Speaker 1: Whole Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People did cool stuff. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: That was a really good deep breath. I just have
Speaker 1: to compliment you.
Speaker 2: He's great. I've been working on my deep breaths.
Speaker 1: God.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it makes people think I'm not doing drugs.
Speaker 2: I'm not even saying that, like it's not a wink
Speaker 2: and a whatever. I think people know that I'm too
Speaker 2: boring to do drugs. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, whose
Speaker 2: last name is totally kind of related to the fact
Speaker 2: that I don't do drugs. But my guest for this
Speaker 2: podcast is Chelsea Weber Smith. How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great and I'm I'm really happy to learn
Speaker 1: the second half of this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because well okay, wait, First, Sophie is a producer,
Speaker 2: Hi Sophie, and Ian is our audio engineer, Hi Ian,
Speaker 2: Hi Ian. I am on women did their theme music.
Speaker 2: And this is part two of a two parter. If
Speaker 2: this is the first time you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 2: then I guess that's news to you. But everyone else
Speaker 2: knows that this podcast is usually two partters on Mondays
Speaker 2: and Wednesdays, since today is Wednesday. Whenever you're listening is
Speaker 2: honorarily Wednesday. If you ever, like man, I wish it
Speaker 2: was just the middle of a week. You just put
Speaker 2: on an episode of cool People with cool stuff, and
Speaker 2: it's either Monday or Wednesday. Everyone's two favorite days historically.
Speaker 2: What was I talking about. I'm off script. I'm lost
Speaker 2: in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: So we're going to do what you were going to
Speaker 1: read the script of your podcast.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's right, because I'm a podcaster. So this is
Speaker 2: part two. We are talking about the Deal Pickle Club,
Speaker 2: and what we talked about last time was some of
Speaker 2: the people who started it, including a man who could fuck,
Speaker 2: and also Hobohemia and why Margaret doesn't like that name,
Speaker 2: even though I'm sure the people who were involved in
Speaker 2: it thought it was the cleverest thing in the world.
Speaker 2: But overall they're pretty cool. So we'll let that one slide. Okay,
Speaker 2: the Dill Pickle Club. As always, when a group of
Speaker 2: people try to do a thing, and they do a
Speaker 2: thing together, history tries really hard to only remember one guy.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I feel like half of my research is
Speaker 2: being like whenever, like and this was run by this guy,
Speaker 2: and you're like Okay, who else did it? Yeah, they
Speaker 2: actually appears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 2: A whole crew of people founded the Dill Pickle Club,
Speaker 2: and they were all wobbles. Jack Jones and Jim Larkin
Speaker 2: are the two that historians can verify directly with a
Speaker 2: long list of potential co founders. Besides, some of them
Speaker 2: were poets and playwrights, most were soapboxers from bug House Square,
Speaker 2: our favorite Irish goth labor organizer, Mother Jones, is often
Speaker 2: listed as a co founder or like people who are talking.
Speaker 2: When Picklers talk about the founders, they often mentioned Mother Jones.
Speaker 2: There's actually no evidence for this, sadly.
Speaker 1: Was it like an inspo, like she was like an
Speaker 1: honorary founder because of what she'd already done. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Probably people were just like, oh, she's so cool, she's
Speaker 2: like the founder, you know, I mean I would that founder. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this podcast was actually founded by not the magazine Mother Jones,
Speaker 2: but the the goth Irish socialist who I actually disagree
Speaker 2: with on a bunch of minor bullshit from one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago. That she was part of it, I'm not so.
Speaker 2: Actually she listened to her opinion and not mine, uh
Speaker 2: for everyone?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly in the town square.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we would have been debating in Buckhouse Square. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you what, No, I would have just left with
Speaker 2: my tail between my legs. I mean, like your mother.
Speaker 2: Jones had good feet. Yeah, yeah, Jack Jones. He is
Speaker 2: often seen as the kingpin of the whole thing. And
Speaker 2: he performed three tasks, well four. One of them is
Speaker 2: that he was the owner on paper and I think
Speaker 2: by the end he was often the guy right. But
Speaker 2: he was the master of ceremonies. He was the sign
Speaker 2: painter and like the set painter for a lot of
Speaker 2: the plays. And he was the janitor. And you know what,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna be in charge of a place, be
Speaker 2: the fucking janitor too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he grew up Jack Jones grew up. It was
Speaker 2: a good name. I gotta admit, hats off to this
Speaker 2: American name. Yeah, he grew up poor as fuck. Like
Speaker 2: most Wobbley's. He worked as a union miner. He was
Speaker 2: a lifelong teetotaler for the classic reason of ain't no
Speaker 2: way I'm going to turn out like my dad, which
Speaker 2: I think that Ben Rightman could have learned from that lesson.
Speaker 2: But you know whatever. But he had another hobby. He
Speaker 2: had a lot of hobbies. He was like a hobby guy.
Speaker 2: One of his hobbies was dynamite. Not like, wow, it
Speaker 2: was great. I'm not using slang here, it was it
Speaker 2: was the combination of nitro glistening saw the that he
Speaker 2: was really excited about.
Speaker 1: The red stick with the fuse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know exactly why he did ten years
Speaker 2: in prison for arson, but I do know that at
Speaker 2: least later he would get arrested for trying to dynamite
Speaker 2: some of his bosses. So I suspect the arson charges
Speaker 2: were not wildly dissimilar.
Speaker 1: He's dynamite, that's right.
Speaker 2: And so he's a union guy, likes not drinking, and
Speaker 2: he likes using direct action to solve problems. When his
Speaker 2: union joined the Wobblies. When the Wobblies were formed, he
Speaker 2: was in. He was like fuck yeah. Although later he
Speaker 2: followed some like twists and turns through various splits in
Speaker 2: the movement that I don't really care to recount, because
Speaker 2: what he's famous for is ignoring. He's not really famous
Speaker 2: at all, But what he's known for is that he
Speaker 2: ignored all those splits and brought everyone together at his
Speaker 2: club regardless of like what flavor of leftist or whatever
Speaker 2: you are. Respect Yeah. He was also famous for his
Speaker 2: ruined left hand, and rumors abounded. The main two contenders
Speaker 2: was that it was damaged while he was breaking into
Speaker 2: safes with nitroglycerin, or that he had been making bombs
Speaker 2: with the IWW's underground Sabotage Division. The historian I read
Speaker 2: was like, and these were probably not true, because after all,
Speaker 2: he was poor, and what kind of safe cracker ends
Speaker 2: up poor? And I'm like most of most of them.
Speaker 1: That's like a very big jump in the logic there are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the IWW absolutely had an underground sabotage division.
Speaker 2: He got arrested for that shit sometimes so and he
Speaker 2: also did nothing to discourage the rumors. He I think
Speaker 2: it's because he did those things or power to him.
