Big Shoulders

Roger Ebert Remembers O’Rourke’s

Roger Ebert on O’Rourke’s, his favorite (and sadly, now closed) bar, where he’d drink hard with folks like Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, and Nelson Algren: “We regulars knew each other. We dated each other. We slept with each other. We went to Greek Town together, with Al presiding at the head of a long table. We met on Saturday mornings at Oxford’s for ‘recovery drunch,’ spelled with a d. Tom Butkovich would pull up behind O’Rourke’s in his old Volvo station wagon and unload the equipment to barbeque a lamb. His mother, from the far Southwest Side, would bring in covered dishes of macaroni and cheese and potato salad, while his stepdad, a steel worker, would dance with his T-shirt pulled above his belly, singing It must be jelly, ‘cause jam don’t shake like that.

The memoir was written for venerable literary journal Granta, but Ebert reprints it today on his blog, complete with pictures. [Roger Ebert’s Journal]

Roger Ebert Remembers O’Rourke’s