Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown | Chicago | S07 E02 | All Documentary

Anthony Bourdain explores Chicago's Old Town Ale House, Hyde Park politics at Valois, Second City, and the city's sports rivalries, capturing its tough, opinionated character.

Key Takeaways

Chicago's identity is rooted in toughness, authenticity, and fierce local pride.
Neighborhood institutions like the Old Town Ale House and Valois serve as community hubs bridging social and political life.
Chicago politics has a long history of machine-style dynasties and controversy.
Sports fandom, especially the Cubs-Sox rivalry, is a central part of civic identity.

What the video covers

Bourdain opens by framing Chicago as a big, outgoing, tough, opinionated city where everybody has a story.
The Old Town Ale House, opened in 1958, is a regulars' bar where the average age is over 40 and the owners joke about its colorful characters, including the late John Fox and 'Reuben Four Toes'.
The bar's 'no shot list' and handshake traditions highlight the local, irreverent culture.
Bruce Cameron Elliot, co-owner and painter, shows his portraits of regulars and political figures like Putin, reflecting his sharp humor.
Valois in Hyde Park is presented as a cross-neighborhood institution where politicians, including Harold Washington and Barack Obama, were known to gather for breakfast and lunch.
The segment on Chicago politics traces the Daley dynasty, criticizing the financial mess left by the second Mayor Daley's administration.
Discussion of Chicago identity emphasizes authenticity: residents see through fakes and value toughness with decency.
Later segments cover Second City's long relationship with the Ale House, Chicago's deep-dish and hot dog food culture, and the Great Migration story of families moving north from Mississippi.
Sports rivalries between Cubs and White Sox fans are portrayed as a defining, almost tribal part of local life.
The episode closes with reflections on Roger Ebert and the city's pride in its writers and critics.

Chapters

Where does Bourdain visit in this Chicago episode?

He visits the Old Town Ale House, Valois cafeteria in Hyde Park, and Second City, among other local spots. The episode mixes bar culture, politics, and food throughout.

What is the Old Town Ale House known for?

It is known for its older regular clientele, a 'no shot list' for patrons, and its owner Bruce Cameron Elliot's paintings of regulars and political figures decorating the walls.

What does the episode say about Chicago's personality?

Chicago is described as big, outgoing, tough, and opinionated, where people don't tolerate fakes and value a bit of toughness combined with decency.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

somebody ask you where you from and you answer i'm from chicago nobody's going to give you a patronizing response like oh chicago's charming [Music] more likely it'll be wow chicago or ho chicago they'll be impressed chicago's a town a city that doesn't ever have to

Speaker A

measure itself against any other city other places have to measure themselves against it it's big it's outgoing it's tough it's opinionated and everybody's got a story [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] down [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Speaker A

as late afternoon gives way to evening in chicago's old town it's time to drink though to be fair almost any time is time for a drink at the old town hale house the chorus assembles to give their opinions on matters of the day subjects

Speaker A

of great import to this city on the lake this city of broad shoulders this true metropolis but there's there's no shortage of characters in here you know i've lost a couple of really great ones john fox the comic

Speaker A

died a few years ago we just lost reuben four toes this 400 pound mexican guy we just called him reuben and then when he had his uh big toe cut off then he became ruben nine toes then when he had his other big

Speaker A

toe cut off he became ruben eight toes and then when he had his leg cut off he changed it down to reuben uh four toes he blames all his problems are the fact his mother didn't give him any titty

Speaker A

milk i mean these guys there's nobody coming through the door to replace him the old town ale house opened in 1958 and has been serving beer and other intoxicating beverages ever since unless you're on the no shot list in

Speaker A

which case your drinking options have been for the good of the community limited there's a no shot list there is the only guy that ever got off it is down there now and it was just because he's a peer

Speaker A

and uh yeah we have a fairly extensive dosha list very extensive meaning you can drink here but no shots for you no shots because just that will lead to no good history has shown us that these people should not drink shot but of

Speaker A

course what they do is they go to another bar and drink shots and then they come over and then we get the remnants right bruce cameron elliot and his ex-wife are the proprietors of the old town ale house bruce likes to brag