Speaker 2: He was a sober bookworm who is outgoing but always
Speaker 2: kept kept a part of himself reserved. He was a
Speaker 2: dreamer and a schemer. He was the kind of person
Speaker 2: who's always trying out some new invention or idea. Right Like,
Speaker 2: he's like the classic I swear I'm gonna build a
Speaker 2: car from scratch and drive it off from the sunset.
Speaker 2: Guy got it that classic trope that totally.
Speaker 1: Exists, and I didn't just make up I know what
Speaker 1: you mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, totally like and this led him down
Speaker 2: some dark paths. Unfortunately, he and his second wife built
Speaker 2: a boat in the backyard and they took it out
Speaker 2: for their honeymoon and it was wrecked by a storm
Speaker 2: and he nearly drowned and his wife did drown.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Had a hard fucking life. Yeah, he spent a long
Speaker 2: time in prison. He was broke as shit. His first
Speaker 2: wife was far more famous than him, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Speaker 2: far more famous than very specific circles. She was a
Speaker 2: communist and one of the founders of the American Civil
Speaker 2: Liberties Union. But by the time she did, like anything
Speaker 2: that she's famous for, she had already left him for
Speaker 2: being boring, and before he started the Dill Pickle Club,
Speaker 2: She's like, man, you're kind of boring, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: what kind of life do you lead where this man? Yeah,
Speaker 2: but he like at one point they'd been married for
Speaker 2: a while and they were like going around doing labor organizing,
Speaker 2: and he's like, why don't you like move in with
Speaker 2: me and we could like have a life, And she's like, Nah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't sound good. So she leaves him.
Speaker 1: Hey whatever, just sounds like a mismatch of needs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Neither of them bury each other. Bad blood. Okay.
Speaker 2: So that's one of the founders. The other guy, Jim Larkin,
Speaker 2: and he's the guy who named the club. He was
Speaker 2: going for something that screamed working class and he was
Speaker 2: a leftist of a completely different origin. He was an
Speaker 2: Irish Republican, like one of the people who helped Ireland
Speaker 2: not be part of England anymore. He was an irishman
Speaker 2: born dirt poor in England who organized doc workers there.
Speaker 2: And there's a connection I got really excited about when
Speaker 2: I realized all history is a web. He's a syndicalist,
Speaker 2: you know, a way of organizing people, organizing dock workers,
Speaker 2: Irish dockworkers in the nineteen hundreds, and this led to
Speaker 2: the solidarity between Irish and Jewish communities that smashed the
Speaker 2: ever loving shit out of British fascism in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: which you can hear about under episodes of the Battle
Speaker 2: of Cable Street.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Jim Larkin. Yeah, he went from England to
Speaker 2: Ireland and traveled around a bunch of Ireland and he
Speaker 2: formed syndicalist unions among dockworkers. There he formed the Irish
Speaker 2: Labor Party alongside future friend of the Pod James Connolly,
Speaker 2: who's one of the main Irish Republican theorists that sparked
Speaker 2: the Irish independence movement, and he was executed for his
Speaker 2: role in the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising, which I is
Speaker 2: like close to Roman Empire for me, Like I mean,
Speaker 2: actually Roman Empire is like nothing. I never think about
Speaker 2: the fucking Roman Empire, besides the fact that they couldn't
Speaker 2: get near Ireland because it was too scary. Jim Larkin
Speaker 2: our guy, not the not James Connelly. He also for
Speaker 2: the Irish Citizen Army. Well actually he was him and Connolly,
Speaker 2: but whatever, Conny's not the part of the story. Jim
Speaker 2: Larkin formed the Irish Citizen's Army, a labor militia that
Speaker 2: joined the Easter Rising. They fought for the principle that
Speaker 2: quote the ownership of Ireland moral and material is vested
Speaker 2: of right in the people of Ireland and to quote
Speaker 2: sink all difference of birth, property and creed under the
Speaker 2: common name of the Irish people. Then East Rising hasn't
Speaker 2: happened yet. His friend and a co organizer hasn't died yet.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fourteen, there's like this big labor thing that
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get into in Ireland and it
Speaker 2: doesn't go great, and like he just burned the fuck out,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I'm get out of here. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go to America for a while. And people are like,
Speaker 2: you're ditching us, and he's like, whatever, I'm burned out.
Speaker 2: I'm going. Yeah. Probably why he survived, unfortunately, And so
Speaker 2: he goes to America nineteen fourteen and he travels around
Speaker 2: and he's speaking to syndicalis and to Irish Americans about
Speaker 2: how World War One is bad and the Irish shouldn't
Speaker 2: fight and die for the fucking British, but instead they
Speaker 2: should fight the British directly or to quote him directly
Speaker 2: because it rules, and he had away with words. Quote
Speaker 2: what has Britain ever done for our people? Whatever we
Speaker 2: got from her, we rested with struggle and sacrifice. No,
Speaker 2: men and women of the Irish race, we shall not
Speaker 2: fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of
Speaker 2: the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic.
Speaker 2: We shall not fight for the preservation of the enemy,
Speaker 2: which has laid waste, with death and desolation the fields
Speaker 2: and hills of Ireland for seven hundred years. We shall
Speaker 2: fight to free Ireland from the grasp of the vile
Speaker 2: carcass called England.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, yeah, that's poetry, maybe, I know.
Speaker 2: Okay, here's what I actually think about. Once a week.
Speaker 2: I think about the fact that Ireland was colonized for
Speaker 2: more than seven hundred years before it won its freedom
Speaker 2: and started the decolonization process. And as an American, and
Speaker 2: I was told that it's too late for decolonization here right.
Speaker 2: I was told that it's been five hundred years, get
Speaker 2: over it. The Irish didn't get the fuck over it,
Speaker 2: and like they still haven't totally won, but like decolonization
Speaker 2: is still a possibility and is not over. I think
Speaker 2: about that once a week.
Speaker 1: At least, I'm going to think about that once a week.
Speaker 2: And then I got like lost how to talk, think
Speaker 2: about how to say it, you know, because I'm like, ah,
Speaker 2: what is it? Anyway? But he had trouble making friends
Speaker 2: in the US. Jim Larkin. He shows up in the
Speaker 2: US and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna talk to the
Speaker 2: Irish Americans and the Irish Americans are like, we're with
Speaker 2: you on hate in the British, but you're a fucking commy,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, you're a socialist. We're kind of shitty
Speaker 2: and right wing here. And then he'd go talk to
Speaker 2: the socialists and they'd be like, wait, you're Catholic and
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, what, why is that a problem? So
Speaker 2: he had a hard time in the US. Yeah, even
Speaker 2: though he was more of a traditional state communist than
Speaker 2: an anarchist. He got arrested for criminal anarchy in nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen during the first Red Scare. He defended himself in
Speaker 2: court there's your Bingo Square listener, and in court he
Speaker 2: was like, look, I believe in Bolshevism, Catholicism, syndicalism, in
Speaker 2: Irish nationalism. What's so hard about that? Why is this wrong?
