By Ben Joravsky
Hamilton’s approach emphasized informality and spontaneity, with teachers and students exchanging wisecracks between songs. After each session the students (beginners and advanced alike) gathered in a common room for a sing-along. The clumsiest, all-thumbs neophyte could feel like Pete Seeger, if only because his scratching was absorbed into the more melodic sounds of the group.
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At first the school operated out of Stracke’s office in an old bank building at 333 W. North. By 1967 it had a building of its own on Armitage near Sheffield. Back then the school was clearly rooted in the counterculture world of bohemians, beats, folklorists, blues artists, coffeehouse devotees, and working-class poets. Many of its teachers lent their names and talents to antiwar protests, civil rights marches, and antimachine campaigns. A favorite song, almost an anthem in the early 70s, was “Lincoln Park Pirates” by Steve Goodman (who, by the way, took guitar lessons at the school as a teenager). The song tweaked the old Mayor Daley and mocked a city so corrupt that it allowed tow truck operators to claim public streets as private property.
By the 90s the school was booming and in need of more space. In 1995 it cut a deal with the city, acquiring the old Hild Library on Lincoln Avenue near Wilson for $10. Hirsch put together a $10 million capital improvement campaign that included a $2 million loan from the city. The old library was rehabbed and in 1998 the school moved in.
It’s hard to imagine any of the school’s present leaders singing songs that poke fun at this Mayor Daley–not while they’re making deals with his administration. And they better watch what they say about corporate America–the new concert hall’s being named for American Airlines, which presumably put up a lot of money for the honor. The school is itself an agent of gentrification. That was also the case when the school was on Armitage, in what was once a working-class black and Puerto Rican neighborhood.
Nonetheless, a few veteran teachers who were complaining about conditions to Hirsch say they’ll pester the new bosses if the place strays too far from its roots. “I’m hoping that this change at the top will be a good thing,” says Pat. “I hope we’re going to enter an age of greater humanism. I know we can’t go back to those days of the three-by-five-inch cards, but the school should be a haven from the anonymous level of things.”
They called themselves the New Team, and last September they made their debut in the Timber Lanes Monday evening men’s league. What a contrast they were from the other bowlers. They were at least a decade younger (a generational difference asserted by their earrings and tattoos), and at bowling a lot worse. They rolled gutter balls and sub-100 games and rarely won.