Speaker A

that he's never had an honest job but he's a writer legendary blogger and artist so who comes here i mean generally who are your regulars i think the i think the most interesting thing about this bar on an average night

Speaker A

if you look down this bar at 10 o'clock or 11. i would say the average age is certainly over 40. which is very unusual it's really what's missing in my life i need an old man bar is there a common thread to the the

Speaker A

irregulars the common thread is uh of our hardcore regulars they're basically alcoholics i mean i was dancing around that well i wouldn't we don't dance here there's no dancing so late john fox who was my all-time favorite funny man he

Speaker A

came up with the hailhouse handshake the secret ale house handshake was like in the morning which was that right what do you have to do to get barred here you know punch somebody probably more than once more than once

Speaker A

the walls of the bar are covered with his portraits of ale house regulars which he mostly paints in the basement next to the beer cooler more notorious are his paintings of well-known political figures who have for one reason or another raised bruce's

Speaker A

ire they are inevitably depicted in an unflattering let's say non-family-friendly light [Music] putin has been behaving very poorly let me put it that way i mean but he also intrigues me plus i also have the extra satisfaction knowing he would not

Speaker A

like what i'm going to do and that that's you know that gives you a lot of pleasure [Music] there is no shortage of opinions at the ale house bar and bruce's opinions and the scope of his work extends far beyond

Speaker A

chicago's borders [Music] i'm working on my latest painting is putin oh yeah say no more i want to see some advice because i i was thinking of the classic catherine the great hoists stallions but then there's these ponies involved i

Speaker A

love ponies well let me show you what what i've come up with because simply because of the size constraints and this is uh of course that's our beer cooler and everything this is where the magic happens well this is where yeah yeah

Speaker A

this is this is where sarah palin was painted whoa and um originally i was thinking and i'd be very interested in your input originally what i thought was the cathode of the great the horses and he in the receptive position

Speaker A

but then on the other hand when i put him in a tutu i thought i think that i've really uncovered the true putin ballet's very important in russia right and if i played him naked that would almost be

Speaker A

macho yeah you don't need the i mean presumably tiny genitals well i don't think there's any doubt about that um i mean look he's got his shirt off so already he's universally at flock because he really likes to take it no he

Speaker A

does and i i love i think this is an iconic image as is i really do i think it says it all i i was waiting i'm glad you told me that because i think i can go full steam

Speaker A

ahead now i'm thinking pastel i've gotten pretty good with pastels but this of people who follow your block and know so much about you know i know who fixes your walk-in refrigerator i know who fixes the bathroom i know who comes in

Speaker A

and cleans the floors and i know the entire morning routine between the fancy pants and jimmy and jimmy and um i know so much about all of these people and just the little the day-to-day workings but do you think there's something we said that

Speaker A

like you know the trajectory of your clientele is not no it does not tend to be it's not ascendant it's not it's it's not a set not an ascendant it's in yes and i've lost a couple really i mean

Speaker A

we've really lost some beauties i mean it's the perils of being a saloon keeper here's here's here's my take on that bar people do not live as long as vegan joggers however however they have more fun [Music] in a city of factions of neighborhoods

Speaker A

black white north side south cubs or white sox everybody at one point or another seems to agree on this place valois in hyde park gotta grab your tray that's probably a rule here um i think meatloaf and macaroni and

Speaker A

cheese please thank you from the white fish the mashed potatoes and corn i'm very happy about this two of my guilty pleasures on one plastic tray wow they sure gave us a lot of treasure so what what is where am i what is this

Speaker A

neighborhood this is hyde park this is the heart heart and soul of hyde park so if you're um running for office why would you use this place as your staging area what's the social importance obviously every politician black and white running for

Speaker A

city office will come through here at some point why it's just kind of a hangout you'd see harold washington here a lot i mean brock uh i used to see barack here all the time he spent mostly for breakfast

Speaker A

[Music] the machine that is chicago politics goes straight back to emperor richard daley the father then the son with a diverse cast of scoundrels in between [Music] how were things in chicago i mean on the ark of the trajectory the problem was