Speaker 2: He was convicted. He was sent to sing Sing prison
Speaker 2: in New York, where the strange anarchist superstar Charlie Chaplin
Speaker 2: visited him, like the most famous man in the world
Speaker 2: at that point. Probably he was deported in nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 2: He goes back to Ireland and he winds up with
Speaker 2: a mixed legacy in Irish politics. He starts by working
Speaker 2: closely with the USSR, and then he realizes what most
Speaker 2: people eventually realize, which is that Stalin is a fuck
Speaker 2: who didn't let anyone think for himself, and his like
Speaker 2: Catholic syndicalism does not play with Bolshevism in the end,
Speaker 2: and does not play with Stalinism in the end, and
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church weren't really fond of his communism. He
Speaker 2: is a man between worlds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hard, I know.
Speaker 2: But he lived good, long life, doing amazing things. He
Speaker 2: died a working class death. He was overseen some repairs
Speaker 2: on a building when he fell through the floor at
Speaker 2: seventy three years old. Oh and like died from his
Speaker 2: injuries like a little bit later. And he had a
Speaker 2: big Catholic funeral, And there's a statue of him in
Speaker 2: Dublin and has one of his sickest quotes, the greats
Speaker 2: appear great because we are on our knees, let us rise.
Speaker 1: That is good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Has a wow fucking poet, Yeah yeah. And some
Speaker 2: of that might come from the fact that he was
Speaker 2: basically bullied into writing poetry at the Dope Pickle Club.
Speaker 1: Oh, nothing like getting bullied into writing poems that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: Everyone who is there was like suddenly kind of forced
Speaker 2: to be a poet. You know.
Speaker 1: Wow, I will tell you I did go to grad
Speaker 1: school for poetry.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I'm also here to your poetry, your poetry, train opera
Speaker 1: guy too many here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, elly, yeah, I wrote more poetry back when I
Speaker 2: wrote trains.
Speaker 1: Hey. Yeah, yeah, they go hand in hand. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just living life, man, you're in the moment. I know.
Speaker 2: What I wish I had done is listen to my
Speaker 2: father's advice, which was, right, write a journal, because I
Speaker 2: was like, how could I I'm never gonna forget this.
Speaker 2: This is the most amazing thing. Like how I'm never
Speaker 2: gonna remember half that shit. I don't remember a third
Speaker 2: of that shit I have.
Speaker 1: I think I have some journal I have journals. I
Speaker 1: was a journaler, but it wasn't like here was what
Speaker 1: I did today. So it's just like scraps of like
Speaker 1: crazy shit whatever. I'm thinking, Well, I'm just doing yeah,
Speaker 1: just the most dangerous behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, that's that's what I have. But my
Speaker 2: father's a big advocate of like literally or like today
Speaker 2: I did the following three things.
Speaker 1: Now, I do wish I would have done that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, he is famous, and none of his fame
Speaker 2: is for running a social club in Chicago. I did
Speaker 2: not mention find any mention of the Dull Pickle Club
Speaker 2: and anything else I read about him except I've never
Speaker 2: read a full biography of him or something though, just
Speaker 2: articles and stuff, except for the book about the Dull
Speaker 2: Pickle Club, where it talks about his involvement a lot,
Speaker 2: because he's one of the founders and he's one of
Speaker 2: the first people there before he's deported for criminal anarchy.
Speaker 2: And I think it matters because people tend to see
Speaker 2: cultural and political stuffs like two distinct spheres. But the
Speaker 2: people who are like doing it, don't you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can be a poet and a revolutionist. You could
Speaker 2: be an actor and a revolutionist. You can have a
Speaker 2: cool hipster club where you talk about need ideas and
Speaker 2: still try to overthrow capitalism and direct in material ways
Speaker 2: and along the way people revolutionize culture. People who actually
Speaker 2: just set out to revolutionized culture rarely do. So it
Speaker 2: comes it comes from great passion. People see these like
Speaker 2: art and cultural movements and just imitate the aesthetics without
Speaker 2: seeing underneath, and you wind up with like a pale imitation.
Speaker 2: I would argue that jazz mattered because it came from
Speaker 2: black struggle, and so people pick up on the like
Speaker 2: aesthetic of it and run with it, but they don't
Speaker 2: have that heart, and it's hollow, you know, it's.
Speaker 1: Like slumming and yeah, the jazz clubs kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, which was so popular, which also but then
Speaker 1: that was also so important because without the sort of
Speaker 1: racial mixing that occurred through those relationships, it's just, yeah,
Speaker 1: history is complicated, and I do think that's like the
Speaker 1: most important thing to get across. Every moment is as
Speaker 1: complicated as the one ran.
Speaker 2: No totally, and I think that it's like so it
Speaker 2: becomes less about being like cultures must stay distinct and
Speaker 2: more like what is the heart of this thing? You know?
Speaker 2: And like how can people who yeah, no, I know and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like how do you hold up the heart of
Speaker 1: the thing while still contributing your own? Yeah, it's it's big.
Speaker 1: These are big quess These are like the questions artists
Speaker 1: have been asking time immemorial.
Speaker 2: It's true. Yeah, And they could have asked them at
Speaker 2: the Dope Pickle Club and then people would have heckled them.
Speaker 2: Those are the two known founders. There's there were more
Speaker 2: and just knowing sure. But there's one figure who is
Speaker 2: prominent through its entire heyday, the guy we talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: the fuck boy hobo doctor Ben Ightman. He wasn't there
Speaker 2: at the start, but he's around soon enough. By nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: he's around on the scene and he is working his
Speaker 2: pr magic on the place. He's talking to journalists, he's
Speaker 2: getting people there, and he's turning it into a thing.
Speaker 2: He turns it from a like from a place where
Speaker 2: some wobblies argue about politics to like this like cultural
Speaker 2: hub that changes Chicago's understanding of the world. This includes
Speaker 2: bringing out highbrow folks to mingle, but he actually worked
Speaker 2: really hard to make sure he stayed working class. And
Speaker 2: he like it was a place for the low life.
Speaker 2: You know, you could come slum, but it wasn't going
Speaker 2: to be yours, you know, which makes sense. He's the
Speaker 2: hobo doctor. He knows how to run in the upper class,
Speaker 2: but he is like, yeah, not an upper classman. The homeless,
Speaker 2: the unemployed, drifters, and therefore a lot of disabled folks
Speaker 2: were a huge part of the clientele. To quote historian
Speaker 2: Franklin Rosemont, who wrote the book on the Dope Pickle Club.
Speaker 2: It was Reitman, more than anyone else, who perfected the
Speaker 2: definitive and wonderful, wonderfully improbable dill pickle mix that brought
Speaker 2: together wobblies and opera stars, poets and scientists, professors and prostitutes,
Speaker 2: hoboes and psychoanalysts, con men and crack pots. And as
Speaker 2: for when they started it, no one actually knows when
Speaker 2: they started it. But you know what, also, well, actually
Speaker 2: a capitalism started with the enclosure of the commons in England.
