Night has yet to come, and so, standing on the corner of Broadway and North Clifton Street, outside the new Uptown Underground nightclub, the sun is still shining and the past is visible down the block and across the street: the Riviera Theater, built in 1917, and the Green Mill, which opened in 1907 as Pop Morse’s Roadhouse.
Three years later it became Green Mill Gardens, making it now the oldest nightclub in the city operating under the same name. There once was a hitching post outside for people to tie their horses.
The Uptown Underground opened in February after some months of wrangling over its liquor license because of its desire to offer entertainment of the burlesque sort.
Its owners are Chris Biddle and Jenn Kincaid, nice and seemingly sensible people.
“But you do have to be a little bit insane to open a nightclub,” she says, smiling.
She is from Canada and he is from Kentucky. Each has been here for more than a decade, working in various capacities on the city’s dynamic theater scene. They met at Victory Gardens Theatre in 2006 and soon started dreaming of a place to call their own.
They found it in 2013 in the basement of the terra cotta-coated Uptown Broadway Building at 4707 N. Broadway. Built in 1926, it retains an exterior rightly described by Biddle as looking “like a caramel wedding cake.”
The basement space was bare, having formerly been a reggae club and before that, perhaps, an establishment operated by Al Capone.
Biddle and Kincaid, and many workers, have fashioned it into a beautiful, comfortable and eye-catching space. Its 7,000 square feet feature a 150-seat main stage and 50-seat Starlight Lounge.
There are handsome chandeliers, vintage posters of burlesque stars, charming and functioning arcade games from the 1920s such as Personality Tester and Hi-Ball, and thoughtfully appointed dressing rooms for performers.
Behind the striking bar, which was salvaged from a shuttered Calumet City tavern, is Ben Parker, a lively and tavern-savvy man who is proud of the bottles nearby — many from such local distilleries as Koval and FEW — and of the list of craft cocktails he has created.
There is, standing above the bar, a life-size statue of a bathing beauty. On the wall there’s a framed front page from long ago — “Prohibition Era Ended/Loop Crowds Hail Repeal” — and near it a photo of Frank Sinatra, who used to sing with the Tommy Dorsey band in the early 1940s just around the corner at the Aragon, that sublime illusion of a Spanish courtyard on Lawrence Avenue that once attracted 18,000 dancers a week and still gathers people for concerts.
“We are very appreciative of the history of this neighborhood,” says Kincaid. There is history in every section of town, but there are few neighborhoods as varied and vibrant, beautiful and bedraggled as Uptown. It is ever intriguing, a colorful mix of rich and poor, mansions and rooming houses.
There were glory days when the movie business was centered here and when nightlife was part of almost every block. The Depression came hard here and the neighborhood became a haven for Appalachian clans, American Indians and immigrants from around the world. In the ’60s and ’70s it was a hotbed of radicalism and a place for many of those society had left behind — the kind of people we stare through — with more than its fair share of dilapidated apartment buildings, Skid Row taverns and guys on the street selling gold chains … selling whatever.
The Uptown Theatre was the center of it all, and it’s easy to remember seeing Bruce Springsteen there in 1980, if not so easy to recall if he played for three hours or four hours. The Uptown was, when it opened in 1925 with 4,381 seats, the largest movie palace in the United States. It closed to most of the public in 1981. There would be some private shows, sometimes, and now some people dream big-money dreams about getting it back on its feet.
But the Uptown Underground is very much up and running. The best known of its entertainments, what Biddle calls “our flagship show,” is “The Kiss Kiss Cabaret,” which Biddle and Kincaid have been producing elsewhere here since 2009. It was dubbed the best burlesque troupe by the Chicago Reader in 2013 and is a cagey mix. A sort of burlesque/comedy/variety show, it can feature striptease, bawdy jokesters, jugglers, music and … almost anything goes and it goes well and satisfyingly.
Other performers include Nick Sula, a talented singer-songwriter on piano on Tuesdays, the “Chicago Magic Lounge,” with close-up and large-scale trickery on Thursdays, and all sorts of surprising, intriguing and provocative acts.
The nightclub’s entertainment schedule is jam-packed six nights a week.
“We are eclectic,” says Biddle. To which one could add, “adventurously so.”
And there are other signs of life nearby. The Wilson “L” is undergoing upgrades that include track improvements, brighter lights on the street, restoration of its station house and former clock tower, new signs and other embellishments. There are CTA proposals afloat for the Lawrence “L” stop too. (My colleague Tracy Swartz explains here).
New businesses are moving in or seriously flirting with Uptown.
“We are so happy here,” says Kincaid. “It’s been a tremendous amount of work, but the response has been so gratifying, from audiences and performers.”
And neighbors: The recent victory party for Ald. James Cappleman, 46th, was held on election night in the club and it was jammed. It was standing-room only as the alderman stood on the main stage and thanked his supporters and said he was very focused on the future, on bringing the Uptown Theatre back to life. A lot of the people in the crowd talked about the neighborhood having a “renaissance,” and Biddle and Kincaid smiled, knowing that they and their new club were already a huge and active part of that.
“After Hours With Rick Kogan” airs 9-11 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.
Twitter @rickkogan