Speaker A

that we had this this the daily dynasty we had the old man and when we had the kid that not so bright kid replaced him and he threw a party for his friends for over 20 years and when it came time to

Speaker A

pay the bill he stuck out the back door of the elf city hall so it's a mess right now financially the one thing about chicago is you cannot get away with being a fake or a phone i mean maybe somewhere out in

Speaker A

one of the suburbs but people see through it right away that's kind of chicago what other characteristics of a true chicago would be stereotypically true i think you've got to make at least a little effort to be not be a [ __ ] i think you got to be a

Speaker A

little tough i don't think he can just you can't be a [ __ ] or at least you're making an effort make a little effort just not to just you know roll over [Music] look down for over 20 years

Speaker A

i have multiple sclerosis and i was leaving a rehearsal from a red orchid theater which is my theater company which is around the corner and i came here i was really really tired and i was talking to uh

Speaker A

mitt who's matt in the blog and maybe three or four other people at the end of the bar and i i just remember like falling on the floor i heard somebody else she's not breathing and i called an ambulance

Speaker A

and that's kind of all that i remember and when i came back a few days later like i walked in the door but i was like yeah you're better and then a couple of the regulars are like that guy that guy said that thing and i

Speaker A

was like what are you saying said when you were on the floor filming of the mouth he said i got he said they said i got really quiet and he said i'll have what she's having so yeah so that was fun

Speaker A

but i i found that later what was really interesting about it was that right away my mind the american cheeseburger it's the sort of feeling you get when you eat it that you remember you're sitting with a friend and enjoying a

Speaker A

memory that takes you back too long ago when you were young and as we follow paul backstage watching him slowly sip his coffee hey what's going on you remember that comedy isn't just about laughs it's also about coffee

Speaker A

and clothes and being yourself do you guys want to run this scene and after all if we can't laugh at ourselves who can we laugh at i gotta be honest he usually does it way better oh come on

Speaker A

how is it that chicago has become the sort of the font of comedy you know it's it's it's a gusher i think it all started with second city and then people came here to study i'd say 90 of people who are doing

Speaker A

comedy right now came to chicago to study paul jurowitz a young man at the beginning of what will presumably be a glorious career first he pushed me in the pool now you call me ketchup dick i try to be

Speaker A

spontaneous one time and this is what i get i feel like no one respects me anymore second city opened in chicago's old town in 1959 and almost from the beginning established a probably unhealthy symbiotic relationship with the ale

Speaker A

house you know their names john belushi gilda radner amy poehler bill murray chris farley if you're funny in america chances are you spent some formative years here getting the [ __ ] hammered out of you learning one hopes in the

Speaker A

parlance of the trade to kill i tuck my undershirt into the underwear tell them how many times per show probably probably seven times got to be a cannonball you know not like a bowl of jell-o jello out there

Speaker A

you know where where are second city people coming from all over all over all walks of life too i mean it is uh you know lawyers teachers with uh you know servers it's all classes well look service that is a

Speaker A

rich tradition i mean one prison anytime you find anyone in the entertainment business one presumes restaurant experience i used to be a server i used to be a cook i was a sushi chef for a while i used to be a segue tour guide i know too

Speaker A

much about segway tour guide yes wow you better have a sense of humor paul and i discuss the perilous nature of a life in comedy over some drinks and food at longman and eagle where though the flannels and neck beards are

Speaker A

abundant the food is excellent beef tartare i like that and who does not love roasted bone marrow tepta koshal with blue cheese and celery relish the good lord wants you to eat this really he speaks to me all the time

Speaker A

coffee of beef tripe and since i'm all about vegetables slow roasted cauliflower with caramelized onions and lentils so does second city travel do you have a road company they're touring companies three touring companies they're on cruise ships as well so i did

Speaker A

10 months on a cruise ship which is 10 months of looking at the water and wondering you know at this trajectory would the boat pull me under i've had this much to drink how long before the boat is out of my sight line