Speaker 2: I would feel I was going to do an ad
Speaker 2: transition about no one knows when ads started. I bet
Speaker 2: there's I bet you, I bet there's old handbills from
Speaker 2: the Roman Empire, oh yeah, with ads on them. But
Speaker 2: I wouldn't know because I've never seen the TV show Room, Sophie,
Speaker 2: were their ads in rom Sophie said, yes, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think about the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, I'm talking about the TV show. I definitely
Speaker 2: don't think about the TV show. Yeah, I've never seen it. Well,
Speaker 2: but you know what I am gonna see or listen
Speaker 2: to or buy whatever comes after the end of the
Speaker 2: sentence and we're back.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 2: I enjoy the scene now where I can push this.
Speaker 1: Really beautiful transition, natural as anything.
Speaker 2: So the most likely start date is nineteen fourteen, but
Speaker 2: some people say it is nineteen fifteen, nineteen sixteen, whatever,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. It's the kind of thing that looking
Speaker 2: back doesn't really matter. I'm sure it matters, but doesn't
Speaker 2: matter to me. It probably started in late autumn, which
Speaker 2: lines up with when Jim Larkin came from Ireland. And
Speaker 2: it probably started as a way for soapboxers to get
Speaker 2: to be able to keep doing their thing during the winter. Right.
Speaker 2: It's hard a soapbox in a Chicago Winner, which you'll
Speaker 2: change in probably about another ten years or so, when
Speaker 2: Winner is a vague memory. So that's we have that
Speaker 2: to look forward to. It probably started the Dill Pickle Club,
Speaker 2: probably started way too seriously. It was like a labor
Speaker 2: forum in a tea room called the Copper Kettle and
Speaker 2: the Dill Pickle, which is too long, if anyone's listening,
Speaker 2: that's too long. It was only open on weekends to start,
Speaker 2: and then in nineteen seventeen the landlord raised the rent
Speaker 2: and then it moved to its real home eighteen Tucker Alley.
Speaker 2: At this point it stopped being a clubhouse only for
Speaker 2: Wobbles and their friends and started to become a bonafide
Speaker 2: social club and cultural cornerstone. It was in a barn
Speaker 2: in the alley, which is a thing that does not
Speaker 2: make sense in my modern conception of how cities work,
Speaker 2: but it was. It was a barn in an alley.
Speaker 2: Over the years, they bought a bunch of other barns
Speaker 2: and like hauled them over and like constantly rearranged the
Speaker 2: whole place by sticking all the things together in different
Speaker 2: ways whenever they like got bored, I guess, and it
Speaker 2: it seems like it would be a hole in the wall,
Speaker 2: right of everything that we're going to be describing as
Speaker 2: place in a barn in an alley. The main lecture
Speaker 2: hall held seven hundred people.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, oh okay.
Speaker 2: I suspect that it was not like a lot of
Speaker 2: like fire code enforcement no in nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: Sitting on a lot of hay bales just waiting to
Speaker 1: erect in play.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this could have gone real different this story. The
Speaker 2: entrance to the alley had a green light. I believe
Speaker 2: it is green like a Pickle. I think that's the idea.
Speaker 2: And then the building itself had two notable signs on
Speaker 2: the outside on its orange door lit by another green light,
Speaker 2: which sounds garish as fuck. And I think that this
Speaker 2: sign is literally like just giant letters carved into the
Speaker 2: entire door, but I'm not sure. There's no photos of this,
Speaker 2: and there's like some illustrations that I've seen. It says
Speaker 2: step high, stoop low, and leave your dignity outside. Well yeah,
Speaker 2: and then once you were in the entryway, the next
Speaker 2: sign said, elevate your mind to a lower level of thinking.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: It's great chaos energy, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. The single most characteristic thing about the Dill
Speaker 2: Pickle Club was the diversity of its clientele. Those who
Speaker 2: started it and ran it. We're working class leftist revolutionaries
Speaker 2: of a mix of different ideological positions. The people who
Speaker 2: showed up were all sorts, and ideas of all sorts
Speaker 2: were allowed. Atheists debated, breakaway Catholics debated, the spiritualists, Buddhists
Speaker 2: and hindu spoke regularly. It was queer friendly and multi racial,
Speaker 2: when both of those things were far from the norm
Speaker 2: in the US. This is decades before wase you pointed
Speaker 2: out you know more actually about this period than I do.
Speaker 2: But I'm saying this is decades before there's a recognizable
Speaker 2: LGBT rights movement in the US. Definitely, Yeah, And it
Speaker 2: comes just after the peak of white labor. The white
Speaker 2: labor movements like racism problem, which I want to say
Speaker 2: like peaked in like probably the eighteen nineties nineteen oughts.
Speaker 2: IWW had a lot of success by being like you
Speaker 2: fucking bullshit racists. Look, we're organizing all the different like
Speaker 2: people of color, and like, you know, we actually rule anyway.
Speaker 2: For a long time, it was the only integrated club
Speaker 2: on the North Side of Chicago. They had talks by
Speaker 2: black presenters with names like Jazz, the Hope of the Nation,
Speaker 2: and Moorish Contributions to present civilization. Folks from all over
Speaker 2: the world came to present about their experiences and lives.
Speaker 2: If you're an immigrant from anywhere in the world, you'd
Speaker 2: come and talk about like here's where it's like where
Speaker 2: I'm from. You know. Birth control was discussed openly, despite
Speaker 2: people going to jail for talking about it at the time. Right.
Speaker 2: Magnus Hirschfeld, probably the single most influential figure in LGBT history. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I haven't come up with a competing person who had
Speaker 2: more of an impact. He's a guy who ran the
Speaker 2: gender clinic in pre Nazi Germany. He came and he
Speaker 2: spoke there in nineteen thirty one and it was the
Speaker 2: largest crowd the club have ever gathered in its history.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The Catholic anarchist Dorothy Day, who later founded the Catholic
Speaker 2: Worker Movement, was a regular there, and I think an organizer.
Speaker 2: And this is before she like I'm like, I don't
Speaker 2: know as much about her yet as I want to,
Speaker 2: but like it was before she like got really Catholic
Speaker 2: and she was just like a hard drinking journalist. People
Speaker 2: talked about political issues, religious issues, cultural issues, art, everything.
Speaker 2: There were lectures on every conceivable topic from Cesarean sections
Speaker 2: to physics. Probably the first discussions of surrealism and Chicago
Speaker 2: were held there. Like the guy who maybe found the
Speaker 2: North Pole, there is this big dumb fight. This actually
Speaker 2: seems like the kind of thing that you heard this
Speaker 2: Like there's like two different guys who were like I
Speaker 2: found the North Pole. No, I found the North Pole.
Speaker 1: I have not heard about those.
Speaker 2: Like the guy who claims that he did it first,
Speaker 2: who probably didn't. He came and gave a talk about
Speaker 2: finding the North Pole and shit, you know.
Speaker 1: Again, chaos energy. Yeah, it all in there, see what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, The New York Tribune was like trying to talk shit,
Speaker 2: so they referred to its client until they said it
Speaker 2: quote equally attended by North Shore Society leaders, pickpockets, morons,
Speaker 2: soapbox theists, University of Chicago professors, and derelicts of all kinds.
