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April 22, 2008
Say it ain't so
Alas, apparently it is so: The Nisei Lounge is closing:
Owners Scott Martin and Din Papageorgakis have a potential buyer, and regulars are convinced the lounge is as good as gone.
The dive bar is on a piece of property as precious as a healthy Kerry Wood right arm.
At a farewell party for regulars Sunday night, chocolate cupcakes were served. A couple of shots of sake were knocked back for old times' sake. People were misty-eyed. But toward the end of the party, Martin showed up to tell the crowd paperwork for the sale had not been signed.
...
The Nisei Lounge opened in its current location on the ground floor of Links Hall in 1951. The Nisei are second-generation, American-born children of Japanese immigrants. But the bar has been open to all walks of life. Last year actor Ethan Hawke came into the Nisei while working on a production upstairs at Links Hall. Just last month Johnny Depp wandered into the Nisei after filming nocturnal scenes for his John Dillinger opus in the alley behind the bar.
Kaunch Hirabayashi opened the original Nisei Lounge in 1949 at Clark and Division. When the bar moved to its present location, Chicago was home to more than 150,000 Japanese Americans, about 30,000 of whom had been interned in camps during World War II. Many Lake View-based Japanese Americans since have moved to the suburbs.
It never really occurred to me that the place was called Nisei Lounge because it catered to Japanese Americans. I figured it was just a goofy, hipsterish name.
Anyway, I guess I should tell the story about why the Nisei Lounge holds a dear place in my heart: it's where I got a hole-in-one at Golden Tee Golf. I do not know how hard it is to make a hole-in-one, but I have never gotten another one, and I do not know anyone who has gotten one. Of course, this was all due to my great skill, and not luck. Not at all.
entry no. 1131
Posted at April 22, 2008 12:38 PM