Speaker A

so that's like a prison ship i mean because you you you can't i mean it's real fun for the for the first two months you know it's a lot of fun hanging out with the crews you know there's a lot of

Speaker A

you know venereal diseases going around right and a lot of partying and there's a bar every two feet and then after you hit the two months and you're like i want to go home mom please help me talk

Speaker A

about you know battlefield conditions to hone your craft man i respect that is that he doesn't have the idea behind it we're gonna send you out from him when you get back from the gulag you will be stronger

Speaker A

for it oh absolutely it's your first time um getting paid as a performer and it's also the largest amount of people i've ever performed for was on a cruise ship it was 950 people you're performing to you know four nights a week

Speaker A

[Music] do we know where the dry cleaning is there's no job that that you can liken to this job what are you trying to say like there was some sort of time travelers my hemp business is doing really well

Speaker A

i think it's all i only have like four lines right is it a kind of supportive i mean comedians are not famous for stand-ups specifically it's more cut throat why don't we all just calm down here all right i thought that would get

Speaker A

a pop or at least a reaction it's too long does anybody know where my socks are in the improv community i think it's a lot more supportive because it's a group did you say community yes got your back i got your back all

Speaker A

right got your back got your bag your job as an improviser is to make that person look amazing that's how you know if you're a good improviser this was the path of least resistance for me it was something i fell into that

Speaker A

i loved and i just found out that i was relatively good at and uh through a series of mishaps i found myself for this position like if you'd asked me six years ago if i would be on the main stage at second

Speaker A

city there's no way i would i would have laughed i would have laughed at you so if this is where it ends for me i'd be happy [Music] [Applause] [Music] maybe the first thing you think of when you think about chicago is not ass

Speaker A

burning szechuan food but maybe maybe it should be well i think a lot of people come and they think that chicago is like on a magnificent mile and you know they're like oh should we go down to navy pier

Speaker A

no right so it's nice to go out to the neighborhoods and there's so many different ethnicities everywhere so going to places like that is really awesome one of my favorite chicagoans chef restaurateur stephanie eiser from the girl and the goat and her colleague

Speaker A

peter wong enlightened me look i knew chicago was a city of very diverse neighborhoods everybody says so but this i didn't know about now i do so where where where are we and why are we why are we here i'm real i have to

Speaker A

say i'm really glad we're here but but why we're at szechuan cuisine so after going to china we're just talking about that chengdu is my favorite place but peter's never actually been to chengdu and so coming back then it was like

Speaker A

let's go to chinatown and try to find places to find those things we ate for breakfast every day [Music] pork dumplings and chili oil start the fire you know why the chopstick is thin it's not thick and fat you can just just you

Speaker A

can just do this i think you're not supposed to do that peter you're supposed to help me know he wants food you're so happy one of my favorite dishes in the world anywhere mapo tofu yes a tofu dish

Speaker A

stippled heavily with pork in a burny numbing nine and a half week style exercise in sadomasochism that will start you thinking some deeply disturbing thoughts do you know mapo dofu is it because it looks like spotted grandmother or did spotted pockmarked

Speaker A

grandmother create the dish both both yes right my mouth's a little on fire right now i think the rice came at the right time yes sounds like we are suffering but actually it's delicious yeah anthony try some of this this is my

Speaker A

favorite this specialty of the house fish hot pot nice all right here it goes i scraped off some viewers we're going for the best pizza yeah it burns so good i could pretty much eat this every day [Music]

Speaker A

the summation was it that uh i moved to move him away from another customer and he backed up and clenched his fist and boy when somebody clenches their fists you know they're really capable of doing something so i got in

Speaker A

the first shot and then somebody grabbed me by my arms and held my arms and he got the second shot off and he my septum which was a good thing but you know he was bleeding and i was bleeding

Speaker A

and you know it was camaraderie we all we hugged and kissed afterwards and you know i'm sorry i'm sorry i did that well he's dead now i don't want to speak poorly about my dad [Music] we always lived in the hood

Speaker A

you would hear gunshots in the distance you would get to know about gangs you'll see the graffiti the people who you were growing up with playing with wouldn't be there anymore it's like what happened the second time it's like oh he's dead

