r/AllChicago

I was visiting a friend in Denver last month and he asked me to grab a hot dog at a place near his apartment. They served it on a pretzel bun with ketchup and called it a "Chicago dog." I almost called the police.

But it got me thinking about all the stuff that's so normal here that you don't notice it until you leave. Things like:

* Saying "the" before every highway. The Kennedy, the Edens, the Eisenhower. Nobody else does this.

* How seriously we take which side of town someone is from

* The fact that "Italian beef" needs three sub-decisions before it's ordered (dipped, sweet or hot, cheese yes or no) and we all know the protocol

* Sweetened iced tea being treated like an insult

What's the thing you only realized was a Chicago thing after you left, or after someone from out of town pointed it out?

So I went down another Chicago bar rabbit hole and the Green Mill might be even better than the Billy Goat one.

Quick context for anyone who hasn't been: the Green Mill is on Broadway in Uptown, it's been on the same block since 1907, and it's widely considered the oldest continuously running jazz club in the country. Most people know it for two things, the Al Capone stuff and the green neon sign. The actual history is way weirder than either.

A few things I learned that I thought were neat:

It started as a roadhouse for mourners. In 1907 a guy named Charles "Pop" Morse opened a saloon called Pop Morse's Roadhouse at Lawrence and Broadway. The reason it survived its first few years was that it sat on the route between downtown and Graceland Cemetery, so it became the spot where funeral processions stopped for a drink on the way back from burying somebody. Chicago in 1907, in a nutshell.

The name is a Moulin Rouge reference, with a twist. In 1910 a real estate developer named Tom Chamales bought it, put a giant windmill on the roof, and named it Green Mill Gardens. He picked green specifically because the red light district was right around the corner and he didn't want anyone confusing his place with a brothel. So the name is basically "Moulin Rouge but please don't think we're a whorehouse."

It was a movie star bar before it was a mob bar. In the mid-1910s, Essanay Studios was operating in Uptown, and the Green Mill was where the executives and stars hung out. Charlie Chaplin drank there. Wallace Beery drank there. Uptown was being called the Hollywood of the Midwest at the time, and the Green Mill was the green room.

Capone didn't own it, his hitman did. This is where every Chicago bar tour gets it wrong. The owner of the Green Mill, Dave Jemilo, who has run it since 1986, has said this in basically every interview he's ever given. Capone never owned the place. Machine Gun Jack McGurn, the guy widely believed to have planned the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, owned a piece of it. Capone came in because his favorite singer Joe E. Lewis was performing there, and because McGurn was paying off the cops so the bar operated openly during Prohibition. Historian Richard Lindberg has gone on record saying 99 percent of the Capone-was-here stories in Chicago are urban legend, and the Green Mill is probably the worst offender.

The trapdoor is real though. Behind the bar, right where it curves toward the baby grand piano, there's a heavy latched door in the floor. Underneath is a network of tunnels that ran under Broadway and came up in other buildings down the block, including what's now the Shake, Rattle and Read bookstore. They were originally built for moving coal and kegs, not gangsters. But during Prohibition they doubled as escape routes during raids. There's a long-running bartender quote about it that I love: "Everyone thinks it's about Capone, but guess what they actually used this for? Hauling coal and kegs."

Capone's booth is still there. If you go in, look for the booth across from the side door on Lawrence, at the end of the bar. It faces away from the stage and toward both entrances. That was his seat, picked so he could see anyone walking in from either door. You can just sit in it. No plaque, no rope, nothing.

The Joe E. Lewis story became a Sinatra movie. In 1927 Lewis was making 650 a week at the Mill and got offered 1000 a week at the Rendezvous Club downtown. He told McGurn he was leaving. A week later McGurn's guys cornered him in his hotel room at the Commonwealth, slashed his throat, cut off part of his tongue, and left him for dead. He didn't die. He recovered, lost his singing voice, became a comedian instead, and his story got turned into the 1957 Frank Sinatra movie The Joker Is Wild. There's a poem carved into the wood behind the bar that commemorates the whole thing, ending with the line "you'll look like confetti if you try to quit the Green Mill."

