Pictures at R.J. Grunts—New Murfin Verse

R.J. Grunts, fifty-three years across Clark Street from the Lincoln Park Zoo.

On Sunday, after the Design for Change exhibition opening at the Chicago History Museum,  my wife Kathy and I, nephew Ira S. Murfin—the last Bohemian—the estimable Emmy Bean and their 8 year old son Floyd moved on up Clark Street for a lunch at the now venerable R.J. Grunts.  Opened 53 years ago the place has barely changed and is still busy on a glorious weekend afternoon.

Grunt’s was the first venture you young restaurant entrepreneur Rich Melman and launched his fabulously successful Lettuce Entertain You empire.  He was said to have revolutionized the hospitality business in Chicago and nation-wide.  He introduced themed casual eateries with catchy names and modestly upscaled menus and has gone on to hoity-toity upscale places with celebrity chefs and clientele.  At Grunt’s he introduced the first-ever salad bar and what became known as pub burgers.

Hip capitalist and restaurant entrepreneur  launched at empire with R.J. Grunt's.

Of course, hiring attractive waitresses was hardly a new idea.  Cocktail waitresses in nightclubs were iconic, as were the Bunnies, silken bustiers and tail up at Hugh Hefner’s thriving Playboy Club.  But the lovelies Melman hired and immortalized on his walls were not presented as overt temptresses but as remarkably wholesome and approachable without having to hide a wallet. 

They came from Chicago working class neighborhoods, as girls fleeing suburban monotony, college drop-outs or part-time students, and fresh from small towns and farms.  All had dreams and R.J. Grunt’s seemed as good a place to start as any.

I knew a couple of them fairly well—actresses hoping to break into the burgeoning local theater scene and encountered others. 

They gained a dose of notoriety when now disgraced columnist Bob Greene co-created Bagtime, a Chicago Sun-Times fictional story series about an aging bag boy at Treasure Island Foods on Wells Street grieving over his divorce from a hot young thing who was a waitress at R.J. Grunts and was caught in an orgy with the Chicago Bear line.  I guess they may have fueled other fantasies as well in addition to real lives in the post-pill era of sexual liberation.

A part of a wall of waitress portraits by the restrooms in the bar area of R.J. Grunts.

Pictures at R.J. Grunts

May 21, 2024

 

Maybe it was the nostalgia in the sparkling spring air—

            after a morning revisiting a slice of my youth

            it seemed an apt choice and just up the street

            from the museum.

 

R.J. Grunts hit the time target, 1971, to be precise

            and was hippie-dippied in a dark wood cavern

            cluttered with tables and catch as catch can chairs

            aping the popular pub joints on Rush Street and

            Lincoln Avenue.

 

But it was hardly revolutionary or radical except maybe

            in the Chicago restaurant biz—

            prime example of Hip Capitalism at its most triumphant.

 

Waiting for a table on a very busy afternoon

            our eyes—the four grownups and a nephew—

            adjusted to the dim interior

            which had hardly changed at all in 53 years

            except the old permanent blue haze of smoke

            had lifted.

 

I studied the wall by the tiny restrooms opposite the bar

            which was covered by 8x10 framed photos

            of smiling vibrant young women and more

            lined every wall in the dining room.

 

Back in the day Rich Melman picked each server for pulchritude

            and waitressing at a hot, busy joint was a good way

            for young women to launch themselves into the world

            and maybe bide time until a career as an actress, singer, or artist.

 

And they took their pictures to hang on the walls,

            years and years of new pictures until the walls were filled

            sparkling with hope with dreams and cheerful open smiles

            as if they would never be groped by drunks

            or followed disastrously home on a dark night

            shining alike no matter how varied in hairstyle or costume.

 

The ones here, by the bar, are probably the oldest,

            those chicks, they called them,

            now grandmothers even great-grandmothers.

 

How brave of them

            how worthy of a moments veneration

            before our table to five is finally called.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

 

Check This Out—Designing for Change of Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s-‘70s

I highly recommend the Designing for Change of Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s-‘70s at the Chicago History Museum.  Exhibit curators and creators did an excellent job of exploring not just the most familiar and expected stuff of that period, but the diverse—and sometimes almost siloed—movements that grew organically and cross fertilized.  

The program for the Chicago Freedom Festival at Soldier Field featured Dr. Martin Luther King and a kickoff for the campaign against slumlords and for housing desegregation in 1966.  The V-in-a-circle device was widely used to promote the campaign and appeared on buttons, flyers, and demonstration signs and banners.

They began with the Chicago Freedom Movement and its campaign against slumlords and for housing desegregation and the creation of iconic v-in-a-circle logo used widely on buttons, posters, and flyers.  From there it segues to Respect and Representation for Black Liberation starting with the South Side mural The Wall of Respect and the development of the Black Arts Movement and other cultural manifestations that resounds down to Black Lives Mater artistic representation.  

The Wall of Respect mural on the South side was a key touchstone in the emergence of the Black Arts Movement. 

 In many ways the most obvious choice is the section on the peace and anti-Vietnam War (not necessarily the same thing) movements that included material relating to the Democratic National Convention protests in 1968 and later protests of the Chicago 7 trial including some ephemera promoting what would become known as the Days of Rage.  This section includes an important collection of Chicago Seed covers and related materials.  I was happy to be a resource for the curators on that. 

                                One of several Seed covers featured in the peace and anti-war movement section of the exhibit.

Women’s Liberation in Chicago was viewed through the lenses not of the “official” middle-class feminist movement that concentrated on advancement through the system and careerism,  but by the pioneering Chicago Women’s Liberation Union with an explicitly socialist perspective.  The CWLU spawned the Women’s Graphic Collective which specialized in big, bold screen print posters—practically fine art pieces—that could be obtained at minimal pricing to democratize both the message and the cultural value. 

Part of the Women's Liberation section of the exhibit included Chicago Women's Liberation Graphic Collective posters and the original sign, upper right of Chicago Women's Liberation Union offices.

The LGBTQ+ community had roots in some of the first organizations for homosexuals in the nation and a developing culture that include the arts and journalism that led to the first Gay Pride Parade in honor of the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in New York.  Many historians credit that parade, which became an annual Chicago tradition, with the inspiration for Pride Parades nationwide.  The particular role of lesbians—who often overlapped into feminist activism—was highlighted by a great selection from Mountain Moving Bus Café which was both a safe refuge and a platform for performance, exhibits, and cultural manifestations,  Materials on marching for abortion rights are relevant all over again.

Chicago hosted the first Pride Parade on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in New York and inspired annual marches across the country.  The unique logo on the lead banner--interlocking gender signs under a power fist borrowed from the Black Liberation movement--was a Chicago contribution the defiant culture.

These groups co-existed and a sometimes seen as part of a broad movement for radical—sometimes revolutionary—change.  But they were different in aims and aspirations as well as strategy, and the art culture that developed with them was unique.  Male domination and sexism were rampant in some of the otherwise progressive movements and offended radical feminists.   The anti-war movement seemed dominated by Whites leaving Blacks often feeling excluded.  The rainbow coalition envisioned by the Illinois Black Panthers and the protests of the murder of Chairman Fred Hampton helped to make some connection.  Many Blacks were resentful of LGBTQ+ activists for “stealing” their playbook especially regarding a strong cultural bias against homosexuality.  Now protests of the wave of murders and disappearances of transgender Women of Color bring communities together.