. But they left
the sound system and paintings alone. They wrecked some bar stools and
tables.
When we closed for the Covid-19 shutdown, we emptied the safe and ATM
machine and left them open, so they didn’t wreck those. But they trashed
the cash registers.
Faddo, the Irish pub around the corner, really got trashed. So did
Maggiano’s, and all up and down Clark Street. I heard from our tenant
that the looters went to Oak Street and cleaned out all the high end
stores. It was really bad. I couldn’t go there myself because the Oak
Street exit ramp is blocked off.
I also heard from our insurance adjuster that somebody took an
axe and chopped up the wooden bar inside one of the places down the
street from us,” Battaglia reported.
Up north on Halsted Street, the neighboring blues bars
Kingston Mines and B.LU.E.S.
remain unharmed. Jennifer Littleton, longtime manager of B.LU.E.S., was
relieved to report: “We have been
fine on Halsted Street, fortunately. On Sunday I went over at 6 p.m. and
our whole block was fine. Kingston Mines was putting up boards over
their windows, but I believe that was to be preemptive. I do go by once
or twice a day to check and pick up mail.”
Tony Mangiullo, owner of Rosa’s
Lounge on 3420 W. Armitage Ave., checked on his club to find that
all is intact. “We don’t have a glass storefront window and we have bars
on the door. We have artwork covering the front of the building but that
is fine too. I am sorry to hear about Legends and Blue Chicago. Both
have glass storefront windows. And that is what looters look for, an
easy target to get in and out quickly.”
A veteran demonstrator who has attended his share of marches since he
moved to Chicago from Italy in the early ‘80s, Mangiullo noted, “I’m a
protestor myself and most of the protestors are not associated with the
looters. They are criminals. Or they are a group that has the opposite
agenda of the protestors and want to make them look bad. I’d say 90% are
peaceful, serious protestors. And they want to use their collective
voice to call for change.” Manguillo
said he attended a march on the South Side from King Drive to Washington
Park on June 2 and described it as “peaceful, with the police there to
help.”
Both Rosa’s and
B.L.U.E.S. have hosted live streaming performances by blues
musicians (not open to the public) on their respective stages, in order
to help them raise money through online tipping and donations. Due to
the chaos surrounding the protest marches and fears of looting, with
streets and exit ramps blocked off and the National Guard stationed in
Chicago and some suburbs, that charitable practice has been temporarily
suspended.
While most live stream performances have been hosted at home by solo
artists playing without their bands, Manguillo saw a need to help the
entire band, since side players --drummers, bass players and
keyboardists, etc -- aren’t like band leaders who can go it alone. “My
fight was to bring an entire band back to work with live streaming.”
“We initiated contact with the State to include clubs like mine to be
able to stream live with full bands during the Phase 2 reopening. And
they approved it. And some of the bands we had here made some real
money. But we had to shut that down for now because of the protests and
looting. But we will rebroadcast previous shows,” he noted.
But the future remains uncertain for live music, dependent upon what the
pandemic will dictate.
“As far as reopening, bars will be in the very last stage to be reopened
and when that does happen, we will have to follow the CDC, city and
state guidelines, but since this is all new, we don’t have exact details
about what those will be yet,” said
B.L.U.E.S. manager Littleton.
Blue Chicago’s
Battaglia is also concerned about the future of his venue.
“As for reopening, it will take a while. We can’t social distance, we’re
so small. We have been paying employees, we applied for funds to do
that. But we’ll be out of money soon. So we’ll pay them out of our own
pockets as long as we possibly can.
We had bands seven days a week, but if we can’t have a full audience, we
can’t afford bands. We’re hoping the bank doesn’t call in the loan. Our
tenants who own the restaurant in our building can’t pay the rent to us,
either.
I don’t know what will happen. We have to wait and see. I don’t think it
will be back to normal for at least a year. We may only be able to open
two or three times a week, and only have duos perform. I wish we could
still have bands every night.
The bars that serve food like Kingston Mines and Buddy Guy’s will be
able to open sooner, since they can do social distancing.
I don’t
know when we will open. Maybe Phase 4 or 5? So many questions are
unanswered. Let’s hope for the best,” Battaglia said.
Manguillo remains determined to weather the storm for
Rosa’s; after all, he named the venue after his mother. “I don’t
know when we can reopen again. We will be the last. It will be tough to
maintain social distance. My operation is minimal with only four
employees – a bartender, waitress, doorman and myself. Unless we can get
serious funding, it will be tough.”
He continued, “A real businessman would decide it’s time to quit. But I
can’t give up. Rosa’s is not just for me. It’s not just a business.”
“We have a history, a legacy. The masters – Jimmy Rogers, Junior Wells
and Big Walter – they all helped me. I can’t turn my back on them.
Compared to what our blues forefathers went through, this is nothing,”
he declared.
“That is
the only motivation for me to not give up.”
####
Visit our
Club Guide to find out about live streaming and updates for
Chicagoland’s blues venues.
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