City of Villages: Streeterville

Streeterville is my favorite Chicago neighborhood story. It is a story a plucky middle aged man, who bit his thumb at the upper crust of Chicago 1880’s royalty and got his plucky butt thrown in jail for it. It’s slightly depressing, mostly hilarious and hundred percent classic Chicago.

In the 1880’s George Streeter crashed his boat on a sandbar on Chicago’s shore. Instead of digging himself out, George had his wife set up house on the sandbar, putting his new home next to some of the primo real estate of the time on Michigan Avenue. Then naturally, George encouraged locals to dump their garbage around his home basically creating a landfill next to Michigan Avenue.

The landfill eroded to create new land, essentially extending the shoreline of Chicago. But because the city had defined the Chicago by the previous shoreline’s border, George claimed that the new land was outside of Chicago’s jurisdiction; it was streeterland. Of course the mayor didn’t appreciate having a squatter define the border of Chicago and after several confrontations (one apparently involving a gun fight), George was kicked out of the landfill and into jail.

The royalty took over and now streeeterville is filled with high rises and office buildings not to mention the Magnificent Mile, one of Chicago’s ritziest shopping areas. Streeterville, defined by the water on the north, south and east and the Mag Mile on the west, includes Navy Pier, the John Hancock Building and much of Northwestern hospital. Needless to say, the finer things of Streetville are fiscally unreachable for me but I did manage to find a dive bar just off Mag Mile that suited my wallet’s restraints.

It was the music blaring from some underground source that drew me to Streeter’s (50 E. Chicago), a dive bar if I have ever seen one. Once I’d hopped down the 5 slightly sticky stairs to the bar, I was greeted with an intense game of beer pong; yes beer pong the universal game of college frat boys. After dodging a few beer soak stray balls, I made my way past the dj closet, where one large man was stuffed into one small closet, to the bar. I was thrilled to find they had 312, my new favorite beer on tap for 5 bucks a pint.

After a beer, the dj came around and asked for requests. He gladly took all our requests from Kings of Leon, to Prince to Beyonce. I think he would have even accepted Ace of Base if I would have been brave enough to ask. He played all of our requests along with all of the requests of other patrons- including a few country songs that visibly pained him. Despite quite clearly not being a dancing bar, everybody danced including the waitress and bouncer and the frat boys in between tosses.

I realize Streeter’s isn’t a very accurate portrayal of Streeterville, but it is the one I can afford and one I think more true to Streeterville’s roots than $15 cocktails on the top of the Hancock building. I think George would approve.