Speaker 1: They just made it sound cool.
Speaker 2: I know. Yeah, Jack Jones, the janitor said, quote more
Speaker 2: famous people in all lines of creative work have passed
Speaker 2: through the Dill Pickle than through any fifty universities in
Speaker 2: the world. But they also like, you couldn't no matter
Speaker 2: how like famous and what respected you are, like, you
Speaker 2: are like the same as everyone else, and you're gonna
Speaker 2: get Apparently the Heckler's like waited until you were done
Speaker 2: and then heckled you.
Speaker 1: Well that's nice. I know.
Speaker 2: There was a Dill Pickle gallery of art on the
Speaker 2: walls because apparently you could pay your debt to the
Speaker 2: house of the painting.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I love this play. I know.
Speaker 2: It was ostensibly a tea house and you could get
Speaker 2: cheap sandwiches and all kinds of non alcoholic drinks there.
Speaker 2: I've read different accounts of whether or not the mob
Speaker 2: muscled in in the twenties and started to serve alcohol.
Speaker 2: I know that they tried. I currently leaned towards they
Speaker 2: didn't succeed, But I'll talk about that more later as
Speaker 2: we talk about the end of it. But no one
Speaker 2: was coming there for the food or the drinks. People
Speaker 2: came to feel like they were part of something and
Speaker 2: to discuss the issues of the day. Like imagine if
Speaker 2: Twitter was like a good.
Speaker 1: Place, you know, yeah, imagine that.
Speaker 2: Not even in the like like this is better than
Speaker 2: pre elon Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, right, better than threads. Yeah yeah, sorry, Zuck, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just please fight it out and both both die.
Speaker 2: Uh legally. Some of the okay, some of the debates
Speaker 2: that they had were like formal debates, like that whole
Speaker 2: fucking thing that I don't understand because I wasn't on
Speaker 2: my high school debate team. But one of the things
Speaker 2: that they would do is they have these formal debates
Speaker 2: where like the Hoboes and Wobblies, which is like school
Speaker 2: university debate teams on a regular basis, debate teams started
Speaker 2: showing up just to watch it happen and take notes
Speaker 2: from the rail riding union organizers about how to fucking debate.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's probably because they actually had passion and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, weren't just reading from some boring ass dissertation. Totally,
Speaker 1: that's how you got to do it. You got to
Speaker 1: hide the medicine, that's what we say. You got to
Speaker 1: be exciting, you gotta be fun. That gets dangerous too. Yeah, charisma, No,
Speaker 1: it's true, and like yeah, no, And I feel like
Speaker 1: they avoided a lot of the like Star Warship thing
Speaker 1: by having like a ton of.
Speaker 2: Characters. You know, you'd go there and it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: just to see Ben Rightman speak or Jack Jones or
Speaker 2: Lucy Parsons or any of these people everyone, and you
Speaker 2: could go be a character, you know, you could like
Speaker 2: build an identity and build a like culture. And I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: You know what. It kind of makes me think of
Speaker 1: as like it's some kind of like political vaudeville. It's
Speaker 1: like yeah, I don't know, yeah, which is also huge
Speaker 1: at this time. Totally, it makes sense that there were
Speaker 1: like some cultural exchange, like in terms of structure happening there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, and also and we talk about
Speaker 2: the medicine that has to go down. It was a
Speaker 2: free speech and debate and exchange of ideas for him, right,
Speaker 2: but it was tinged with humor and everything was like
Speaker 2: kind of stand up comedy ish on some level. There's
Speaker 2: one category of people who you actually could go there
Speaker 2: if you want it and be like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: go advocate for law and order or fascism or like
Speaker 2: like anything. Like at one point someone was like, I
Speaker 2: guess you could go there and argue for misogyny. Everyone
Speaker 2: would just tear you apart, you know overall, And I
Speaker 2: wish I knew more about how they made this happen.
Speaker 2: It was a free speech zone, like a literal actual one,
Speaker 2: where the people who didn't want to use it were
Speaker 2: the authoritarians, fascists, stalinists, cops and organized criminals largely stayed clear.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: And like I don't know, I I like want to
Speaker 2: know how they threaded that needle, you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because now you have like the people who are like
Speaker 2: debate me are like bad people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, yeah I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if it's because like, if your debate
Speaker 2: cannot be televised, you know, there's no way for you
Speaker 2: to like gather a complacent, distant audience. Like everyone is
Speaker 2: there feeling the energy of people being like you're a
Speaker 2: ideas suck, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did way more than debates and whatever. They
Speaker 2: every Saturday night were dances and the orchestra was whatever
Speaker 2: musicians were in the house that night.
Speaker 1: Oh I love it. Yeah, what a place.
Speaker 2: People came as we cant to talk about this before,
Speaker 2: but it's in my script, so I'm going forward with it.
Speaker 2: People also came to be around the sort of characters
Speaker 2: of a sort we don't have as much today. On
Speaker 2: some episode or another we talked about Emperor Norton and
Speaker 2: the San Francisco characters. Have you heard of Emperor Norton?
Speaker 1: I haven't.
Speaker 2: Oh. He was this guy who like may or may
Speaker 2: not have been homeless, who declared himself the Emperor of
Speaker 2: the United States and Mexico and like wrote pardons and
Speaker 2: laws and shit, and was like actually this like anti
Speaker 2: racist crusader and organizer. But he was just this guy
Speaker 2: in nineteenth century San Francisco.
Speaker 1: It's a character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chicago had its own characters, right, some of the
Speaker 2: founders of the place were some of these characters. A
Speaker 2: ton of the people who were the characters didn't make
Speaker 2: their way into their history books. And so there's all
Speaker 2: these like the Surfesser who didn't actually seem interesting enough
Speaker 2: to really include in my script much, Martha Biegler and
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Davis, who I don't know anything about. You know,
Speaker 2: we'd be like, holy shit, we're going in Martha. Martha
Speaker 2: Biegler's there, you know. And and it was a place
Speaker 2: where a neurodivergence was celebrated as a strength by having
Speaker 2: this sort of like character based thing because it wasn't
Speaker 2: let's go make fun of these people, you know, mm hmm.
Speaker 2: A ton of the Chicago poets started hanging out there
Speaker 2: as teenagers while they were still in high school. A
Speaker 2: ton of high school students went there because it wasn't
Speaker 2: a bar and the food was cheap.
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 2: It's the place to be. It's like the mall, I know, right,
Speaker 2: if the mall was like the crazy awesome place like yeah,
Speaker 2: like yeah, like imagine just like dropping off your kid
Speaker 2: being like have fun at the Big the Big Pickle.
Speaker 2: It's the dual pickle, Mom, Yeah, and leave the carriage
Speaker 2: or whatever. Yeah, okay, yeah, well you're not too anarchists
Speaker 2: for me to give you enough money for one of
Speaker 2: those sandwiches, are you no?
