A Walk on the Light Side, and Chicago's Old Mashed Potato Club


Life is too heavy today; let’s take a walk on the light side.   

I miss Chicago.  Between the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) and the Picasso Thing in Daly Plaza, Chicago is a toddling town.  One of my favorite spots was the now closed Mashed Potato Club. 

In the winter of 2000 my husband and I had been recently employed by a Chicago based company and were in town for orientation.  We were staying at a downtown hotel and looking for a place to eat.  Tom was scanning the dining guide in the hotel room.  

            “How does this sound?  The Mashed Potato Club, featuring roast beef, 70 different kinds of mashed potatoes, erotic art and an eclectic crowd.”  Between the roast beef and erotic art Tom had found the masculine version of gustatory nirvana.  We checked the map, grabbed our coats and were on our way.  On the cold walk to the restaurant we decided that “eclectic” meant the presence of an artsy/college crowd. 

            It must be pointed out that Tom and I are from St. Louis.  I love both cities but for different reasons.   Chicago is a big city and wears it well.  Chicago struts.  St. Louis is a small town in a large body.  While Chicago is truly the city of broad shoulders, St. Louis is the town Judy Garland sang about in, “Meet Me in St. Louis.”  There is a benign innocence to St. Louisans, and it was spurring Tom and I on toward what we thought would be a simple supper.

            We got to The Mashed Potato Club after a brisk, twenty minute walk and were more worried than impressed with the exterior.  The bright yellow building at 316 W. Erie St. was one shade on the safe side of seedy.  Stepping into the foyer, we saw an old white couch.  I have never seen a couch with so plain a history.  It wasn’t so much that you wondered what tales those cushions could tell; it was that they were speaking all too clearly! 

I am sure that only a long walk in the blustery Chicago cold made us bold enough to open the second door to the interior of the restaurant.  What a good choice that was!  The Mashed Potato Club was warm, welcoming and wild.  We walked past several busy tables of couples, some clearly hetero and others clearly not. Chicago always makes me wish I was better dressed and this evening was no exception, that is, until our host(ess), “Barbie” came over.

Barbie was a gentleman in three-inch heels, a mini-skirt, blond wig and five o’clock shadow.  With all due respect to the fellow, if I were a man and that was the most attractive woman I could make myself into, I think I would have played the hand God dealt me, but then, I don’t know the territory.  Aesthetics aside, Barbie was one of the most congenial servers I have ever had.  He quickly brought us a tray of complimentary Jell-O shots to accompany the tall draft beers we had ordered.

I know that Jell-O shots are made with a shot of liquor.  I was NOT aware that they were made with a shot of liquor in each serving.  During our delicious meal, the Jell-O kept coming.  Meantime, the pageant of humanity that came and went was a joy to behold.  When we asked for our check, Barbie pressed us to stay until 10 o’clock when the drag show started.  A drag show!  Given one more Jell-O shot, I would enter the damn thing.  Given two more, I’d have won! 

Tom (good husband that he is) knew better than to trust my impaired judgment and we headed for the door and our hotel.  Knowing that the Mashed Potato Club has closed for good is a melancholy thought.  It was easy to relax, enjoy life’s mysteries and laugh at the world there. 

As for Barbie: here’s looking at you kid, keep the faith.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more