The Billy Goat

I’ve been to The Billy Goat Tavern before.  It’s under Michigan Ave., deep in the guts of underground Chicago.  It is always dark down there and perhaps just as well.  The Original Billy Goat Tavern was right across the street from the Chicago Sun-Times, not far from the loading dock where newspapers were tossed to the trucks before the presses finished rumbling for the night.

The walls of the Billy Goat are adorned with clippings and photos going back to shortly after the invention of moveable type.  Walter Winchell is there.  Mike Royko, Larry King, Mayor Daley, on and on, they’re all there, immortalized on the smoke stained walls.  Sitting at a table, you almost wait for someone to feed a dime into a payphone and yell “Get me rewrite! And hold the Front Page!” 

To this day, they sell mickeys of gin, vodka, rum and scotch over the counter, purportedly for those hard-drinking reporters who now punch the speed dial on the cell phone and then press 1 for rewrite and press 33 for composition. 

The Cheesborgers?  Superb.  The Double is the Cheesborger of choice.  Cheeps?  Ya.  Barbecue or Regular?  No Pepsi, Coke.  Served on a slab of waxed paper.  Or you could order a Polish, which is a bunch of slices of kielbasa on a bun.

Is the ghost of John Belushi here?  Sort of.  Are the Ghosts of Old Newspaper Men here?  Oh most emphatically.