Bridgeport bar Maria’s offers taste of diversity for a new generation
BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter/dhoekstra@suntimes.com April 14, 2011 7:20PM
The toast of Bridgeport: Michael, Maria and Edward Marszewski pose in their new-look Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar. | Scott Stewart~Sun-Times
Updated: July 16, 2011 12:20AM
Several months ago, Ed and Mike Marszewski remodeled Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar in Bridgeport.
The brothers grew up in the stubbled shadows of Bridgeport’s old-man bars, culminating at Maria’s. The bar is owned by their mother. She is a diminutive native of South Korea who learned a lot about the neighborhood, especially after her husband — a Chicago street cop — died in 1979.
Ed and Mike moved the oak trim wall from the rear cooler to the middle of Maria’s. The thick wall separates package liquors from the bar.
And a new generation of Chicagoans are warming up to a new way of thinking.
◆ Maria’s has nearly 400 different beers, more than any bar in Chicago.
◆ Maria’s son Ed is publisher of the leftist newspaper Lumpen, formerly Lumpen Times. He started it in 1991 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He publishes the Chicago art magazine Proximity.
The family is turning a drink tank into a think tank.
Ed calls Bridgeport “The Community of the Future.” He added the ‘community’ tag line to Maria’s. He also runs the Co-Prosperity Sphere gallery in a former department store at 3219 S. Morgan, two blocks south of the bar.
◆ Mike is a union carpenter. He also is a collector of more than 250 ventriloquist dummies, some of which can be seen in the front of Maria’s. “They’re some of my favorites,” Mike said. “‘Scarface’ Al Pacino. George W. Bush [dressed as a sheriff with a fringe vest]. Some from the 1920s and ’30s that are custom-made.”
Maria’s is now sleek, dark and very cool. The gold tin ceiling has been restored, and a new oak floor has been installed. Benches were created from recycled hardwood floors. Ed’s wife, Rachael Olson-Marszewski, made three chandeliers with empty brown 22-ounce beer bottles. There are 40 bottles on each chandelier. Olson-Marszewski is a Bridgeport artist and sculptor.
Longtime Chicago DJ/musical curator Joe Bryl hosts a weekly “Global Soul” DJ series at Maria’s. He said, “People are coming to Maria’s for something that is in some sense rarefied. It’s a working-class place. No pretension.”
The speakeasy at the oddball corner of 31st and Morgan dates to the late 1930s, when it was Kaplan’s, which morphed into a grocery store that sold buckets of wine.
Bridgeport was originally called Hardscrabble, a nod to the Irish-American canal workers who settled in the neighborhood. Kaplan’s was a shot ’n’ beer joint when Maria purchased it in 1989. She ran the neighborhood bar from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Alone.
“People came in here and said, ‘Get the hell out of here, Chinese!’” Maria recalled during a conversation at her bar.” What could I do? Women said I was looking for a husband. I wasn’t looking for a husband. There were no other Asians in the neighborhood. There were Mexicans and other people.”
Ed said, “Eight years ago, I’d walk across the street and someone would scream, ‘Get out, you gook!’ I’d go, ‘You get out of here. This is my neighborhood.’ And we’d have a confrontation. But Armour Square, Chinatown and Pilsen have since moved in. This neighborhood is being gentrified by Chinese and Latino communities as well as [college] students who are attending schools near the neighborhood.”
Acclaimed Four Seasons Hotel executive chef Kevin Hickey (no relation to the former White Sox pitcher) was born and raised three blocks from Maria’s. His family has been in Bridgeport for six generations.
“That was a rough section when I was a kid,” said Hickey, 42. “It’s slowly evolving into something better. As a resident, I never went there. Eddie’s done an amazing job with the place and Maria is a character.” Hickey now lives along the Chicago River in Bridgeport and is a Maria’s semi-regular.
Ed said, “Children of the xenophobic element of Bridgeport have grown up in this multicultural world. They are more accepting. So the children that used to live here come back, freak out and say, ‘No one would come to Morgan Street when I was growing up.’
“But my mother didn’t tolerate bulls--- from people.”
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Maria’s is not Maria’s first rodeo in Bridgeport.
Her late husband, James Marszewski, owned Jim’s 31st Street Inn at 31st and Harding.
