In 1999-2000, Boadie and I lived in a little apartment near Ravenswood and Damen in Chicago. It was the perfect apartment for me at the time. I had many adventures there.
Across the alley was the Oakwood Lounge. At first, all I knew about the Oakwood Lounge was that it had a blue and pink airbrushed sign.
I had not been living in that apartment (I called it Girlhaven) very long: I moved in over Labor Day, and I still had the windows open, when it was closing time on a Friday night (ie, 2 am Saturday morning) and I was awakened by one of the patrons of the Oakwood Lounge.
“Don’t you f*ck my seester! No! Don’t you f*ck my seester! I am going xhome! I am going xhome right now, and my seester is there! Don’t you be there! Don’t you f*ck my seester!”
For a very long time.
And you think that kind of thing is annoying, but after a while it just becomes hilarious. So I listened to that guy go on and on in the alley from 2:00 to about 2:30 about how his friend should not have biblical relations with his seester, and I knew that I would tell this story at every party for the rest of my born days.
A couple of months later, my friend Dan came in town on business, and we at dinner at Roong Petch for old time’s sake (I recommend the crab rangoon and the red curry with duck), and I told him this story.
“We have to go!” he said.
So we went to the Oakwood Lounge. It had a linoleum floor and a bunch of posters in “gold-tone” frames of ladies wearing sweatshirts straight out of Flashdance. Some of them were draped over tigers.
Mustached men in blue denim shirts were sitting around, staring. Dan and I sat at the gold-tube-and-fake-leather bar chairs.
“Retsina?” asked the bartender.
Life is too short to drink retsina. We had bourbon.
A man approached us: bouffant grey hair, a white band-collar shirt, a navy double-breasted blazer with gold buttons, pressed jeans (with sharp creases), and tassled loafers with no socks.
“Wellllcome to de Oakwoooood Looooounge,” he said.
He kissed my hand.
“We do not often see de beyoooooteeeful ladies xhere at de Oakwood Looooooounge,” he said. “Please enyoy a dreeeenk on de houuuuuse. I khope you will come beck to de Oakwood Louuuunge and brink your beeeeyoooteeful friends!”
It was so creepy. And so GREAT.