MARIO'S BARBERSHOP

A barber shop is unlike any other social space. It is a business, but it’s also a gathering place, and a place where a man is allowed to extend his living room into the larger world. It’s a place where chairs are comfortable and history bounds from the walls like sound. It’s a place that feels like an old shoe, its leather tarnished but strong, and its soles marred but comfortable. In 2011, most men go to chain hair cutteries with their disaffected beauty school graduates and minor hair felons, or upscale salons with their disaffected models and aloof trendsetters. The comfort and familiarity of the barbershop is lost on most men in Chicago. There are some neo-retro barbershops that have opened up in Chicago’s hipper neighborhoods, but they try a little too hard with luke warm Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in mini-fridges and halfhearted straight razor shaves. Those who understand know that a real barber shop can’t be forced. Like a decent pair of jeans, or a good woman, it just exists. Those looking for a real barbershop experience in Chicago, should hike up to a quiet little suburb Northwest of the city called Park Ridge.

Mario’s hair salon has been in Park Ridge for years and it still caters to a dedicated clientele of men looking for the perfect proportioned haircut. The small store front location off of Northwest Highway is easy to miss, but once inside, the shop’s uniqueness is hard to deny. The men cutting hair at Mario’s will smile at you when you enter, but only after the bell rings and makes your presence known. The air in the shop is filled with the scent of shave cream, powder and hairspray, and a small television fills the room with sound. There’s usually a few men of varying ages sitting in the vinyl chairs along the wall. They pitch stories back and forth to the barbers, and trade jokes, political debates, and familial stories. The walls at Mario’s are lined with memorabilia, family photos, news clippings, VFW flags and large mirrors. The sound of scissors dances lightly behind the boisterous voices and laughing. Some god somewhere knew that conversation goes well with haircuts, like wine and cheese, or smoking and sex. There isn’t any pretentious music, free whiskey or beer, and nobody there is wearing designer anything, but somehow it all holds together. Somehow Mario’s manages to feel like home, both nostalgic and relevant, and never ashamed of its flaws.

Once in the chair, the barbers at Mario’s move like dancers. They ask you what you want, but once you’re in the chair they already know what to do. Powder puffs about your head, a paper collar is placed around your neck and the striped apron goes around the whole chair. In an instant, a foot goes on a squeaky leaver and you’re hiked up or down in an ancient chair with ashtrays in the armrests, and turned toward the television. You do some talking, some story telling, some laughing, watch your favorite Chicago team lose, and close your eyes for a few minutes. When the barber’s done, you’re a little rested, and your hair looks better than it did when you walked in and the bell rang.

Mario’s is a place for guys who know that beer is best served cold inside of a darkened bar, beautiful girls are everywhere, conversations should be hilarious, and haircuts should be about the scissors and the company.

Do your hair a favor and go see Mario.

Mario’s Barber Shop
1017 North Northwest Highway
Park Ridge, Illinois
847.825.9855

CHICAGO GARAGE ROCK BREAK

Chicago is a city filled with beer, blues, and suburbs. In the 1960s, Chicago's garage music scene exploded with a plethora of blues influenced, pot laden, beer fueled rock and roll. The kids in these bands grew their hair long to piss off their church going Ozzy and Harriet families. They went down to the South side and listened to blues musicians spill their whiskey soaked guts across the strings of misshapen guitars, and they channeled rebellion into three minute songs about girls. Chicago garage rock from the 1960s postures and snarls in a very blue collar, matter of fact way. Listen to a band like The Shadows of Night fight their way through three chords, and you can hear the sound of youthful discovery that is powerfully raw and uniquely Chicago. These kids were growing up in the most segregated city in the United States, home to the stockyards, riots, and quiet ranch house hamlets; these were kids born of absurdity, middle class ethics, and impending violence. This isn't the music of the streets, this is the music of observation, of white kids on the fringes of suburbia, mimicking squalor, and trying to understand the foreignness of the black man's blues.

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OFRAY METZKER
















Ray Metzker's Chicago photos,taken during the mid-20th Century, capture a grey, dusty city, haunting in its geometry. Metzker's Chicago is place of secret loneliness, dreary urbanity and action. His black and white images are odes to post-war Chicago, before the city got fancy.


See Ray Metzker's work at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

CHICAGO HOUSE BREAK



These tracks are a slice of Chicago house music from 1980-1995. House music was born in Chicago and these early tracks by artists like Larry Heard, Ron Trent, Fast Eddie, and Farley "Jack Master Funk" gave birth to a music phenomenon that took the world by storm. These early tracks are raw, experimental, and funky. Check the way artists combine the James Brown sample-crazy breaks of late 80s hip hop with the beats of house music to create something called 'hip house'. Hip house was the life-blood of Chicago house parties and school dances in the late 80s and early 90s. House music was also a staple of Chicago top 40 radio, and every night the music's jacking rhythm could be heard pouring out of apartment windows and car stereos. This music is the foundation for all modern dance music, and like it or hate it, it all began in Chicago.

CHICAGO FOOD

SOUTHSIDE CANDY DILL PICKLES

Food in Chicago is specific - There is a correct way to eat a hot dog, a special kind of dough for deep dish pizza, and hundreds of ethnic food traditions that slam into each other like an elegant wrestling match. Food in Chicago is a crazy quilt, a hodge-podge of style and substance. And in some cases, Chicago food offers up ideas so radical in their awkwardness, so unique in their flavors that they must be illuminated.

