By Ben Joravsky and Mary Wisniewski
“It’s ironic–you’d think a grad student would support Jimmy’s,” says Rebecca Janowitz, an aide to Fourth Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle. “Of course, I don’t know how anyone can be against Jimmy’s. It’s a neighborhood institution. Even my mother likes to have a beer there.”
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Of all those bars, only Jimmy’s, which opened in 1949, survived. “It survived because a bunch of professors said they’d have a fit if it was torn down,” says Janowitz, a faculty brat raised in Hyde Park. “The general feeling was that there had to be someplace where the faculty could go and drink.”
The pastor at St. Thomas, Father Jack Farry, supports the bar’s reopening. He jokingly calls Jimmy’s “St. James Chapel. Whenever we’re missing a teacher we know where to look.”
While calling various city agencies, Barnard discovered that bars are prohibited within 100 feet of schools and churches. “That 100 feet is measured in one of two ways,” says Barnard. “If it’s a school, it goes from property line to property line. If it’s a church, it’s from building corner to building corner.”
As the bar’s backers see it, Barnard has no reason to fret. Jimmy’s is better managed than most bars; indeed, Bill Callahan recently called Barnard and apologized after a work crew drilled and sawed in the early morning. And Webber has promised Barnard that the university will carefully monitor the bar. Should Jimmy’s become a noisy nuisance, it wouldn’t be difficult to make the bar pay, not in the age of Mayor Daley, who has encouraged residents of other neighborhoods to vote precincts dry. “He complains about noise, but Jimmy’s isn’t noisy,” says Janowitz. “Believe me, this is not an issue. We’ve had 100 calls on this and only one complaint.”