Speaker 1: Mom?
Speaker 2: They sometimes put on three plays a week at this place.
Speaker 2: Sunday night was like play night, but sometimes up to
Speaker 2: three night plays a week. For a while, they were
Speaker 2: the most active small theater in the city. I think
Speaker 2: small theater is like a specific designation of a type
Speaker 2: of theater. But I I think it's the equivalent of
Speaker 2: off Broadway but for other cities or in the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenties or something, I don't know, it had its own troop.
Speaker 2: They put on all the big name plays, but they
Speaker 2: also put on plays from local play rights and and
Speaker 2: then music nights. They ranged from hobo songs to operate
Speaker 2: a jazz to Eastern European folk music. And it's heyday
Speaker 2: was like nineteen seventeen to like the mid to late
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties. Jack Jones the ringleader and janitor. He got
Speaker 2: arrested more and more in connection to running the place,
Speaker 2: and the cops fucking hated this place. And as for
Speaker 2: how it fell apart, I guess it. Well, it depends
Speaker 2: on who you ask. For example, if you were to
Speaker 2: ask Sophie, Sophie would say now is the time to
Speaker 2: do ads, and then it doesn't actually even tie into
Speaker 2: what I was saying, is just an awkward ad transition,
Speaker 2: which is what you come here for. Why why won't
Speaker 2: you just leave me in peace? Why must I always
Speaker 2: do these ad transitions? Even if you subscribe to cooler
Speaker 2: zone media, then you get the best of both worlds,
Speaker 2: because I still have to performatively describe the anti capitalist
Speaker 2: struggle with running a platform that has ads, But then
Speaker 2: you don't have to listen to the ads. It really
Speaker 2: is just the best thing you can I good, here's
Speaker 2: the ads, and we're back. So by the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: there's like a bunch of copycats. And it's funny because
Speaker 2: like if you read some of the people talking about
Speaker 2: like all these fucking poser clubs, like blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: and then other people were like, like Ben rightman is like
Speaker 2: it's great other people are doing it now. Isn't that
Speaker 2: the point? You know? Because he's just like, yeah, actually
Speaker 2: earnestly excited about it. But then he actually lists which
Speaker 2: of the copycats are, like good and which ones of
Speaker 2: our like total poser clubs that.
Speaker 1: Suck you know, nothing changes, I know.
Speaker 2: I know. And some of them are like more specialized ares,
Speaker 2: ones that are actually speak easies, you know, and all
Speaker 2: these different things. But yeah, it's model expanded across Chicago,
Speaker 2: and once it was no longer the only game in town, like,
Speaker 2: the culture started to change and some of the characters
Speaker 2: went not were the people who would kind of go
Speaker 2: and spin off their own clubs, you know. Most of
Speaker 2: the others failed faster because a lot of them lacked
Speaker 2: that heart that we're talking about where they actually come
Speaker 2: from something. You know, because if someone random centrist or
Speaker 2: right wing persons like, oh, I'm going to start my
Speaker 2: new free speech for him, and you're like, oh, it's
Speaker 2: gonna it can go terribly Yeah, you know, because it
Speaker 2: goes to this theory that I have that I haven't
Speaker 2: seen proven wrong yet, which is that new aesthetics are
Speaker 2: new aesthetic ideas are pushed by radicals and freethinkers, and
Speaker 2: then people copy the aesthetics, not the heart. I kind
Speaker 2: of already mentioned this, but I just think about this
Speaker 2: like this is another thing I think about it, probably
Speaker 2: not once a week. This is a like intensely for
Speaker 2: a week once a year. Is this type of thought
Speaker 2: where like you pick a culture or a genre of
Speaker 2: like fiction or music or living, and you can find
Speaker 2: the like radical roots of it, and then and then
Speaker 2: you see just the aesthetic is what is then packaged
Speaker 2: and sold to people. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think drag is a really good example of
Speaker 1: that too, because we just did a drag queen series
Speaker 1: and starting around this time, Harlem Renaissance drag queens, you know,
Speaker 1: co opted by hipsters, White hipsters suddenly slowly take over
Speaker 1: the drag scene. You know. It's kind of a typical,
Speaker 1: typical cycle that you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And it's like if you just see the like, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you just see the aesthetic trappings, then you copy that,
Speaker 2: because that's the easiest thing to figure out to copy,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, as compared to like copying the like
Speaker 2: way of thinking for yourself and like applying it to
Speaker 2: your problems, which if you come from a different background,
Speaker 2: will give you a different aesthetic result. But that's good.
Speaker 2: We can create a beautiful, chaotic, lovely mess of culture
Speaker 2: that I want to live in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's like you want to have those things
Speaker 1: passed down even if they're in copy form, which is
Speaker 1: like unfortunate. But what's the alternative I guess is like
Speaker 1: we adopt aesthetics and hopefully adopting those aesthetics leads us
Speaker 1: back to their roots versus fighting against the aesthetic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's complicated, No, that that makes sense.
Speaker 2: I mean like yeah, look at punk, Like punk is
Speaker 2: like a yeah, like I think two of the most obvious,
Speaker 2: Like like anyone who doesn't know that punk and hip
Speaker 2: hop both come from like real radical shit, like just
Speaker 2: like really missed the memo because like it's like pretty
Speaker 2: they're pretty forward about that, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a suburban kid's like, whoa, that's a
Speaker 1: cool anarchist patch. What's that? Yeah, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: like okay, do that with your time? Good? Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, absolutely, you know you're right and that like sometimes
Speaker 2: you can encapsulate the message into the aesthetics and like
Speaker 2: lead people back to it, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it destroys the whole things, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: different than different different strokes.
Speaker 2: I guess whenever people are like I know the answer
Speaker 2: to I have the solutions to things, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: you clearly don't, because we haven't gotten out of this
Speaker 2: mess yet, you know, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not hanging out with you totally.
Speaker 2: But yeah, So the Dill Pickle Club by the mid
Speaker 2: to late nineteen twenties, it's struggling and it is no
Speaker 2: longer the like main happening place. And I suspect it
Speaker 2: was never incredibly good at making money. I mean they
Speaker 2: had they had the people showing up so clearly, you know,
Speaker 2: and they did a and he had a lot of support.
Speaker 2: But Jack Jones, he has nothing if not a schemer
Speaker 2: and an optimist. He's the kind of guy who builds
Speaker 2: a boat in his backyard while running a club that
Speaker 2: he started after he blew off his messed up his
Speaker 2: hand with nitroglycerin, you know. Yeah, And so he kept
Speaker 2: like publishing papers that were like it's bigger and better
Speaker 2: than ever, We're gonna have these like bold, new amazing things,
Speaker 2: and it it just wasn't true anymore. And then like
Speaker 2: the way he decided he was going to save the place.
Speaker 2: This is the most this guy energy thing he's going
Speaker 2: to do his entire life. He tries to market a
Speaker 2: self walking Dill pickle duck toy.
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's great. I feel like this was the
Speaker 1: era of like novelty like toys and pranks and stuff.