Speaker A

he was in the gang he got killed in the drive-by he got shot in the cycle hip-hop artist extraordinaire lupe fiasco grew up on the south and west sides of chicago but inside his home was always an island

Speaker A

of sanity a supportive creative environment well what was different about your family my mother and my father were very intelligent and politically oriented and active so it you know i got book smart and street smart you know floyd webb is an old family friend this

Speaker A

is lupe's mom shirley as becomes quickly apparent she is along with being an extraordinarily good cook an extraordinary and determined human being this is so outrageously delicious wow the whole time we're eating by the way people are moving in and out of

Speaker A

shirley's small apartment the place clearly a hub for a tightly knit community of friends and family so what what age were you when you came to chicago i was uh 13. the worst thing that my family could have ever done was

Speaker A

left the south was left mississippi we should have stayed but this was the land of opportunity here in detroit and the great cities of the new york then we were never hungry down in mississippi we got here depending on welfare

Speaker A

whatever and they became alcoholics abusive to the children and wives and the children came out in the streets and just everybody lost control and now it's what was chicago like when you arrived uh it wasn't as violent uh you know the neighborhoods were

Speaker A

communities no vacant lots there were families all over kids on the street you could go outside and play and not worry about your children and somewhere in the late 70s early 80s it started to change and become more violent july 4th two

Speaker A

young men gunned down from nine people shot to death however much you might love chicago want to celebrate its general awesomeness its character its architecture its food there's no getting away from the ugly fact that chicago's south side is also

Speaker A

currently the murder capital of america what do you think people are killing each other in such large numbers in chicago and not in new york let's be clear it's only a few spots this is the whole city it's not the whole city to be honest

Speaker A

iraq is inglewood right look it's a pretty staggering body town the sad part is that it's been like this right and the only reason this story now is because white people are looking at it and it's like oh that's terrible it's

Speaker A

like that's been like this for 30 years how come it wasn't terrible 30 years ago you probably actually could have did something yeah does a hip hop artist have enough any any obligation really to to speak about anything

Speaker A

positive or even smarter than cars girls or where's my money um i guess it depends on where you come from um and then do you feel the obligation to where you came from a lot of people in the hood won't take me serious you

Speaker A

know they don't they won't take they don't take chuck d serious because at least you take somebody who's rapping about crack and rap about dope that is actual thing that they can go get and sell and make money that day if they

Speaker A

wanted to you can't preach to them black panther party or you know marcus garvey or this because they can't go out and get it and actually sell it and monetize and make money off of it right despite an appalling murder rate

Speaker A

questionable leadership chicagoans aren't going anywhere anytime soon the southern people we brought our spirit here so chicago have like a warm spirit and you know loving spirit it's a beautiful place it's a genuinely beautiful place where you have to

Speaker A

redefine what beauty is to you when you go to different neighborhoods and it's really bad but even in that there's still a beauty in the people and then just from a cultural front you know we got everything here you know we got

Speaker A

if you want capoeira we got capoeira whatever i got yes we got all my garcia yeah you want house music we got that too you want you want just straight finance and you want to just be a stock

Speaker A

market baron we got that too you know you want some of the best food that you'll ever find we got that too so we're crossroads and we picked up a lot of a lot of little dna and things

Speaker A

from different places on all fronts [Music] [Music] some characters i've always my whole life had very a lot of difficulty with these fire plug type guys and he started looking like he was going to start punching street shimmy

Speaker A

who's a guy that hangs around on the street comes in here and i said something to him and he came he made a move so i got him a real nice left left knocked him down and i never saw a guy make this move before

Speaker A

but on his stomach he just went like squished over hooked my leg got on top of me and started whacking me and uh hawkeye our doorman just sat there watching me being pummeled and street jimmy came over here

Speaker A

[Music] making a living hasn't really been what it's been about ever in chicago keeping the ball in the air is what it's about just making sure that things keep going remain viable and sustainable nobody's too concerned about making a

Speaker A

killing or becoming a star everybody just wants to keep doing it is that a uniquely chicago attitude i flatter myself by thinking that people in chicago care more about what they're doing than what they're getting paid to do it

