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According to Ken Mierzwa, what is now the rather posh River North area, was something different back then: “…it was still a pretty marginal area, with graffiti on the walls and sleazy liquor stores, the kind where patrons put their money, or sometimes a watch or a diamond ring, through a semi-circular opening in the bullet-proof glass and get a pint bottle back in exchange.
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O’Banion’s opened for business in 1978 and was owned by the same guy who owned one of the fine area liquor stores.
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This apparently added to the edgy atmosphere once the punk rockers began to descend on O’Banion’s.
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The latter was the predecessor to O’Banion’s and it is said that the “rougher” male crowd, who had a penchant for leather, would continue to go to the club thinking that it was still a gay bar. Following that, the space was turned into more than one gay bar – one for the ladies and one for men called PQ’s. The saloon then become Chicago’s largest strip club in the 1950’s, known as the Liberty Inn. The building housing O’Banion’s was once the McGovern Saloon, which was frequented by Dion’s former ally, Bugs Moran. Rumor has it that it was Dion’s clean-cut Irish persona was used in Hollywood to portray gangsters, including those played by James Cagney. Three men walked in and, when Dion went to shake the middle one’s hand, the other two fired two bullets into his chest, two in his throat, and another blew his jaw away while the third man (Frankie Yale) still gripped his hand so that Dion could not reach for his guns in time (which he usually kept on him in concealed fashion). O’Banion was an associate of Bugs Moran, Al Capone’s arch-rival, and is described by historian Frederick Lewis Allen as, “…a bootlegger and gangster by night, a florist by day a strange and complex character, a connoisseur of orchids and of manslaughter.” Because of this, as well as having thoroughly pissed of the Sicilian Genna Brothers, O’Banion was murdered by Capone’s henchmen in his shop. O’Banion’s was in fact named after Dion O’Banion, a Chicago gangland figure that operated a flower shop in the 1920s, originally located nearby. Though it only existed for four years, it’s influence on Chicago music can be felt today in such venues as Metro, Empty Bottle, Neo and Exit. As punk rock yielded to new wave, so did the neighborhood to gentrification and O’Banion’s was sold and turned into an upscale restaurant. This was a far cry from its previous incarnations as a gay bar, the largest strip club in Chicago at one point and a “Bugs” Moran hangout. O’Banion’s was not exactly “aesthetically pleasing” or even “clean,” but it did play host to a litany of local talent and national acts like the Dead Kennedys, Husker Du and The Replacements. O’Banion’s is now the Irish pub, The Kerryman.įollowing the demise of Chicago’s first punk club, Le Mer Viper when it burned down in 1977, a new bar by the name of O’Banion’s opened up at the northeast corner of Clark & Erie in River North and quickly became a Chicago legend. The second is Frank Eck, drummer for the Chicago New Wave band The Dadaistics and who regularly performed at O’Banion’s from 1978-80. The first is Ken Mierzwa, photographer and author of Ephemeral Creation – a personal memoir of his Chicago punk experience with some additional photos. Editor’s Note: sadly, this writer was too young to have visited O’Banion’s in its heyday, so most of what follows is taken from two Chicagoans that were integral parts of the defunct Chicago punk scene of 1978-83.