It’s time to discuss the Southside pickle phenomenon.

Chicago is the most segregated city in the country. Unlike New York City and LA where cultures seem to jump into a blender and coagulate, Chicago is tribal in the purest sense of the word. Immigrants have been migrating to the Midwestern hub for a few hundred years. Dozens of ethnic groups from Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, have all carved out little hamlets within the city walls. Before the 1960s, Chicago was essentially a black and white city with a strong working class immigrant aesthetic. Most middle class immigrants sought work in Chicago’s stockyards or hundreds of factories that created everything from cookies to football helmets. Chicago now contains immigrants from every country on the planet, and this diversity is what makes Chicago so interesting. That being said, Chicago is still segregated on racial lines, with the Northside remaining a bastion of whiteness and the Southside an enclave of blackness. These lines, while invisible, are very real when talking about culture, lifestyle and snack food.

Enter the pickle and its friends Kool-Aid, Now and Later, Jolly Rancher, and peppermint stick. The pickle, while nothing more than a small cucumber soaked in vinegar brine, has achieved legendary status within the invisible boundary of Chicago’s Southside African American community.In Chicago, a pickle is not just something eaten with a pastrami sandwich; it is a briny vehicle for youthful experimentation and hilarious creativity. For decades young people on Chicago’s Southside have been combining pickles with candy, Kool-Aid, and other snack foods to create tastes and flavors that are uniquely Chicago. This pickle experimentation can be traced to the great migration of southern black workers in the middle of the 20th Century. Pickling in the South has long been an easy and delicious way to preserve perishable food items. People in the Southern United States pickle everything from peaches to pigs-feet. What differentiates Chicago pickle enthusiasts from their southern brethren is the youthful insanity of the flavor combinations.

One such combination is the peppermint-pickle. One of the longest standing pickle experiments, this delicacy has its roots in Chicago, and continues to be a popular treat for kids and adults on Chicago’s Southside.The peppermint pickle is made by removing the top off of a large kosher dill pickle and inserting a candy-cane sized peppermint stick into the pickle's cavity. The result is a salty, sweet, mint flavored, crunchy treat that is both funky and delicious. The acid from the vinegar in the pickle brine melts the peppermint stick, and allows the astringent peppermint flavor to soak deep into the pickle.There are variations of this treat that include placing a Jolly Rancher hard candy, or Now and Later taffy within a large pickle. These candy pickles reached fever pitch during the mid-1990s when Kool-Aid pickles began making the scene on Chicago’s Southside. These pickles, again having roots in the deep-south, combine kosher dill pickles with packets of strawberry, cherry, or fruit punch Kool-Aid. The pickles are placed in a large jar filled with extra sweet Kool-Aid and left to soak for up to a week. The candied pickles were invented by African American school kids in southern states like Georgia and Mississippi, and as their popularity grew, they made their way to Chicago. In Chicago, these candy colored, sweet-tart pickles can be found in candy houses, corner stores and neighborhood shops all over the Southside. This childhood delicacy has now become so popular that Kool-Aid pickles have been used in gourmet BBQ joints from Los Angeles to New York City, and were even featured in the food section of the New York Times.

Chicago is still a town where childhood experimentation and cultural gastronomy can slow dance together and concoct something as wonderfully tasty as the candy pickle.

CHICAGO MUSIC

STATIC DISCOS - ESTADO FUTURO

On August 27-29, 2009, get a taste of the future at the Festival of Latin Electronic Music in Chicago. The festival will feature live music, DJ sets, workshops and speakers focused on the Latin electronic music scene. The three day event celebrates a diverse range of electronic music and showcases modern Latin culture in all of its eccentric glory.

Artists from Mexico’s Static Discos label will be featured at this annual Chicago music fest. Static Discos is a contemporary Mexican music label committed to melting headphones and minds with its wide spectrum of electronic music. When discussing electronic music and its multitude of sub-genres, Mexico rarely comes up in conversation. Contrary to popular belief, Mexico is not just awash in chicken dances, cowboy suit Norteno and nostalgic Mariachi. Mexico has long been an exporter of progressive pop and indie-music, and it should be no surprise that Static Discos’ catalog is deep with sonically adventurous concoctions. The music on the label ranges from improvisational electronic jazz, glitch pop, minimal Detroit style techno, and deep house. The artists on the Static Discos label have a deep understanding of music history, and they are brazen in their desire to take Latin music into the 21st Century.

The Festival of Latin Electronic Music will be a wonderful opportunity to hear what Latin musicians think the future will sound like. Judging from the work on Static Discos, the future will be delicious, like an elotes plugged into a modular synth.

For more information on Static Discos or the Festival of Latin Electronic Music, visit staticdiscos.com.or www.myspace.com/fmelchicago.

CHICAGO JAZZ BREAKS




Here are some tasty Chicago jazz flavored breaks from a time when music still had soul.

Chicago soul-jazz, recorded in the 1960s and 1970s, sounds undeniably Midwestern, but it also has a global perspective where its rhythm and feel are concerned. The musicians who were laying down these tracks respected Chicago's blue collar, blues roots, but they also aspired towards the melting pot of the great metropolis.

These are the sounds of the city.