Logan (Red) Square and the New Revolution: How a Brewery Transformed Milwaukee Avenue
- joeymcd23
- Dec 13, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 19, 2023
“Revolution brewery?!...Re-vo-lution? There’s a restaurant called ‘Revolution’? When did that happen?” My Mother asked incredulously while driving through the old neighborhood.
“It’s been a while Mom, Milwaukee Avenue is different than when we lived over here.” For example, Father and Son Pizza was replaced by Federales and it's beer garden. The Mega Mall was replaced by a Farmer's Market.
“Yes, of course it’s different, but Revolution? There’s a red star and fist. Are they communists? Do we know them?” Apparently my mother knew every communist who once lived in Logan Square.
“It’s nobody from the ‘Red Square’ days,” the nickname the old leftists gave to Logan Square in the early 80’s. “This is the new gentrification. Being communist is cool.”
“Cool? How can communism be cool?” My mom was trapped in the Logan Square of my childhood. “How can this be cool? And nobody's protesting?”
“Mom, these kids wear Che T-shirts. Its about the vibe, it’s edgy. The revolution has been co-opted and capitalized.”
“I can’t believe it. What would our old neighbors say if they saw this?”
Moving to Little Warsaw
My family moved to Albany and Schubert in 1979, months before Pope John Paul II's visit to Chicago. The Polish Pope’s visit was a huge occasion to my section of Logan Square, where framed portraits of the holy father greeted visitors to their homes. The Pope’s image ordained the shops along Milwaukee Avenue, which the Pope’s caravan used to traverse its way from O’Hare airport to downtown.
Novelist Nelson Algren described the old avenue’s, “Churches that look as though they’d been brought over whole, without a brick missing, from Stockholm and Lodz, Dublin or Budapest: from all the old beloved places.”
The butcher shops had 30 varieties of sausages hanging from the ceiling. You couldn’t ask for kielbasa because it was all kielbasa, and each had a unique name. Old men descended from bars and drunkenly stumbled across Milwaukee Avenue in the middle of the day.
My next door neighbors, the Mezyk’s, emigrated from Poland and resented the communists they left behind in their homeland. Their iconic Pope preached to the faithful the evils of the godless communists. Living on a block with proud Poles I knew better than to share my parents leftist political leanings.
We lived in a three bedroom apartment in a 3-flat, plus a garden unit. Red bricks terraced the edge of the concrete steps. The stoop was a gathering spot for mothers to watch their children play on the sidewalk. As we played “off the wall” with super pinkies, they inhaled Virginia Slims and gossiped.
They mostly talked smack about the young boys in the neighborhood, complaining of their thuggish ways. If a Puerto Rican boy walked by holding hands with a Polish girl, slurs were spewed once they got out of listening distance.
“These sp#cs are taking over,” was typical of the comments.
Berniece and Jerry Fyfe lived in the basement , next door to their brother - below the Mezyk’s. The Irish-American siblings were in their 60’s and left their southside neighborhood when it became majority black. They resented living in Logan Square, and the culprit for their relocation was reminded to everyone - “Those damn n*gg*rs.”
I didn’t understand the pain the word caused others, but I knew a seemingly kind old lady transformed when she conjured its spirit. Despite their racism, they were great neighbors to us. Berniece kept a key for my brother and I when we walked home from school. As neighborly as they were, we avoided topics like Harold Washington and other matters of race.
My parents shared a bedroom, my brother and I shared the second and the other was my dad’s “study." It was a mythical forbidden land, a place I rarely explored. I knew to stay away from this place. My father spent solitary hours reading and writing, comforted by the volumes of books surrounding him on two full walls of shelves.
The Babysitter
I learned my dad’s collection was unique when Dorothy Mezyk babysat us, along with one of the Fyfe nephews. They were teenagers who grew up together, and sometimes acted like boyfriend and girlfriend. It was a secret that Scott joined us that night, Dorothy offered us ice cream in return for our silence. We played hide and seek, and I sought a forbidden place to hide.
They quietly entered the study, “Now, where the hell is the light switch?”
“Oh, here it is.” The light illuminated the books, which appeared to glow. The study was the only room with fluorescent bulbs and had the charm of a dingy old public library.
Scott Fyfe first noticed the books, “Who the hell are these people?” referring to my parents. “And why do they have so many books?”
“Yeah, what are all these?” as Dorothy picked up a dark chocolate leather bound volume of Stalin. It was volume 1 of the thirteen volume set. Of course that was nothing compared to Lenin’s 30 volume set. The Lenin books were not as nice, with a paper cover in a faded avocado green.
“Wait a minute, here’s something else, it says Karl Marx.”
“This says Lenin and it has the Russian flag.” Suddenly fear overcame Dorothy, as if she stumbled into a scene of the occult. “Scott! These are all communist books, the McDermott’s are communists!”
I maintained my silence and focused on my hiding spot. I never took any special notice of my dad’s boks. I knew we were different and there were secrets we had to keep, but I was curious by their response to these books.
“Are you serious Dorothy? How do you know these are communist?”
“Stalin? Russia? Lenin? Russia? Mau? China? Is this starting to make sense to you?”
A surge of terrified glee overtook them. They rushed out of the room and slammed the door behind them, as if they trapped the Loch Ness monster within the confines of my dad’s study. They breathed hard, while laughing at each other.
Dorothy calmed down, “Whatever happens, we can never tell our parents, especially my father. They already think the McDermott’s are weird, there’s no way he lets me babysit if he finds out about this.”
The Old Red Square
We practiced our communism in secret, out of fear and respect for our neighbors. Even as an adult I’m hesitant to share this story with others. My parents were investigated by the FBI, so their paranoia was valid. My parents were first generation college graduates. Imagine my grandparents' pride and then shame, when FBI agents visited their home. Their prized offspring were involved in anti-American activities. That’s what it meant for my parents to be leftists at that time.
We were the original gentrifiers of Logan Square. Our families had downward mobility, we were educated but prioritized the struggle over material possessions. Nonetheless, the first sign of a gentrification is when the leftists move in. We were outsiders in several ways due to our lifestyle. And now, 30 years later, our beliefs set the trends.
Milwaukee Avenue is another story. This strip was industrial, with a few taverns, an SRO and the famous Mega Mall. On weekend nights nary a soul walked the avenue in the 80’s. Today lounge’s use red velvet rope to control the overflow of party goers. Revolution sparked and propelled the new commercial district of Milwaukee between Kedzie and California.
So, when my mother asked me, “What would the neighbors think if they saw this?” In addition to the Bolshevik Brew, there’s a whole lot they wouldn't recognize.
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