Cabaret Comes to Wicker Park
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Kirchman and Davenport came up with the idea five years ago, when Davenport was a bartender at Spiaggia and Kirchman was an advertising executive who frequented the restaurant. After discovering a common interest in cabaret music they vowed to open their own club, but they spent years wrestling with zoning laws as they searched for the right spot. They considered sites in the west Loop and along the growing entertainment strip on Southport, but eventually they bought a space just north of Division and Milwaukee that had previously housed a dry goods store. Explains Kirchman, “We kept coming back to Wicker Park, because it seemed right to us.”
She and Davenport have lived in the neighborhood for years, and they’re convinced that the area will welcome cabaret entertainment. “As the price of real estate in the area has increased, a somewhat older population is moving into Wicker Park,” says Kirchman. In addition to the older set, they hope to attract those people who flock to the neighborhood’s growing array of upscale restaurants. “There are a lot of 30-plus-year-olds who are looking for somewhere to go in Wicker Park other than a rock club after they dine at Cafe Absinthe.” Area restaurateurs agree. “We’re seeing a lot of people from different neighborhoods coming here to eat,” says Derrick Robles, co-owner of the Bongo Room, one block north of the new club. Joan Welch, executive director of the Wicker Park Chamber of Commerce, also thinks the area is ready for cabaret. “The median age has climbed from 18 to 19 up to between 25 and 30 over the past ten years,” she says. “There’s definitely an older crowd here now.”
Struggling with alleged irregularities in its financial records, Livent Inc. has introduced a new seating policy at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, where Ragtime premieres this Sunday. House seats, reserved for the well-connected and traditionally among the best in the venue, are typically sold at the regular orchestra seat price ($75 in the case of Ragtime). But Livent is charging $125 for a special “VIP seat” that includes access to a private lounge, coat check, and other amenities. Meanwhile the Ontario Securities Commission continues its investigation into the company’s financial records; the company’s stock has not traded since the story broke in early August, and despite CEO Roy Furman’s promises of new information in late October, Livent is keeping quiet. Fosse, a revue of dance numbers by Bob Fosse that opened to mixed reviews in Toronto that same month, will premiere on Broadway in January; hoping to give the show a new spin, Livent recently dropped the subtitle A Celebration in Song and Dance and tagged the show “a new musical,” though it lacks the characters and libretto associated with such a format. Life is no cabaret.
