The Green Mill is (was?) a
jazz club on the far north side of
Chicago (not so far north as to be in the godforsaken
suburbs, but far enough to warrant a
cab). The beautiful
art deco interior is simultaneously intimate and impressive, and the large circular booths next to the stage are as inviting as a feather bed.
Legend has it that
Al Capone used to hold court here, but that legend is attached to practically every would-be-cool nightspot in
Chicago.
I used to hang out here, off and on, in the late '
eighties, at first for the Sunday night
poetry slams, then later for the music, which I didn't understand but nonetheless found entrancing.
Among my standout
memories of the place are the night friends from my small
bible-belt hometown came to visit and I took them there for the
poetry slam. This was in the fall of 1989, I think, and
flag-burning had recently re-emerged on the national radar as a problem begging for a constitutional solution. One of the slam contestants delivered a
screed about
Amerika and
Zion, then extracted two small flags from his pocket, one Israeli, the other American, and introduced them to his
zippo.
My friends went back to Oklahoma with a story.
I returned to the Green Mill once, around the
turn of the century, and it seemed like the crowd had changed. The old jazz fans and
boozehounds had been replaced by young
hipsters. They were a little younger, and wealthier, and perhaps a little too aware of the
irony of the place. In other words, in classic
American form, the old crowd had been displaced by more
people like me.