The Daily Parker

After a month-long boycott of Chicago's Berlin Nightclub organized by Unite Here Local 1, the venerable institution closed for good today:

The announcement came hours after Unite Here Local 1, which represents the Berlin Nightclub workers who unionized earlier this year, also posted on Instagram the club’s owners told them the bar was permanently closed as of Sunday.

Workers at Berlin Nightclub, 954 W. Belmont Ave., had been leading a boycott of the popular LGBTQ+ bar for more than a month, claiming Schuman and Webster had never met with the union in person to negotiate its first contract.

Prominent drag performers like Irregular Girl, co-host of Berlin’s popular lesbian night “Strapped,” joined in solidarity, canceling their shows for the remainder of the boycott.

“Berlin has always been a sanctuary for trans people in Chicago who do not feel safe in many other places. … All of that is due to the hard work of the workers, many of whom are transgender themselves, all of whom are queer and all of whom are being mistreated and underpaid by Jim Schuman and Jo Webster,” Irregular Girl said during a rally outside the bar in October.

Berlin owners addressed the union’s actions in an open letter posted that week, claiming that the union’s proposals for higher wages, health care and pension benefits would cost the nightclub over $500,000.

None of Berlin’s union employees work more than 27 hours a week, and the club’s part-time employees earn a base hourly wage plus tips, according to a statement from the owners. All workers make between $22.50-$57 per hour with tips, the statement said.

In August, Berlin workers went on a two-day strike after organizers said Schuman and Webster repeatedly skipped bargaining sessions, bringing negotiations to a halt. Performers canceled their shows in support during the walkout.

Welp. Berlin was a straight-friendly gay club on the edge of Boystown (now known as Northalsted) when I first went there in the 1990s. It wasn't really my scene, but it was fun and campy, and occasionally some cool acts would play there.

I'm sad to see it go down like this. But closing to spite your union? That's not just a dick move, it may be illegal. I don't think this story is over.

I'm setting this to post overnight so I can read these things tomorrow morning:

• President Biden published an op-ed in Saturday's Washington Post, laying out the necessary steps for ending the Gaza war, with the nuance, sensitivity, and command of the facts we should expect from any President.
• Robert Wright lays out the history of Hamas, with particular emphasis on how American and Israeli meddling shaped it into the awful group of people it has become.
• Josh Marshall points out that "the day after" the Gaza war looks pretty bleak, because (a) Netanyahu has no reason to plan for something he doesn't want in the first place; (b) none of the Palestinians' "allies" want to get involved in Gaza; (c) the US and the UK, which could potentially occupy the strip until it can stand on its own, really can't for lots of obvious reasons; and (d) Hamas has every reason to prolong the war as long as it can.
• Former first lady Rosalynn Carter died at 99. James Fallows, who worked for her husband in the White House, has a remembrance.
• Bloomberg City Lab explains the design and social history of London's Mansion Block apartment buildings.

Finally, if you come across a mostly-empty parking lot this coming Friday, post a photo of it with the tag #BlackFridayParking to raise awareness that we have way too much parking in the US. Maybe it can nudge policymakers towards necessary zoning and parking minimums changes to help us get out of the urban planning disaster of the 20th Century?

As planned, my urban-hiking friend and I walked just under 21 km for four beers. She timed the entire trip, and I timed each segment, so we know that the total was 3:24:55 over 20.73 km, just about where we expected to be:

(Note that she uses the obsolete Imperial system of measurements and I use the International system, so the lap markers on her track are miles. Ugh.)

Her Garmin course isn't public, but mine are:

• Leg 1, Metropolitan Brewing to Burning Bush Brewing;
• Leg 2, to Alarmist Brewing;
• Leg 3, to Temperance Beer Co.; and
• Leg 4, to Sketchbook Brewing, Evanston.

We had a really good day. The temperature stayed right around 10°C, so it felt a little cooler when the sun went down, but by that point we'd just arrived at Temperance.

