Labor dispute closes Berlin, Chicago’s beloved gay bar
Berlin, a club that was a cornerstone of Chicago’s gay nightlife, has closed after 40 years.
The bar’s owners announced last week that they would close the bar after months of boycotts by workers and performers in support of a fledgling union’s demands for higher wages, health insurance and improved safety.
“The magic that took place at 954 W. Belmont will never be recreated,” the bar said said in a statement on its website. ‘That couldn’t be so. It was a remarkable tornado of talented artists and collaborators, inspired friends and customers, a crazy location and a lot of dreams.”
Patrons and former bartenders responded by flooding social media pages dedicated to the eccentric space with photos and memories. “The early 90s in Berlin were a blur and an absolute blast!” wrote one customer on Facebook.
The bar opened in 1983, as Chicago’s gay rights movement coalesced around demands for more resources to address the AIDS epidemic.
Named after the cabaret clubs of the Weimar Republic, Berlin became a stage for political rallies and the place to party afterwards. The club’s DJs largely eschewed the pop music played in other gay bars, preferring dark wave and post-punk.
Still, Berlin attracted celebrities to the dance floor, including John Waters, Elton John and Donna Karan. And famous artists, such as Lizzo and the drag star JoJo Babygraced his stage.
“It was like an island full of toys for misfits,” St. Sukie de la Croix, who photographed Chicago’s gay nightlife in the 1990s, said in an interview. “Anyone who didn’t fit into other gay bars went to Berlin because everyone else went to Berlin.”
The club stood out in a neighborhood – dominated by LGBTQ bars, sex shops and record stores – where revelers danced into the early morning hours and drag queens and kings performed at Sunday brunch. And it survived even as other mainstays of the counterculture closed due to rising costs and lost revenue during the pandemic.
“Berlin gave you the space to not play a Top 40 song, not wear the trendiest wig, but just be a weirdo and a freak, and the audience would embrace you,” DiDa Ritz, a contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and a regular performer in Berlin, said in an interview.
Ms. Ritz said the club’s welcoming atmosphere made it a bridge between Wrigleyville, the sports-bar-heavy area around Wrigley Field, and Boystown, Chicago’s gay enclave also known as Northalsted.
“What made it really magical was that there were straight people from Wrigleyville with their Cubs jerseys on, transgender people, just a whole bunch of people,” Ms. Ritz said. “Literally until the last day it closed, it welcomed everyone.”
Berlin was originally owned by Shirley Mooney and Tim Sullivan. Jim Schuman and Jo Webster took over after Mr. Sullivan died of complications from AIDS in 1994, the club said. Berlin was the center of Mr. Schuman and Mr. Webster’s origins as a couple and remained so throughout their marriage, they said in a statement.
The bar always had a political slant, says Owen Keehnen, an LGBTQ historian who came of age as a young gay man in Berlin. After activists involved with the Chicago chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or Act UP, clashed with police at a 1990 demonstration, they celebrated in Berlin, shoulder to shoulder waving “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge. Terence Smith, who ran for mayor of Chicago in the early 1990s and then for president as Joan Jett Blakk, his drag persona, held campaign events in Berlin.
More recently, the nightclub was once again a center of unrest as drag performers rallied for better wages and protection.
In 2020, Ms. Ritz helped lead a march from Berlin to Halsted Avenue, the commercial heart of Boystown, demanding better working conditions for artists.
And this year, workers at the counter went on strike for two days in early August, calling for wage increases, as well as health care and pension benefits. In an open letter On the bar’s website, Berlin’s executives said the demands were not financially feasible for a company operating on razor-thin margins, let alone one still recovering from the strains of the pandemic.
The letter stated that Mr. Schuman was being treated for stage 4 cancer, and that Mr. Webster – both his husband and business partner – was his primary caregiver.
The bar could not afford rising costs of “security, insurance and permits, equipment, rent and more,” the owners said in the statement announcing the closure last week.
Neither Mr. Schuman nor Mr. Webster responded to an interview request.
In a statement on InstagramBerlin workers said they were “heartbroken” by the decision to close the club but had no regrets about their fight for better conditions.
“As workers, as queer and transgender people, as artists, we must continue to fight for what we deserve in this world that too often devalues and diminishes us,” they said.
Cecilia Dillon, a cashier at the Vic Theater, a music venue near Berlin, said the nightclub has been a mainstay in her life since she arrived in Chicago 12 years ago.
“It’s an important place, especially for the queer and drag communities,” she said. The Friday themed nerd nights — where drag queens dress up as Pokémon or anime characters — always drew big crowds, she said.
“It’s a very successful company, so I’m surprised they don’t have the money to pay their employees a living wage,” Ms Dillon said.
Berlin was mourned even by its competitors, says Jamie Reyes, a bartender at Sidetrack, an LGBTQ bar a few blocks away.
“It was a different kind of bar,” he said, “where people who might not feel comfortable in a typical gay bar would feel more at home.”
Jesus Jimenez reporting contributed.