A Conversation with Cole Brice of Cole’s Bar in Logan Square, Chicago
From Cameron Esposito and Netflix to indie rock stars, how an unassuming Midwestern dive bar is becoming a cultural centerpiece
by Katie Ingegneri
“Are you going to Cole’s tonight?”
The ubiquitous question if you live in the general Logan Square area of Chicago, or really, anywhere downtown — if you’re into live music, rock music, stand-up comedy, or the kind of unpretentious spaces “where everybody knows your name.” Cole’s — aka Cole’s Bar, the establishment named after its Chicago-born proprietor Coleman Brice — is a mid-sized bar on Milwaukee Avenue near the California blue line stop that opened circa 2009, long before Logan Square became a “hot,” gentrified area. With few outwardly distinguishing characteristics beyond quirky, Abraham Lincoln-themed art, you wouldn’t necessarily know at first glance what a special space this humble bar is.
With an air of gin-soaked wood and cigarettes, Cole’s has became a touchstone for at least two Chicago creative scenes: stand-up comedy and rock music. Their famous open mic night for comedians was ushered into existence by the excellent Cameron Esposito, and commemorated in an episode of Netflix series “Easy,” which is based in Chicago. Cole played a bartender — aka himself — in the episode that follows comedian Odinaka Ezeokoli on Milwaukee Ave from Cafe Mustache to Cole’s across the street. (The show is also directed by Joe Swanberg, brother of James Swanberg, songwriter and performer in Chicago indie music mainstays The Lemons and TodaysHits.) The bar also supports visual artists, folk music, and DJs — a real community bar.
For me, a music fan and writer who started this magazine while living in Logan Square, Cole’s was always about music, a space where I could catch great bands covering the gamut of indie rock genres and styles — always with no cover charge at the door. While my memory tends to get foggy when considering the sheer volume of bands I saw there in a, uh, less than sober state and often very late into the evening, some nights really stand out, like seeing the now-world-dominating Whitney back in their small show days, or catching brilliant local musician Trey Gruber’s band Parent there before his tragic passing in 2017. From touring punks to the garage rock mainstays of Chicago DIY’s basements gone above-ground for the evening, the unpretentiousness of Cole’s is exactly the kind of space that needs to exist in urban spaces to foster community, collaboration, and multiple generations of artists becoming inspired by each other.
From being brought there on a serendipitous date during my very first visit to Chicago in 2012, to moving to Logan Square myself, and immersing myself in the music scene, there were few comparable venues in terms of music, cheap drinks, and always finding buds at the bar. I dragged my friends there on the night the Cubs won the World Series, despite not being a native Chicagoan and not caring much about sports, because I knew we had to grab PBRs there to have my idea of a quintessential “Chicago night.” It became the centerpiece of my world as a music fan, music writer, and Logan Square resident, a reliable space as the waves of gentrification rose, putting in trendy cocktail bars on the surrounding blocks and taking down DIY houses like Wally’s World, which had just been one street over. As the gentrification hit, I ended up moving back to my home of New England, but damn, I miss being able to just walk from my own apartment further up on Milwaukee Ave to Cole’s.
Cole himself has always been a reliable presence in the space, a 30-something family man who lives in the area and who can often be seen behind the bar late into the night on weekends, among the local artists and musicians who serve drinks to the hundreds of patrons who come through. A down-to-earth and unpretentious Midwesterner, you might not even realize that big-name comedians like Hannibal Buress continue to come through the bar — or that there is graffiti proclaiming “Cole is a babe!” in the ladies’ room.
I thought it would be interesting to interview Cole as an appropriate ending to my time living in the neighborhood earlier this year, particularly as Cole was an early adopter of reading Houseshow and let me book multiple shows there, including when, for the first shows I ever threw, I audaciously booked an entire weekend of great indie acts there in May 2017 (roll call: Desert Liminal, The Bingers, Flesh Panthers, Luke Henry, Sports Boyfriend, and Modern Vices), and in December booked my own 30th birthday party there with a full band lineup (Daysee, Sports Boyfriend again cause she rules, and Engine Summer) and my friend Cadien Lake James of Twin Peaks DJing. Trendy cocktail spots may come and go, music venues may open or shut down, but this world needs unpretentious bars — and Cole’s will always be my favorite of any time, any place.
Among other topics, Cole and I discussed how he started the space as a response to his own early years as a musician and live music fan, how he thinks history will remember his bar, and just why there is so much Lincoln-themed art on the walls. I hope Cole’s will continue to thrive and soldier on as a much-needed centerpiece of artistic community, as corporate development and real estate threatens all that urban-dwelling “hipsters” like myself hold dear — and I hope history will remember it as such.