Speaker A

one of the things people have always loved about chicago of course is the music and if one guy has defined rock and roll and punk sounds for the last three decades well this guy steve albini would have to be a powerful candidate

Speaker A

member of the legendary chicago punk band big black and one of the most important producers of underground rock albini produced some of the most influential music of the last 25 years the pixies slint nirvana pj harvey to name a few

Speaker A

he takes me to one of his favorite chicago spots ricka benny's to sample the particularly unholy delights of the breaded fried steak sandwich this thing is this is a half a sandwich bear in mind that's like four pounds yeah

Speaker A

wow we're gonna need a boatload of napkins there's no delicate way to eat this you just hoist and go the time out of the fryer is also critical these are still crispy on the outside this is precisely the way the sandwich was meant

Speaker A

to be eaten yeah that is a thing of beauty and taste and tasty so you have remarkably uh unusual for the music industry on unremarkably lenient um [Music] views on uh music sharing your pricing structure uh as a producer is you know somewhat

Speaker A

against the grain of the usual business model and you were not living in l.a or new york though living on a mountaintop peeing on the uh you know peeing downwards from a great height oh what what are you some kind of

Speaker A

a communist what what well i mean i have a i have a healthy suspicion of capitalism as a uh as a method i feel like you know left unchecked capitalism is a is kind of a cultural sociopathy like for a business

Speaker A

to be successful in capitalist terms it has to do the best possible job of exploiting everyone that it does interaction with the end game of capitalism is that everything is crappier and crappier and people are more and more exploited and i

Speaker A

have a healthy suspicion of that so i feel like the social model that i'm comfortable with it suits my business practices which is that we're all in the same game we're all trying to do the same thing we just want to make

Speaker A

sure that things get better for everybody is that is that a chicago attitude do you think um well in in my circles it is yeah and the in the punk rock scene and the and the people who are influenced by the punk

Speaker A

rock scene that's a that's a very common notion is that you're not trying to extract the maximum you're trying to make sure that everything goes everything carries on is there less douchery in chicago you can find jagoffs that's a uniquely chicago jaguar

Speaker A

it's been so long since i've heard it if you look for them you can find jag offs of all type in chicago but the people who are you know thank you so much productive and content and part of an enterprise that is

Speaker A

you know righteous for lack of a better term right they tend to not just give lip service to the notion of egalitarianism or fairness but they tend to embody it what about the musicians i mean how much money does um

Speaker A

a guitar hero deserve to make well all of it obviously because that's what people are listening to people are listening to somebody's creative expression [Music] [Music] look down the bar right some characters you can't write about them in some people

Speaker A

[Music] around here nicknames have a a sick habit i'm gonna stick it to you like glue you just you don't just dodge them you just live with it when i used to bartend the morning shift here him and this other guy used to come

Speaker A

in um a bit crazy before it was even like 8 30 in the morning and this one poor guy was here and they were like on both sides of them just going nuts and i'm like you know that's it you know

Speaker A

you guys got to go but uh he says you know man you're a real buzzkill and it stuck to me ever since i mean it's carved in stone pretty much [Music] chicago is famously a sports town the bulls the bears the cubs the white sox

Speaker A

to you and me those are just names but to many chicagoans a cause a defining lifestyle choice the rivalry between cubs and white sox fans for instance is particularly vicious the difference between a cult fan and a sox fan is a cub fan

Speaker A

goes to the park they enjoy themselves they have fun the team wins that's okay if they lose it's no big deal the sox fan will turn on their team on a dime if they they don't if they're not good if they don't play well they

Speaker A

don't hustle but a perfect day for a sox fan is the sox to win the cubs still lose and then the cubs plane crashes so what do you attribute this uh this uh quality of deep deep bordering on murderous hatred the hatred

Speaker A

is basically from the south side of course i mean they hate us like you have no idea we don't have that vicious content to that where why why the viciousness and hatred all right but to be around cub fans is to hate