If Metropolitan were staying open, and if Alarmist were anywhere near a train station, I'd rate them both "Would Go Back" in the Brews & Choos List. Alas.

Metropolitan has a beautiful taproom and patio right on the river:

And Alarmist has some delicious beers:

For part of the trip we walked along the Weber Spur Trail, a relatively recent and not-yet-improved former rail line through the Sauganash neighborhood:

Today I felt a bit tired, but in a good way. We did have one extra beer at Sketchbook, but we got 10-ounce pours where available, and we shared the flight pictured above (and the extra 5-ounce pour not shown).

So what's next? Holidays, unfortunately. But we're hoping for a very mild El Niño winter this year, so we might do another beer hike sooner than one might think.

This may be the last warm (enough) weekend of 2023, so once more, I'm planning to go for a long walk. This time we plan to start at Metropolitan Brewing, which will close for good in 5 weeks. We then proceed up the river to Burning Bush, thence 8.5 km northwest to Alarmist, thence 7.5 km northeast to Temperance in Evanston. At that point we'll either head north to Double Clutch (2.4 km), or east to Sketchbook (2.7 km). Both Double Clutch and Sketchbook are along the Metra line that goes right past my house, so that's easy enough.

None of these will get a new Brews & Choos review, though. Even if Metropolitan weren't closing, it's too far from a train station (1.8 km from Belmont); so is Alarmist (2.7 km from Forest Glen). Sketchbook and Burning Bush are both on my Top 10 list, and Temperance and Double Clutch already have "would go back" ratings. But my walking buddy hasn't been to any of them except Sketchbook. So I'm game to go back.

I plan to get a couple of Brews & Choos visits over the next two weekends: next Friday or Saturday in Chicago, and the following week in the Bay Area.

Walk highlights and photos tomorrow or Tuesday. New reviews soon.

First, Wednesday after work at Spiteful Brewing. Cassie enjoyed the seemingly-bottomless treat bag, but after one beer we both wanted to go home and get dinner. (Note that Cassie did not have the beer.)

As I alluded yesterday, I went to City Winery last night to see '90s folk singer Dar Williams:

Great set! I always feel like I'm back in the aughts when I see her.

I have tickets to a late concert downtown, which means a few things, principally that I'm still at the office. But I'm killing it on this sprint, so it works out.

Of course this means a link dump:

• The XPOTUS has a hate-hate relationship with life.
• After a damning ethics report, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) has announced he won't run again, which is too bad because it would have been an easy D pickup.
• Speaking of Republicans in Congress, why do they behave like adolescent boys all the time?
• Israel is seeing a rally-around-the-flag effect, with the odd wrinkle that everyone hates the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud).
• The Post has decided to show people the horrific things 5.56mm rounds do to a body, as their public editor explains.
• George Packer looks at why political writing, in general, sucks.
• Where do all the stolen catalytic converters go?
• A train crash at the Howard St El station injured 23 passengers, and somehow distracted the cops on the scene from a shooting a block away.
• It will take Caltrans 3-5 weeks to fix the I-10 freeway in Los Angeles after a fire last week, with about 300,000 vehicles diverting each day.
• After Elon Musk's latest anti-Semitic garbage, author John Scalzi has left Twitter for good.

I promise to write something substantial tomorrow or Saturday. Promise.

I hope to make the 17:10 train this evening, so I'll just note some things I want to read later:

• Monica Hesse can't help making fun of the dude-bros in the US Senate who think they're still in middle school. Guess which party they're in?
• Julia Ioffe interviews National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
• Last night I finished Jake Berman's The Lost Subways of North America, and this morning I read Veronica Esposito's (positive) review for The Guardian. I recommend this book too.
• The New Republic interviews James Fallows about the uptick in aviation near-misses lately.
• National Geographic cuts through the mythology and history of Paul Bunyan.
• I did not feel the 3.6-magnitude earthquake that rattled central Illinois this morning, because who really feels a 3.6?