Conversation with Cole Brice at Cole’s Bar, March 2018
Katie Ingegneri: I first came here in March 2012, when I was first visiting Chicago, cause I met people who lived in the area [despite otherwise being stuck downtown in the Loop] — how long had you been open at that point?
Cole Brice: I opened in the summer of 2009, so I guess that was like 3 years…but it even seems like 2012 was so long ago, right? It’s crazy.
So did you always want to open a bar, or…?
Yeah, kind of — my inspiration was The Mutiny. When I was like 22, or 21, or whatever, I was playing in the same kinds of bands that will play around the scene here — you got a band, you got like 40 fans who are mostly your friends, maybe like a couple or three weirdos that come out. And so I was like “this is fun, the Mutiny is such a great vibe,” but obviously it’s a little bit limited in what the capabilities are and what the place was.
And I was always coming up on this barrier — and this was a long time ago, and the market in Chicago has changed a lot. So we’d play like, Mutiny, and we’d bring 40–50 people, and it would be amazing — it feels packed, it was fun, Ed is really happy and throwing cash at you — you’re like “great.” But then you scale up, and there was really nowhere to go in between Mutiny and like, Subterranean, or a bigger room like that.
So the situation was we’d be like, 40 people on Friday night at the Mutiny, and then you’d try to do the show at Subterranean, and it’d be like 40 people on a Tuesday night at Subterranean or Double Door or something like that, and it would just be like — crickets. It would just feel so sad, like actually sad, like “why are these guys here, why are we here, why is anybody here, this room is like 20% full”— so at the time there was really not a place to make that leap.
You know, you had places like Empty Bottle, which was kind of getting going, but they were at a higher level, doing touring bands, famous bands, and then filling in on the weekdays with the upper echelons of the garage rock scene or whatever the scene is. Hideout was kind of a closed-circuit at the time — I guess with any of these clubs, they get into a space where you are just within one scene, it was so hard to break into.
So that’s what I was thinking, like “man it’d be so great if we had some place that was kind of in-between.” I had the idea, and it took me about 6, 7, 8 years to take it from idea to actualization, and at the same time as I was opening, [The] Whistler opened up like six months before I did, Burlington [Bar] opened their venue like two years after I did. So you started seeing this kind of stuff popping up during the same kind of time period.
How did you decide on this location?
It was kind of very fortunate, I was looking all over the place. The way Chicago works, liquor licenses are permissible by location, it’s kind of complex but there’s various rules about too close to a daycare, too close to a school, moratorium district, zoning — there’s like a check mark of like six conditions that need to be met. And in actual practice, it comes down to there are very few locations that are actually licensable for a new tavern, without getting into like, lawyers, and zoning changes, and special political influence and all this stuff.
So what happened is, Logan Square was kind of a no-go for a long time. It was where I lived, and I was like “Logan Square would be great, there’s no bars in Logan Square,” at the time, except the Two-Way — the Two-Way was really sketchy back then — but I heard about Revolution [Brewing] had broken ground over here, and I was like “how is Revolution gonna get their liquor license in Logan Square.” And because it’s location-based, that was like, “well, if they can get one, I can get one, on the same block.” So I happened to see this place was for rent right across the street — “if it’s legal for them, it’s legal for me.” So I kind of rode in on whatever — political influence, legal expertise, coattails — so that’s kind of how it worked. So I opened up before they did, but it took a while to get open.
Cause back then, Logan Square was still very up-and-coming, right?
It was a weird mix, it was a stable neighborhood that was very family-focused. There was good real estate values, it was a beautiful neighborhood, safe, economically diverse, racially diverse, but it wasn’t like the restaurant scene and the bar scene. It was just like, “I’ll be over at Albany and I’ll get my little single-family home, or my two-flat, and rent the upstairs.” So it was developed but not “hot.”
I’ve been here since 2013, and it’s definitely changed so much in the past 4 years. So have you seen a massive uptick in business?
For sure, just being on this strip — there’s so much foot traffic now. This was all just empty, I had no foot traffic to begin with, because there was nowhere where people were going — there was no destination, no reason to walk down the block. Every place was like some old printing factory that had shut down, a couple businesses — Chicken Run which used to be a restaurant across the street, Heretics over here, supermarket over here — that was pretty much it for the entire block. So just having the foot traffic and just being an entertainment destination is so helpful, just got really lucky.
And so did you start it from the beginning with the idea of having music and comedy and all of that?
My original concept was the music piece of it, comedy was kind of a happy accident — I was just looking for weekday programming and I happened to meet the right person, which was Cameron Esposito, so I was like “you could do a comedy show here, what do you think?” and she was like “well, actually we should do an open mic.” So that was just very fortunate. The original concept was to do the music venue, and then the bar piece kind of popped out from there.