Speaker A

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i i just i can never bring myself to understand their hatred of us [Music] [Applause] [Music] so they're they're they're they're cursed their their historic destiny is to be losers and like they say any team any team can

Speaker A

have a bad century the cubs are working on having two bad centuries right toppo ggo is a massive italian american joint in the old town that serves up much better than you think old school stuff like scallops and pesto cream

Speaker A

sauce for bruce here and squidding pasta with shrimp for buzz kill my veal saltimbocca is most excellent and a long festering dispute across from me only makes my food taste better is bruce's attitude uh atypical or typical uh it's uh extreme or is he relative

Speaker A

moderate it's that's extremely typical i mean he is sitting at the same table with a cub scene well yes i drink with cub fans i've even had sex with cub fans i mean no truth be told uh the last time the sox

Speaker A

won it no five not that long ago really uh for christ's sakes you won one this century how about how about this century we've already won you know i've been on this way 55 years you've won one you know what

Speaker A

you guys are worse than notre dame i wouldn't mind winning every every 25 years cling on to that i mean look uh chicago is a great city yes it is it deserves to win right i mean the thing is about chicago sports

Speaker A

fans we got to see the greatest basketball player that ever lived we were athletes in our pride in our prime we got to see this right so now we we're not holding things up to a higher standard of excellence right now here's

Speaker A

where the cub fans and sox fans joined forces to watch the bear game right that's something we can all agree on you both hate the bears no no i love the bears and we just want virginia to just cash in their chips and

Speaker A

just go away so let's say let's say the planets all the stars align perfectly for chicago in your view how what does the sports picture look like who wins who loses what happens first of all there'd have to be some funerals there'd

Speaker A

have to be a funeral several who would have to die i would say the owner of the bears and then do you agree with this yeah or less we hate owners yeah we are united hatred of the owners

Speaker A

well i wish you both luck [Music] [Music] and i had a little to do in the mornings i just get a and roger he was a very fat guy always been a very fat guy until of course he became ill but he was an

Speaker A

indefatigable walker he loved to walk the reason we ended up here was because in the drinking society that we were involved in at the time there weren't many walkers but roger was bow walker i was a walker legendary film critic roger ebert was a

Speaker A

man of mythic proportions in chicago a close friend of bruce half of the siskel and eber duo and a regular at the old town ale house roger passed away in 2013 after a long battle with cancer [Music] i've been sort of conducting in an

Speaker A

informal poll over the course of the week asking people who chicago should honor if you had to put up a statue you know of the sort of an iconic chicago one who everybody agrees is a good person uh and

Speaker A

very popular answer roger ebert i would say that i'm a little prejudiced but definitely roger ebert deserves all the accolades he's been getting justifiably so roger's the guy that got me to write the blog and he's the guy that gave me the

Speaker A

tips he was an amazing guy and i think of course had he not become ill and really handled his illness in a way that i could i can't even conceive of myself handling um i think that that really kind of set

Speaker A

him apart from kind of the other iconic chicago people the guy and correct me if i'm wrong this was an enthusiast i mean this is a guy who actually liked going to the movies now this is not always the case with uh

Speaker A

critics they don't necessarily love the peep the people or the subject matter they're reviewing roger loved movies and he loved actors if you went over to his house he would want to watch movies siskel and ebert classic you know

Speaker A

it's like that is an iconic relationship they didn't seem to like each other they hated they hated each other yes i mean they understood what they had but a lot of people think cisco was the alpha he was not roger had two things over

Speaker A

cisco he was a much better writer and he was much better read so uh roger lived principally in chicago oh yes and and he had i believe he had plenty of opportunities to leave i mean he was offered some serious dough to go to new

Speaker A

york and uh go to uh l.a why did he go in chicago favors are worth more than money and and loyalty in chicago this is very important stuff roger is one of the most loyal people he was loyal to his

Speaker A

friends to his family right and uh i just i don't have any problem understanding why he decided to stay here [Music] you

Topics:Anthony BourdainParts UnknownChicagoOld Town Ale HouseValoisHyde ParkSecond CityChicago politicsCubs vs White Soxtravel documentary

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