Barrelhouse piano, green beer, a couple of pool tables, girls in rooms upstairs, smoke from two-for-a-penny cigars.
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For a modern audience reading this and thinking, "What a terrific bar in Portland, Oregon! I can't wait to see all of my other fellow citizens dying to be seen in a bar like this!", you should try to remember that this story takes place in 1893. This is scandalous! A piano?! Playing live music composed by Black Americans?! Pool tables?! With a capital P! Prostitutes! Cheap cigars! Beer that's green on a day that's not the one that racistly celebrates Irish history by everybody getting completely shitfaced! In 2021, this sounds like a great time! But in 1893 . . . well, it still sounds like a great time! Plus it's way more authentic in 1893 Chicago. If this bar were in 2021 Portland, it would be appropriative and gentrifying and full of truly terrible people.
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