It sounds like from your experience playing, you guys always had this cool thing where you just paid the bands without charging at the door.
Yeah, and again, from my experience playing at the Mutiny, you’d play a show at a better venue and be like “okay, well they’re gonna charge everybody seven dollars at the door, of which they’re gonna take $300 for production costs.” And nobody gets paid anyway — it’s not really about the money at that level, even if you make like $200, you gotta split it up between like 7 guys, and all your friends had to pay $7 to get in there — like at the end of the day, even if you did make some money, everyone makes like $30 bucks, like what’s the point? Really the point is to get out there, and play a fun show, at that level. And once you get a little bigger, like “we’re gonna make $1,000 from the show,” that becomes a real night’s work.
For sure. Yeah it was always super straightforward for me, throwing the shows here cause I had never done that before, so I was like “this is really great,” cause people come to Cole’s anyway, and it’s easy to get to, not too complicated. What did you do before this?
I used to be a financial statement auditor — that was my profession, I just did that to make money in order to have money to invest. It was something I enjoyed doing, but I didn’t want to be doing it long-term.
And you’re from Chicago?
I’m from Chicago, yeah.
So you just grew up in the city, and just decided to stay here and build your life?
Yeah, it’s just kind of my lifestyle, it never really struck me to go anywhere else. I grew up on the northwest side here, and now that I’m older I’m like “I missed my chance to move someplace with good weather” [laughs] — “now I’m stuck here forever.” But it’s just where my family is, where my friends were, my networks were, it’s my home.
Then you ended up on the [Chicago-based] Netflix show, “Easy.”
That was just another interesting little fortunate occurrence. Odinaka [Ezeokoli], who’s a comedian, this is one of his comedy hangs, and the director of the series was trying to do a piece about Odinaka and his scene, and because he’s very realistic about everything, he’s like “let’s go to the places you actually go,” so they filmed in here. I was just hanging out in the basement, and they were like “do you want to play the bartender?” I was like “who are you gonna get to play the bartender, who’s gonna be Cole?” [laughs] They were like “you wanna play it?” and I was like “sure, let’s do it.”
It’s such a great Chicago show in that regard, and they were at Cafe Mustache and everything. So I guess this is your kind of future for the time being, unless you sell the bar?
Yeah and I don’t have much to sell, cause I’m just renting here, so I’ll be here until for some reason I can’t do it anymore. And then we’ll do something else, and we’ll see. Either I’ll get hurt, or I’ll just get tired, or whatever — maybe we’ll just keep going forever, we’ll see what happens.
It’s already like such an institution in the music world, and the scene here for sure. I mean, do you ever think about the fact that in the future, this could be like, the Max’s Kansas City of Chicago?
I do think about that sometimes, but I don’t feel like Chicago could ever have a place like that cause of “Second City syndrome,” you know…I feel like everybody goes somewhere else when they reach a certain level of success. So I don’t think about that — I think about like, maybe I could be like the Lounge Ax. A lot of those bands that are a little older that popped out of Chicago in the 90s, so like Wilco, Smashing Pumpkins, some of the punk stuff, kind of all traveled through Lounge Ax and it’s supposed to be a famously good club, like pre-Empty Bottle, pre-Hideout. I never went, they closed a year before I turned 21, so it was like, when I was 12 or 13 you’d hear about the Pumpkins, and be like “man, the Pumpkins are playing at Lounge Ax, I would love to go to a cool spot like that where I could catch a band like the Pumpkins!” You’d be working some job at the grocery store in high school and all the older hippies would be like “man I saw the Pumpkins at Lounge Ax, I saw Wilco at Lounge Ax,” they’d always have their story about how they saw them way back when. That’s why I was like “maybe I could be like Lounge Ax.” But I feel like there’s something not cool enough about Chicago to be like, international, you know what I mean?
Yeah, you never know though — cause I think about a band like Whitney, they played here, and all those guys, they hang out here, and Twin Peaks — they’re on the up and up, and so that’ll be part of their history.
That’s really cool, it continues to be really cool, that’s one of the things that make it so enriching is like just getting to see people develop in this way, where they go on to superstardom. Also such nice people, too, and you never really think about that being a factor, you always assume artists might be some kind of tortured assholes or something like that, but they’re just truly good people, it’s just really cool.
That’s probably where Chicago does stand out, cause you don’t have obnoxious Brooklyn hipsters who think they’re too cool to hang out. When I started the magazine there were more DIY venues, and it was easy to get to know communities that way, and Wally’s World was just over on the other street, but a lot of those are gone now.
Do you think that’s a function of some kind of enforcement thing, or do you think it’s just a function of — maybe we don’t know about those now cause we’re too old and those kids are so young, what do you think?