Finally, Molly White looks at the ugly wriggling things under the rocks Sam Bankman-Fried's trial turned over: "Now that Sam Bankman-Fried has been convicted in one of the largest financial fraud cases in history, the crypto industry would like people to please hurry up and move on. The trial is over, and it’s just so dang inconvenient that Bankman-Fried so publicly ruined the general reputation of an industry rife with scams and frauds by making it seem as though it is an industry rife with scams and frauds."

Despite the XPOTUS publicly declaring himself a fascist (again), the world has other things going on:

• Josh Marshall plots out how House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) knows he has to pass a budget that Democrats can stomach, but because he still has to placate the extreme right wing of his party, he's pretending he can pass something else. And the clown show continues.
• The US Supreme Court has published their new ethics rules, which look a lot like a subset of the rules the rest of the Federal courts have, minus any enforcement mechanism.
• Tom Nichols warns that many students protesting the Gaza war have turned to old canards of anti-Semitism, possibly without realizing it, but certainly without hesitation.
• The Economist reminds everyone that Lord David Cameron caused most of the problems current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Cons.) hired him back to fix.
• James Fallows advises journalists to report facts and analysis of current news, without distracting themselves and the public with prognostication that turns out wrong almost every time.
• The State of Illinois has finally stopped using my tax dollars to subsidize private and religious schools in addition to the public schools I already pay for, even though some parents make arguments to pity to get me to continue.

Finally, Google has built a new computer model that they claim will increase the accuracy of weather forecasts. I predict scattered acceptance of the model with most forecasters remaining cool for the time being.

I spent part of the afternoon at Spiteful Brewing yesterday and made good progress in Iain Banks' second Culture novel, The Player of Games. It was a lovely fall day:

Cassie enjoys going to the brewery but she does not understand that the treat bag sometimes runs out:

But she does make friends everywhere she goes:

Welcome to stop #88 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Hop Butcher for the World, 4257 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago
Train line: CTA Brown Line, Montrose
Time from Chicago: 33 minutes
Distance from station: 1.1 km

Named after the opening line in Carl Sandburg's "Chicago," Hop Butcher for the World took over Half Acre's Lincoln Ave. facility last January. It took me a while to visit because they're so close to my house that I wanted to walk over, but they don't allow dogs. Boo.

So Friday evening, a friend and I had dinner a couple blocks away on Lincoln Ave., and decided to get a beer after. My friend had two 5 oz. pours and I had a single 10 oz. pour, so we got to try three.

The brand-spanking-new barrel-aged Lincoln Anniversary Stout (12.5%) hit pretty hard, with a sweet and malty body and a strong alcohol feel. My friend, who knows more about beer than I do, said the alcohol covered up some "technical issues," and didn't recommend the beer; I thought it was OK. The Dees, Dem & Dose IPA (6.75%) had a nice, hoppy, clean flavor, with a good finish, but also a slightly sweeter palate than I would expect. I had the Grid APA (5.75%), with good Citra flavors and a very drinkable balance.

(My friend later clarified her opinion of the Anniversary Stout: "I don't remember saying I wouldn't recommend the stout. I wouldn't give it 5 stars, since that alcohol heat can cover up technical issues and isn't my preference, but the alcohol heat is also somewhat inevitable in beers with ABVs over 12%. A lot of people like the alcohol flavor, but I don't. I also don't like it when breweries use sugary add-ins to cover it up, which Hop Butcher didn't do in this one.")

Unfortunately, I can't fully recommend the taproom. It's loud, as it was when Half Acre lived there, with hard cement walls and nothing on the floor or ceiling to mitigate the sound. The Atlantic complained about this phenomenon five years ago. And since they don't allow dogs, I wouldn't just walk over there with Cassie on a weekend afternoon.

Beer garden? No
Dogs OK? No
Televisions? None
Serves food? No, BYOF
Would hang out with a book? Maybe
Would hang out with friends? Maybe
Would go back? Maybe