A beacon for the lost: Cal's Liquors, photographed by ten-nine.
"Eat, Drink, and Get out!" reads the sign by the door of Cal's Liquors. If you've made your first cautious steps into the filthy shotgun structure at the corner of Wells and Vanburen, the only question crossing your mind will be the "Eat" part. As in, where the hell could they squeeze a kitchen and what miscarriage of Health and Sanitation would allow it to exist?* This is the only mystery of Cal's. Everything else, from the cheap beer to the proximity to Chicago's pulsing financial epicenter, makes perfect sense. The chief patrons are bicycle couriers, the human fax machines who still tie commerce together with their precious cargo. They drink shoulder-to-shoulder with options traders and assorted weirdos. No one cares who you are or what you're wearing, a total relief from other bars downtown.
"it is a total poophole and that is also why i like it." - Joanne Y.
"one of the...owners wore the same white tee shirt every day with giant yellow stains under each arm pit! I made it to rehab in 1987 and credit seeing those pits as the trauma that made me surrender!" - Kevin O.
"Oh it is a messenger bar, be careful....they hold you corporate lives in their messenger bags...and they have long memories..." - John C.
Inexplicably, Cal's has enough room for rock shows every weekend. Photo by Bitter Bettie.
Whenever a touring punk band tells me they played "downtown" in Chicago, they can be talking about only one place. Gig posters at Cal's have the best band names ever: Coldcock Jones and the Shithawks, Slutbarf, The Crackpipes, Dirtbox Racers, the list goes on, each more vile and awe-inspiring than the last. If you're flying solo, let your eyes wander across the years of yellowed fliers as you pick the label from your bottle of PBR.
*I won't leave you guessing- at lunch time, food comes from neighboring Peppers, through a hole cut in the wall. Enjoy!
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