I think it’s a combination, probably, cause it seems like kids are moving down to Pilsen and starting spaces down there, but you know, I think probably the gentrification has changed some of that to a degree.
Right, maybe it’s more dispersed and there’s not quite pockets like there used to be?
I have kind of a different perspective cause I’m not from here, but I’ve lived in Logan the past 5 years, and it just seemed like the rock scene, and punk, was able to flourish between the bar here, and Wally’s World, and there were DIY venues that like, Twin Peaks started out at, but that definitely seems like it was back when it was less of a desirable area to live in. Cause now it’s such an influx of people. I think where Wally’s World was, they’re building condos.
When I was young, I came of age right at the tail-end of the bowling alley scene — Fireside [Bowl]. That was a place that was an all-age venue that bands could play, and we could go to when we were in high school. And then it was like really dry, there was no all-ages scene anywhere in the city, there weren’t house shows, and they were pretty aggressively busted up when they did happen. When I first opened over here, for maybe the first five or six years, there was, like you said, that really strong house show scene. It was great because bands would turn 21 and come to me fully formed, already super good, with a ton of fans, they were already networked-in to the scene. I wonder if that activity is still going on — cause it’s so good for the scene, to germinate these things, and for people to try this stuff out in a way that’s very low-pressure.
Yeah, totally. I hope it continues. Obviously you can’t let in underage people, so there’s that slight barrier cause a lot of people are starting real young, but I don’t know what else there is really these days. People used to have more like — like you’d have a house venue, an actual house where people played in the basement…
And it was like an every-week kind of thing.
Yeah, and it seems like the prices are going up, and more normies are coming into town. Like how Wicker Park used to be the place to be, and then that got too expensive and crazy. So I gotta ask about all the Abraham Lincolns, and President art, in here. I feel like that’s always such a signature of coming here. Is it just cause of Illinois, or…
It’s another funny, fortunate little thing. I had this one goofy velvet painting of Abraham Lincoln that I used to hang by the stage, and people would always riff on it, all the bands would talk about it, all the comedians would talk about it cause it was really silly. And it got stolen some winter night, somebody just cut it out of the frame, rolled it up and took it out. And I made a Facebook post, like “please bring it back,” and I have a lady who organizes my art events, her name is Tracy, and she put together a community art show where everybody drew a Lincoln. And then a lot of those artists donated it to me afterwards. Then I had a bunch of them, and they keep coming in — people are like “what should I draw — I’ll draw a picture of Lincoln and give it to Cole,” so I got so many of them — I’ve got Lincolns in the basement that I still need to hang up, I gotta find a spot for them.
That’s funny, I always wondered about that. Cause you do have these other velvet paintings, right?
Well, I’m trying to expand to other Presidents, or other figures, or whatever, but everyone still thinks “Lincoln”!
So what’s the craziest stuff that’s ever happened here?
You know, I couldn’t even say…I feel like not a lot of really crazy stuff happens. We try and catch the stuff before it gets too crazy. I feel like there’s a lot more low-level craziness in general than most people interface with, but like, not a lot of like, very serious crazy. I don’t know if that’s a good answer — I think about this all the time, like when I write my memoirs, “all the crazy shit I saw,” but I don’t really see a lot of crazy shit. I see a lot of the usual nightlife stuff, like drugs, and creeps, and losers and weirdos and eccentric people, but nothing like that really pops out.
Nothing too outlandish.
Nothing too outlandish, exactly.
I’m glad people aren’t getting too out of hand in here, hopefully. I’m just really psyched I got to host those shows here, cause that was really fun, and got to have my 30th birthday here, which was awesome. It was really stress-free for me to just be able to book people here, so I appreciate that.
It’s been nice having you as a resource, it’s just good to have blogs like yours, magazines like yours, that have your ear to the ground — you’re going out to more shows than I am, I’m not going out to shows, you know? So I sit like a spider in my web waiting for things to come to me, and sometimes I miss ’em, sometimes I get ’em — but it’s just nice to see like, what bands are those bands I should be looking out for and more aggressively pursuing. Especially what I said with the younger people who are graduating out of the house show scene, it’s cool for me to know about those people, so resources like yours are great. I can just go on the blog and be like “who’s Katie talking about this month, am I familiar with them or not,” and if I’m not familiar with them I can learn about ’em, and be ready to get that email.
Yeah, I guess it’s a pretty good alignment in that regard cause I live here [in Logan Square], and was coming out to stuff. This has always been such a part of my Chicago experience, and I think you should be proud of having a space that people can just come to, after shows, or just wander by to see their friends, or whatever, cause I don’t think there are a lot of bars that have that same vibe.
Thank you!