He quit the police force in 1971 and ran the bar until his death in 1979. Maria took over and ran the bar until she sold it in 1984.
“It was similar to Maria’s in that there was a bar with an apartment behind it,” Ed recalled. “We had a German Shepherd mix named Boots. Dad and his friends had a social club in the back. They called it the ‘Screwball Club.’ They would give kids toys at Christmas. My brother and cousins ran this little hot dog joint on the side of the bar. They were barely teenagers.”
Maria Kim met James Marszewski when she was teaching Sunday School at a church in her hometown of Pusan, South Korea. Her father was a police officer. James was a soldier stationed in Pusan with the U.S. Army.
“He said he saw my face before he came to Korea,” Maria said, with a black-and-white portrait of her husband propped up behind the bar. “He told the priest he would marry the vision he saw.”
They were married in 1964 in Pusan. Mike, 48, was born in Pusan. Ed, 43, was born in Evergreen Park.
After Maria sold Jim’s 31st Street Inn, she opened House of Kim, 101st and Harlem, a Korean-Japanese restaurant that she ran between 1984 and 1989. “It was the only Korean-Japanese restaurant on the Southwest side,” Ed said.
Maria interjected, “I also had a beauty shop at 95th and Oak Lawn.”
Her shop was called Guys and Dolls, and clients included the actors who would appear at the old Drury Lane Theatre on 95th Street.
Maria became best buds with comedian Kaye Ballard. “I did her hair for a month,” Maria recalled. “I went to her house in Palm Springs. I met every movie star who came to town.”
When you are young, the characters are bigger and the ride is more dramatic.
Ed helped his mom at the bar when he was in his mid-20s. He said, “I remember Jake. He must have been 70. The guy would sit there with his PBR cans, drink nine of them, take off the tabs and leave them at the end of the bar. I served Jake for 15 years. These old-timers would be here every day at 11 o’clock in the morning and they would be pissed if I was 10 minutes late in opening the bar.”
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Things are different now.
Bryl’s “Global Soul” series has featured guest DJs Aaron Cohen of DownBeat magazine, Milwaukee musical anthropologist Paul Cebar and this reporter. Bridgeport native and former Drover Tim Larson had his April 8 record release gig for “A New Deal” at Maria’s.
Customers drink in style, and it’s not old.
Bartender Kenneth Zawacki said, “Old-timers ask for a domestic beer. I tell them we have 400 domestic beers.” Three Floyd’s and Founders (from Grand Rapids, Mich.) are the best sellers.
Ed added “We’re looking for the best beers, ryes, bourbons and scotches that we would want to give our friends. Our focus on the ryes is because that’s what everyone drank back in those days. Rye was your whiskey. It’s also important to get a good cocktail. We’ve remixed classical recipes and given them a Bridgeport spin.”
◆ The Bubbly Creek ($8) is named after the funky hog butcher creek in the neighborhood. The drink is made with ginger beer, strong whiskey (which represents Bridgeport’s stockyards-era whiskey row), topped with a green maraschino cherry. “That represents the toxic waste of the creek,” Ed pointed out. “So you’re drinking a visual concoction to emulate what the Bubbly Creek might look or taste like.”
◆ Una Paloma Blanca (the white dove, $9) is named after a George Baker song that was popular on Maria’s old jukebox. The drink contains Jose Cuervo 1800 silver tequila, organic fresh-squeezed lime juice, pineapple juice and locally sourced Filbert’s grapefruit soda.
Maria’s also allows customers to make their own cocktails. “There’s an elitist mixology culture where people think they’re superheroes of making mixed drinks,” Ed said. “Anyone can make a great cocktail. Bring your recipe. If we like it, we’ll put it on the menu.”
The Marszewski brothers have come a long way in several months. They never considered getting out of the business. Soon they will finish corporation paperwork that will make them co-owners of the bar along with Maria.
“It was a family obligation, the Korean thing,” Ed said. “Then you realize maybe you can make it a place that is more interesting and dynamic. Honestly, I was tired of serving Ice House at 11 o’clock in the morning to some dudes watching ‘Wheel of Fortune.’”
The old television set is gone at Maria’s
Bridgeport is no longer black and white.
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