Birthday Week

7/4/07

So I left my friend R to finish up painting my kitchen while one of my kitties looked on, and headed for Chicago to see D. My birthday is July 5th, and D understands the concept of the “birthday week," which must include fireworks, as they are part of the celebration. It was a glorious, cool, sunshiny day, and the drive was fast and uneventful.

Upon arriving, D and I shared an adult beverage and headed out to a local authentic Mexican restaurant for supper. Authentic it was, down to sitting under a ceiling fan because there was no AC, slow service, not having half of its menu items, and giving me a touch of tourista the next day. But we were not deterred on our determination to celebrate my birthday, and headed to The Green Mill, a famous Chicago jazz club.
(For a Rolling Stone blog about it, see Deep Blue Organ Trio)

The Green Mill is an amazing place for many reasons. The first time D took me there, I was most overwhelmed by the décor. Of course it is dark and smoky (what Chicago smoking ban?) but it was built during Prohibition as a speakeasy, and has many of its original components, such as lit carved wooden ceiling ornaments, old wooden refrigerators behind the bar, carved paneling housing paintings too dark to penetrate their meaning, and a door in the floor behind the bar to the liquor cellar. The phones have rotary dials, and the cash registers are manually powered. Time seems to have stood still there, and except for the occasional decorative excess of later decades (tiny mirrored tile lining what looks like a vertical water pipe), you could be downing Canadian whiskey in 1933.

This second visit left me with another taste. We were there to see the Deep Blue Organ Trio, a regular at the Green Mill every Tuesday night. We came through the door and were greeted by the doorman/bouncer, a large thick man with earrings and a tiny pointed Mephastophilian goatee. He took our cover charge and told us three things: “Turn off your cell phones, there’s no smoking in here, and be quiet in respect for the musicians.”

We sat at the long wooden bar on red leather stools. I ordered a Maker's Mark Manhattan, on the rocks, with bitters. D ordered a vodka martini with a twist. We watched the bartender pour our drinks, and inhaled the sweet dynamics of the trio, moving from rocketing jazz with an organ pulse, to a sweet melancholy guitar lead over a long organ backstory. I watched as one of the employees lit a cigarette, leaned against the bar, and stared with a wistful smile out the front windows to the street. A couple entered, already drunk, the woman loud, and the entire place turned to say “shhhhhh.”

As in all bars at night, the lights play against the bottles of liquor, sending a sapphire and amber glow that mixes with the magic of a little anesthetic, a good friend, and the drowning beat of good music. Servers who have seen it all empty ashtrays, wipe them down, and place them back on the bar. It’s now after ten and the young crowd starts coming in, ordering apple martinis, which the bartender makes with a barely hidden sigh.

The reverence for the music is palpable. The crowd respects the rules, excluding the part about smoking. The crowd is rocking, rolling, dancing in their booths, and music keeps going on and on. It’s transfixing, transforming. A confirmation that the world can be beautiful. A slow ride to somewhere deep in yourself to which you haven’t been for a long, long while.

On our way home, the thunderstorms starting rolling in from Lake Michigan. I unscrewed the security light outside of D’s back door, and sat at his pocket-sized deck-on-a-back-stairway, watching the show. The first set of fireworks of my birthday week.