Speaker 1: I just got a bunk about novelty toys that that's uh,
Speaker 1: I bet that's what's happening here.
Speaker 2: It's like the whoope cushion era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly like the Chattering Teeth. Yeah, those types of
Speaker 1: just stupid bullshit that we love so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he creates the do Dill Duck, which the
Speaker 2: like rumor among picklers. I I'm not gonna give this
Speaker 2: one too much credence that it was the inspiration for
Speaker 2: Donald Duck. I mean, stranger things have happened, and Disney
Speaker 2: was clearly all about robbing the public domain and then
Speaker 2: putting it into the copyright. Yeah, but the do Dill
Speaker 2: Duck didn't go anywhere despite being self walking. And let
Speaker 2: me tell you, if your cafe is struggling, probably inventing
Speaker 2: a duck isn't the way out of it. No, I
Speaker 2: could have had a walking pickle.
Speaker 1: What did it look like? Do we have like pictures
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 2: There's like some sketches. It's like kind of boxy.
Speaker 1: It's what's it call again?
Speaker 2: Do du dash d I l duck?
Speaker 1: Uh? Just see this sketch. Oh okay, so it's got
Speaker 1: a like a little bit of that duck or the
Speaker 1: little bird that dips its head into water vibe. That's
Speaker 1: what it looks like to me. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, the drinking duck that I think of from.
Speaker 1: The drinks bird.
Speaker 2: Yeah all right yeah. Although, actually, now that I've looked
Speaker 2: this up, it claims that it was invented and copyrighted
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two by Jack Jones, The Picture of a Duck,
Speaker 2: and it says, I walk with a shimmy and wiggle
Speaker 2: my bill. I wobble my head to give young folks
Speaker 2: a thrill. I'm just made of wood, but I'm sure
Speaker 2: to bring luck to those who possess this ungainly old duck.
Speaker 1: Nothing more thrilling than that duck.
Speaker 2: I take back everything I said about being good to
Speaker 2: force people to write poetry. No, it's a joke. I
Speaker 2: think it's a great poem.
Speaker 1: Was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and okay. I've read a bunch of different versions
Speaker 2: of how the Dill Pickle Club met its end, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them are like, oh, you know, cycles
Speaker 2: of hipsters and blah blah blah. I find one the
Speaker 2: most convincing, and so that's the one I'm going to use.
Speaker 2: And it is what Ben Rightman said happened. And basically
Speaker 2: it's like, all right, Jack Jones, he hates alcohol, and
Speaker 2: he's like real committed to his ethics, right, you don't
Speaker 2: become a I mean, you don't live this guy's life
Speaker 2: if you're not like willing to take some risks to
Speaker 2: live by your ethics. You know. Yeah, And the mobsters
Speaker 2: in the next neighborhood over are getting more and more
Speaker 2: powerful as prohibition goes on, and they keep trying to
Speaker 2: muscle in on the place, and they want their guys
Speaker 2: as waiters so they can do bootlegging and take a
Speaker 2: cut of the action. And the only like argument is
Speaker 2: whether or not they succeeded ever or not. You know.
Speaker 2: But Jack Jones won't. He won't go for it. Either
Speaker 2: it happens and he keeps fighting back or it doesn't
Speaker 2: happen at all, And my money is didn't happen at all.
Speaker 2: And he goes to the politicians he's like, you got
Speaker 2: to protect me from the mafia, and they're like, we're
Speaker 2: not going to fucking help you unless you bribe us.
Speaker 2: It probably didn't.
Speaker 1: Phrase you because the mafia will, you know, mafia takeover,
Speaker 1: We'll make money yeaheah.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. So he writes a five hundred dollars check
Speaker 2: to a politician, but then his conscience wins out and
Speaker 2: he stops payment on the check before it's cashed. So
Speaker 2: the politicians who are probably in bed with the mafia.
Speaker 2: Chicago is fucking notorious for this. They dredge up an
Speaker 2: old law that a dance hall can't be within one
Speaker 2: hundred feet of a church, and in nineteen thirty three
Speaker 2: they shut it down.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. That sounds totally plausible.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and like like literally the only because everything
Speaker 2: else that I've read is like kind of vague, being like,
Speaker 2: oh just kind of fell off the map, and you know,
Speaker 2: the neighborhood is gentrified and or like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I find this the most convincing argument. Yeah, but it
Speaker 2: left a hell of a legacy. It was the working
Speaker 2: class under belly of what gets called the Chicago Renaissance,
Speaker 2: which tends to focus instead on the like upper middle
Speaker 2: class and such like that elements of it. And it
Speaker 2: was just, you know, just huge cultural touchstone that started
Speaker 2: with some working class revolutionaries from the mining camps and
Speaker 2: from Ireland, atheistsyntheists, socialists and anarchists, poets and actors. And
Speaker 2: I will say, so I close this out, there's one
Speaker 2: place in my life that I've been to that feels
Speaker 2: the closest to the dill pickle, and I just want
Speaker 2: to shout them out. There's a worker cooperative bookstore and
Speaker 2: cafe in Baltimore called Red Emma's.
Speaker 1: I've been there. Yeah, sorry, I just randomly have been there.
Speaker 1: No one time I went to Baltimore.
Speaker 2: I was so cool there, absolutely, And what's cool is
Speaker 2: the lineage is actually clear here. It is named after
Speaker 2: Emma Goldman, who taught Ben Rightman everything he knew. Red
Speaker 2: Emmas is a majority POC like POC owned radical space
Speaker 2: where ideas all across the left are discs where people
Speaker 2: go to just be. And it really kind of does
Speaker 2: that magical stuff that cities do best. I say, this
Speaker 2: is someone who doesn't live in a city anymore, but
Speaker 2: there's like something specific about this, like way of creating
Speaker 2: culture and like having characters and like bringing people together
Speaker 2: that cities really do amazingly, and I think Red Emmas
Speaker 2: does an amazing job of it. And I will say
Speaker 2: also they sell books online, So if you want a
Speaker 2: good place to get your books, you should go to
Speaker 2: Redemas dot org and they have like an amazing selection.
Speaker 2: And there's also like kind of another direct lineage in
Speaker 2: that the Chicago surrealists Franklin Rosemont, who wrote the book
Speaker 2: about the Dill Pickle Club, was actually a fairly I
Speaker 2: actually checked with one of my friends who wrote red
Speaker 2: Emma's right before I recorded this episode, and she was like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: the Dill Pickle Club is absolutely a like conscious thing
Speaker 2: that we were thinking about when we started this place
Speaker 2: and about twenty years ago now, so they have actually
Speaker 2: outlasted the original built Dill Pickle Club by a couple
Speaker 2: of years.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're on there like fourth building because they
Speaker 2: keep getting like, you know, it's hard to be a
Speaker 2: worker Cooperati bookstore, you know. Yeah, but now they own
Speaker 2: their building. It's been put into a land trust, so
Speaker 2: they're fucking You should go check out red Emmas if
Speaker 2: you're only wearing Baltimore, or you should buy their books.
