Memories of O’Rourke’s pour forth
The bartender died a week ago, and because the bartender once worked at and owned a place called O’Rourke’s, which was for a raucous time among the most popular and famous taverns in town, former patrons offered a wave of memories in the wake of Jay Kovar’s death.
As is common in these icy internet days, many of these recollections took the form of messages on social media rather than words spoken in the warm light of taverns.
Among the most poignant came from Jim True-Frost, a wonderful actor, Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member and terrific guy. He wrote on Facebook, “I got to know Jay across the bar. I was not yet of drinking age, but being a close friend of Jay’s close friends, he made me feel welcome and much more. I felt wet behind the ears, but Jay made me feel like an adult, an artist. He was warm and humane, he was indulgent yet did not suffer fools, much less unkindness or cruelty; he knew the world was nothing if not absurd. … How did so many of us end up in his orbit, and feel so close to him?”
The relationship between bartenders and their customers can be a special one, a bond born of booze, yes, but also of familiarity and intimacy, for it is with a bartender that many people feel comfortable sharing their hopes and fears, their troubles and triumphs. It is also a vanishing bond, since there are fewer taverns than there used to be and, though you can still find some men and women who have been serving drinks for decades, tending bar is no longer seen as a lifelong livelihood for young people, many of whom feel compelled to gild the definition of their task by calling themselves mixologists.
Kovar was a bartender and O’Rourke’s no longer exists. There are few who even remember its birth and life for a couple of years on Wells Street in Old Town or its 1966 move around the corner and a few blocks away to 319 W. North Ave. Kovar was there at the start, and so was the man who would become its most famous patron, the late Roger Ebert, whose almost daily patronage gave the place a certain style and helped attract thirsty newspaper pals and celebrities, among them author Tom Wolfe and actor Charlton Heston, whom Ebert interviewed in one of the bar’s booths.
As he wrote on his lively and still living blog (www.rogerebert.com), “O’Rourke’s was our stage, and we displayed our personas there nightly. … From the day it opened on December 30, 1966 until the day I stopped drinking in 1979, I drank there more or less every night.”
He also wrote that Kovar was one of his heroes, in part because he “seemed to be able to drink all evening and be calm and wise and steady” and also for his “sympathy. He was the kind of guy who always had time to talk, always had time to listen.”
Kovar did seem able to drink half shots all night without showing any signs of being drunk. He smoked Pall Malls, if memory serves. He bought the place from its original owners with a couple of partners and then later bought them out and it was his.
The bar served as one of the legs of what was known as the Bermuda Triangle, a hard-drinking excursion that began at the Billy Goat on Hubbard Street (or for others, myself included, Riccardo’s), carried on to O’Rourke’s and ended at the Old Town Ale House, east of O’Rourke’s on North Avenue. As Ebert put it, “The triangle got its name, it was said, because newspaper reporters crashed there and were never seen again.”
In addition to Ebert, his pal John McHugh and other newspaper types, O’Rourke’s drew from nearby Second City (John Belushi), the Earl of Old Town (John Prine and Ed Holstein, who tended bar there for a time) and theater folks from across town. Kovar was protective of their privacy and his, rarely allowing photographers to shoot his patrons or him.
Betsy Ingram, a longtime local theater fixture as producer, director and actor, met Kovar in the mid-1980s. “Jay could be curmudgeonly, but he was so lovable,” she said. “He created a place where real friendships were formed, where the world’s problems were ‘solved’ and great conversations took place. He created an atmosphere that felt like home, a home where you never knew who might walk through the door.”
The North Avenue location closed in November 1989 but reopened the next August at 1625 N. Halsted St., just south of the Royal George Theatre and across the street from what became Steppenwolf ’s home in 1991. It is said that some of the money to facilitate this move was supplied by actor Brian Dennehy, who for many years starred on Chicago’s stages and frequented O’Rourke’s bar stools. (Dennehy’s daughter, actress Elizabeth Dennehy, noted on Facebook that news of Kovar’s death produced in her dad a “sad wistfulness.”)
The new place was not the old place, though it still featured black-and-white blowup photos of Sean O’Casey, Brendan Behan, George Bernard Shaw and James Joyce. And many of the Steppenwolf crowd.
Actress-singer Suzanne Petri worked as a bartender at O’Rourke’s in the mid-1980s and says, “Jay was the best boss ever. I loved him in all his gruffness. He always danced with me, with my mother, my sisters. And the place had the best jukebox in town. I am filled with so many memories of so many great times.”
Steppenwolf ensemble member (and Petri’s husband) actor Robert Breuler said the tavern “created a sense of warmth from the moment you walked in.”
But it closed in 2001, and Kovar offered this reason to the Tribune: “The whole drinking scene has changed in Chicago.” Auctioned off were many bar artifacts, from glasses to its jukebox’s records. One of those items, the long, scarred but still beautiful wooden bar, made its way onto the Steppenwolf stage in the 2002 production of “The Time of Your Life.”
Kovar and his wife, Rita Ryan, lived a relatively quiet postO’Rourke’s life in the neighborhood, and Jay could often be seen walking dogs on the beach, in the park or along the Old Town sidewalks. I would see him every once in a while and often shared some memories and my thanks, for he was always watchful of my mother when she used to spend too much time at O’Rourke’s before, like her good friend Ebert, giving up drinking.
But I knew him mostly from the tavern and that is true of most people, who do not know their bartenders beyond the confines of their working environment.
Sarah Pang knew Kovar as a friend. A former first deputy chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley (among many high-profile political positions) and currently running the One Chicago Fund, Pang and her business/management consultant husband, Bruce Munies, were Kovar’s neighbors.
“I used to go to O’Rourke’s every once in a while but didn’t get to know Jay and his wife, Rita, until we moved onto their street in 1994,” Pang says. “He had in him the DNA of this city, the very best of the city. He was a renaissance man, and that is a rare thing these days. We talked almost every day, walking our dogs in the early morning. Politics, poetry, everything. There was no BS about Jay or Rita, and it was very special to be called their friend. This is a huge loss.”
Not everybody felt that way, and you can find some disparaging words in the social media swirl. Kovar was in his 80s and one does not live that long a life, behind a bar or in front of it, without ruffling a few feathers.
“He was the kind of guy who always had time to talk, always had time to listen.” — Roger Ebert, writing about Jay Kovar