The bandleader rule. When Capone walked in, the band would stop whatever it was playing mid song and switch to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Apparently nobody was allowed to enter or leave the bar while he was inside.

It almost died in the 70s. By the time Dave Jemilo bought it in 1986, the place was a flophouse. He has said in interviews that on his first visit he was stepping over passed-out drunks on the floor. He bought it six months later anyway, restored the original woodwork, brought in jazz seven nights a week, and turned it back into what it had been. He still owns it. It also hosts the longest continuously running poetry slam in the country every Sunday night, started in 1986 by Marc Smith, who basically invented the modern poetry slam there.

The whole point is you can still walk in tonight, sit in Capone's booth, look down at the trapdoor a few feet away, and listen to a jazz quartet on the same stage Billie Holiday played. Nothing about it is recreated or themed. It's just still there.

Anyone here have Green Mill stories? Curious if any of the late night jazz regulars or poetry slam folks are on this sub.

So I've been down the rabbit hole on this place and figured it deserved a post because the actual history is way better than most people realize.

Quick context for anyone who hasn't been: the most famous Billy Goat is tucked under Michigan Avenue (430 N. Lower Michigan), so you literally walk down a staircase off the street into a windowless tavern below the city. It's been there since 1964. But the story starts way earlier.

A few things I learned that I thought were neat:

It was bought with a bounced check. In 1934, a Greek immigrant named William Sianis bought the Lincoln Tavern across from the old Chicago Stadium for $205… with a check that bounced. He covered it with the proceeds from opening weekend. Talk about confidence.

The "Billy Goat" name was an accident. A goat literally fell off a passing truck and wandered into the bar. Sianis adopted it, named it Murphy, grew a goatee to match, and renamed the tavern. From then on Chicago cops would bring him stray goats because they knew he'd take care of them. There's a photo of him pouring a Blatz beer into Murphy's mouth and apparently the goat didn't miss a drop.

He was the original troll. When the 1944 Republican National Convention came to town, he hung a sign that said "No Republicans Allowed." Predictably, the place got mobbed by Republicans demanding to be served. Free publicity, exactly as planned.

The Cubs Curse started here. In 1945, Sianis brought Murphy to Game 4 of the World Series at Wrigley with a paid box seat ticket. P.K. Wrigley said "let Billy in but not the goat" because the goat stunk. Sianis allegedly threw up his arms and declared the Cubs would never win another World Series. They lost the game, lost the series, and didn't win another one until 2016. After that '45 game he sent Wrigley a telegram that just said "Who stinks now?"

Why it's underground. When the original moved in 1964, the new spot happened to sit on Lower Michigan, which exists because of Chicago's multilevel street system. It ended up sandwiched right between the Chicago Tribune and the old Sun-Times buildings, so it instantly became a newspaper bar. Mike Royko basically held court there every day after work. The "Wall of Fame" inside still has yellowed columns from Royko, Kupcinet, Kogan, Roeper, Kass, etc.

The SNL bit was based on real employees. Bill Murray and writer Don Novello were regulars during their Second City days. The "Cheezborger! Cheezborger! No fries, cheeps! No Pepsi, Coke!" sketch was directly modeled on Sianis and his buddy Bill Charuchas, who actually yelled that stuff at customers in the '70s. Belushi, Aykroyd, and Murray ran the bit multiple times.

There's a whole book about it called A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream by Rick Kogan if anyone wants to go deeper. Just thought it was cool that you can still walk down those stairs off Michigan and order the same cheezborger Royko ate while filing his column upstairs.

Anyone here have their own Billy Goat stories? Curious if any of the old Trib/Sun-Times folks are still on this sub.

Im moving from Houston to Skokie or Evanston (havent decided yet). Is there anything I should know about those 2 cities? I want to feel safe and i want enough shopping, restaurants. I also like it quiet but not too quiet where it feels like im living in the middle of nowhere.