Speaker 2: That's the dope Pickle Club. I never thought i'd be
Speaker 2: doing an episode though, Like, let me tell you about
Speaker 2: a nightclub.
Speaker 1: God, yeah, this was so fun. Yeah, I'm just left
Speaker 1: with the deep sadness that I could never go there.
Speaker 1: I know, at least we could go to Red Emmas.
Speaker 1: There's lots of places like it. But it does sound
Speaker 1: like the energy of that time, Like we said, like
Speaker 1: the vaudeville character driven energy is so what I want
Speaker 1: in my life, and I just wish I could have
Speaker 1: been there. Yeah, and yeah, it sounds like it was
Speaker 1: a mix of so many different important parts of like
Speaker 1: the nineteen teens going into the twenties. It's like just
Speaker 1: really big changes happening there. Yeah, and about to hit on,
Speaker 1: like a total changes in American culture that would like
Speaker 1: you know, talking about pr talking about capitalism and all
Speaker 1: those things. I feel like, you know, the twenties are
Speaker 1: coming and it's going to change everything positively negatively. But
Speaker 1: the roots seem to be you know, in these radical movements.
Speaker 2: Yeah that yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: It's this behind the scenes thing like this, Like you know,
Speaker 2: it's all these people who are like or all these
Speaker 2: movements that are much known, much better known for their
Speaker 2: other work, you know, and then being like, but there's
Speaker 2: actually these like nexuses that bring all these people together
Speaker 2: and like so Jack Jones didn't, you know, overthrow English
Speaker 2: rule of Ireland the way that Jim Larkin did or
Speaker 2: something right, but like he cleaned up after a place
Speaker 2: where everyone came together. And maybe Jim Larkin, who has
Speaker 2: that fucking amazing way of putting things, maybe he developed
Speaker 2: that doll pickle club, or maybe he walked in as
Speaker 2: a ringer and he was like, whatever, I got this shit,
Speaker 2: you know, whatever, I don't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And maybe there's a lesson in terms of how
Speaker 1: to make politics fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right. It doesn't have to be a boring conversation. It
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to be a battle on Twitter. It
Speaker 1: can be you know, sharing space with people and having
Speaker 1: conversations that are fun and watching shows and reading each
Speaker 1: other's znes and you know, it's a there's a lot
Speaker 1: of joy in political movements, and I think that gets
Speaker 1: lost in kind of the grimness of it all totally.
Speaker 2: And I also think that there's something about the fact
Speaker 2: that they like they listen to each other, Like even
Speaker 2: when they like would heckle each other, be like, no,
Speaker 2: you're fucking wrong, you piece of shit, but they they'd
Speaker 2: be like you piece of shit, but you're like, my
Speaker 2: piece of shit, you know, like like it was like haha,
Speaker 2: and that's something that I feel like we've really lost
Speaker 2: and we need to bring back. And I think it
Speaker 2: partly it's because it happens in person, you know, where like, yes,
Speaker 2: the kinds of things that people say to us online
Speaker 2: are not the kinds of things that people I mean
Speaker 2: sometimes people are like driving past me and moving cars
Speaker 2: will ye all the kinds of things that people say
Speaker 2: to me on Twitter, you know, but like, but.
Speaker 1: That's because they're not looking in your eyes. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not looking in your face totally. Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: And like we actually need to learn to respect diverse
Speaker 2: opinions and like even when we're like, no, your opinion
Speaker 2: is fucking wrong, but it's like I hate your opinion
Speaker 2: that I hate you unless you're like, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to murder everyone or whatever, right, But like instead of
Speaker 2: being like I don't know whatever, I clearly like, no.
Speaker 1: It's true. It's like always been kind of the saddest
Speaker 1: part of leftism is just the the continued in fighting
Speaker 1: that keeps derailing things. And you know, I mean this,
Speaker 1: the Bill Pickle Club makes me think of the Rainbow
Speaker 1: Coalition for at Hampton's Rainbow Coalition for the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: was just like, let's bring together, you know, all types
Speaker 1: of people, let's bring together, like these Hillbillies as that
Speaker 1: you know, they were called the time, and they're going
Speaker 1: to be flying their Confederate flags and like we're gonna
Speaker 1: have the Black Panthers yell at you about why that's
Speaker 1: fucked up. And then they're like, you know what, We're
Speaker 1: not bringing the Confederate flag.
Speaker 2: Did that happen? We talked about them on the show.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that they ever put down the Confederate flag.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Did they did? Yeah? I mean again, history is hard,
Speaker 1: but according to my research and what I found out,
Speaker 1: they did end up retiring the flag and standing together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, breakfast for kids revolutionary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, also if people want to learn about stuff,
Speaker 2: I know my ability to do smooth transitions was destroyed
Speaker 2: somewhere earlier today. Do you have anything you want to
Speaker 2: plug here at the end of the show.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll just my podcast, American Hysteria. If you
Speaker 1: like this show, I really think you'll like our show.
Speaker 1: We cover moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and
Speaker 1: crazes all through kind of a sociological lens and how
Speaker 1: they affected culture and culture affected them, And I do
Speaker 1: think there's a lot in common. It's very research based,
Speaker 1: so if you're an obsessive researcher, I think you'll like
Speaker 1: it too.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, what do I have to plug? I'm doing
Speaker 2: a bunch of what club? Oh yeah, I started a
Speaker 2: book club. It's funny to say it like it was
Speaker 2: in the past when it's actually in the future. For me,
Speaker 2: Cools own book club every Sunday on both this feed
Speaker 2: and it could happen here. Feed is fiction, story culture,
Speaker 2: the kind of stuff that also matters, you know, and
Speaker 2: it is hosted by me, and I read stories. And
Speaker 2: the first month of it is going to be one
Speaker 2: of my novella's called The Lamble Slaughter of the Lion,
Speaker 2: which is the first book in the Danielle Kines series,
Speaker 2: and it is about a squatted town that is ruled
Speaker 2: over by a three antler deer that the anarchists summoned
Speaker 2: to try and keep the town safe. And it is good.
Speaker 2: You might like it. And I read it to Robert Evans,
Speaker 2: and then after that I'm going to read other stories,
Speaker 2: most of them won't be by me. They could even
Speaker 2: be by you. But I don't know how to tell
Speaker 2: you to submit, ye, because we haven't figured that stuff
Speaker 2: out yet. Just make it really good and have it
Speaker 2: come on my radar naturally. That's the way to submit.
Speaker 2: Get good at writing fiction. Get good, yeah, be as
Speaker 2: good at words as Jim Larkin and better than me, Sophie.
Speaker 2: What you got to plug that? That's what I have
Speaker 2: to plug? You did it? Hell? Yeah? All right, We'll
Speaker 2: see you all either Sunday or Monday or Wednesday, or
Speaker 2: whatever day of the week you listen to another episode
Speaker 2: of Cool People Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: Hey Bye bye.
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 2: visit our website
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.