It was Monday night and in an attempt to savor the real chicagist's chicago, beyond my beloved chicago-style hot dog shops, I turned to every real chicagist's favorite book: the Fodor's Chicago tourist guide. Under cheap and greasy in the index, I found Billy Goat's Tavern, the inspiration for the infamous Cheeseborger SNL skit.
After being convinced into a double cheesborger by the delightfully no bullshit waitress, I sat down at the red checkered slightly sticky table to indulge in a borger packed with onions, relish, pickles, ketchup and mustard sliding out the sides. As I attempted to keep white shirt presentable for the gathering crowd of middle aged men, I glanced up at the news to see that the Tribune Co. had filed for Chapter 11.
Billy Goat's has the good fortune to be situated directly across from the towering Tribune building, nestled onto lower Michigan, below the glits and glamour of the loop, but in proximity to feel the after shocks of the news. As a journalist- if not practicing than at least in spirit- I felt a pang of distress for the Trib journalists left without job security and the entire industry suddenly facing it's own mortality as it knew it.
Then I suddenly realized this same emotion was being emitted by the 5 or 6 greying men at the bar. Dressed in stretched out sweaters and coffee stained dress pants, I knew these kindred souls were Trib workers themselves. I had found the Trib lair.
I asked Payne, the best waiter who never actually waited on anybody, if any of these guys were journalists. And as luck would have it, Payne knew the guy walking into the bar was the sports editor of the Trib himself.
Relying on the fact that i had managed to keep my shirt free of pickles and that i still might look presentable, I waved Mr. Sports Trib himself over to our table of idealistic youth. And so began a night of stories of old newspapers ways, current business models and new media possibilities; it was the Christmas Carol's ghosts of newspapers' past, present and future.
Mr. Sports Trib told stories of his first newspaper gig as a delivery boy and how he used to get in trouble because he always read the newspaper "front to back" before delivering it. He told stories of small town newspapers and big breaks, of superbowls and world series, and frankly things i have never heard of and didn't understand. He said journalism was a thinking profession and that's why he loved it. And he kept muttering that we were just so young; not young and foolish like others have implied but young and potential, young and eager, young and lucky.
And that is what I felt that night- extremely young and extremely lucky. As the business editor rolled in at 11:30, I managed to buy Mr. Sports Trib a round before he could buy us our 7th round. He of course protested but it was the least i could do not only for the advice but also for this feeling- this renewed optimism of youth, that youth wasn't just inexperience and entry-level positions but that it was a time that allowed you to be foolish enough to follow passions, a time to drink too many rounds on a Monday night, a time where luck could still change the course of one's life.
Norman Mailer once wrote to a friend ""Now, of course, all of this is every artist's anguish- so many of us could have been geniuses if everything had worked out right- but i had so much more good fortune that the others, and I've fucked it away so wastefully."
Of course Mailer had a surplus of genius and for as much luck as he pissed away he still manages to be hero-like statue for many journalists and artists. But for the rest of us with our status-quo amounts of genius, luck, mixed with the passion to pursue that good fortune, might be enough to get us our dreams or at least to land us in a dive bar on a Monday night with enough good stories to entertain any pretty idealistic girls who might have wondered in.
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