The Mirage

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0:36Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place? Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving? Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. Hi, it's Phoebe. Today we're bringing you a story about a bar in my hometown of Chicago. It was called the Mirage Tavern. And even though it sold drinks and had regulars, it was a front. But probably not the kind you're imagining.

1:21Our friends at the radio show and podcast Snap Judgment talked with some of the people who ran the bar back in 2018 in an episode they called Night at the Mirage. And today, we wanted to share that story with you. Here's Joe Rosenberg. Zay had dreamed of being a reporter for the Sun-Times his entire life. And in 1977, he was still a cub reporter, a rookie, stuck covering the suburbs. But then, one night, he was in the office, working late. It was in the evening, and I was working on a story when suddenly I was called into managing editor Stu Lurie's office. And if you called into the office late at night, I was worried that this was not good news.

2:08I didn't know what it might be. But Stu's first words, and he was smiling when he said them, he said, Zay, have you ever waited tables? And I said, yes. And they said, can you hold your liquor? And I sensed something was happening here, and I decided I was going to answer yes to every question no matter what it was. And I said, yes. And they said, are you good at talking to people? And I said, yes. Otherwise, can you keep your mouth shut if you have to? And I said, yes. And then he asked, can you write 50 ,000 words in a big hurry? And I said, yes. And at that point, Stu leaned back in his chair and smiled and said, I think we're going to detach you from the city room for a while.

2:53At the end of the meeting, Stu Lurie said, do you have a nickname? And I said, well, my college friends called me Nordi. And he said, all right, well, good luck, Nordi the bartender.

3:10That's when the editor read Zay in on the plan that the Chicago Sun-Times had bought a bar. And the story needed a second reporter to work with Pam. and I said yes. Pam Zechman, Z-E-K-M-A-N, and I'm an investigative reporter now with the CBS station in Chicago. Pam Zechman was a senior investigative reporter at the Sun-Times, and she and the editor, Stu Laurie, had come up with this idea. The idea was for the paper to buy, set up, and operate a working bar. It was to be a sort of undercover bar to catch Chicago officials in the act of corruption. Normally, what would happen is that people would call into newspapers like the Sun-Times with complaints about things that they thought needed to be investigated.

3:57And then Pam and the other reporters would go out and, well, investigate. But one of the most difficult tips that we got was tips from small businesses that said that they were sick and tired of having to pay bribes to all kinds of inspectors that would demand payoffs and keep coming. It never ended. In other words, a city inspector would come to an establishment like a restaurant and say, oh, geez, you're out of code. What can we do? And then shake them down for a little money. And to be clear, this wasn't something that just affected a few businesses. It affected thousands.

4:39People would say everyone does it. It's systemic. You'll never be able to do anything about it. It's just the Chicago way. and we wanted the tipsters to go public with us and they wouldn't understand a way they would not. And that's when Pam and her colleagues came up with the idea. Well, what if we buy a bar? And this was back in the day when a newspaper could afford to buy a bar. No sooner had they made their grand plan than they realized exactly how unprepared they were to buy, manage, and run a bar in the middle of Chicago. This was a big project with all kinds of things that could go quite terribly wrong.

5:25My biggest fear was that we would have something terrible happen in the bar and that it would become a horrible mistake. Well, aside from the fact that the cover could be blown and the whole project could just be collapsed, someone could be killed in our tavern. I mean, it's a tavern in Chicago, and you're always careful. There were so many ways it could go wrong.

6:04First, they partnered with an investigator from the Better Government Association named Bill Rechtenwald to help them run the operation. The second is, duh, they hired a bartender. They figured they needed at least one professional who could pose as the owner. His name was Jeff Allen. But like them, he was new to the ways of the Chicago bar scene. Then came the third order of business, to actually find a bar, preferably one that wasn't sparkling clean and up to code. We looked at dozens of places, tried to find a bar that was in our price range. We were looking for a place where we could conceal our photographers.

6:46Finally, they found 731 North Wells Street.

6:53I remember very well one of those moments in life you remember, corner of Wells and Superior, parking my car, not really knowing quite what I'd be called upon to do, opening the screen door and going in. There's a bar along the left, some booths on the right, and a jukebox. And this is a shot and a beer kind of place.

7:18Most important of all, from the get-go, it had a lot of obvious violations. There were drain boards behind the bar that were rotting. There were bar sinks that dumped water directly onto the floor. There was a pool of water in the basement that we thought had maggots in it. It looked like maggots. There were electrical wires hanging down from all sorts of places. One of the toilets didn't flush. In other words, it's the perfect place for what you wanted to do. It was wonderful. And incredibly, the owner said in five years he'd never been cited for a single violation. We couldn't believe it.

8:06We had just started fixing the place up minimally when the first inspector that came in was a plumbing inspector, older man, very heavyset. He was looking at behind the bar. He wound up being unconcerned about water that was like a waterfall, practically, dripping from the sinks, and he said, nothing here is up to code. And then he made a comment about probably we didn't have enough money to fix it. So leave it, he said. That's not something an inspector should say. Leave your code violations. He said, don't worry about it. We'll work something out. This happened a few times. An inspector would come in, ham and ha, and leave saying they'd be back to work something out.

8:57So all that Pam and the rest could do was carry on with the business of getting the bar ready and wait to see what would happen next.

9:09We'll be right back.

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10:10Download today. We're trying to figure out what to name the tavern. And it came up with any number of, well, half-joking, like the Golden Scoop or the Sunny Times Tap. But these professional writers, we, could not come up with a tavern. Bill Rechtenwald, a gifted investigator, finally just said, why don't you call it the Mirage? That's what it's going to be. And he was right. It was perfect.

10:45Do you remember, tell me what you remember about opening day. Fear. I did not expect that we would have a lot of business in the neighborhood that we were in. I was wrong. I mean, on opening day, I was having trouble pouring beer. And a customer had wound up giving me a lesson in pouring beer without having it foaming out of the glass and gave me a pat on the back and said, that's very good. There was another time when somebody asked me for a drambuie And I said, a what? And he said, a drambuie And he said, I don't think we have that And the customer said, what do you mean you don't have it? It's right behind you I have no idea One guy came in one morning and wanted a shot and a beer And I poured the shot in the beer But even before the bar opened They also had had to figure out how to find graft, and they had no idea how it worked.

11:49How would inspectors ask for handouts? What words would they use? And how were they expected to hand over the bribes exactly? What the owner is supposed to say is, isn't there some way we can avoid this aggravation? That's a key word in Chicago. That sentence has been spoken so many times. Isn't there some way we can avoid this aggravation? At which point you start negotiating. But we were very concerned about never being accused of entrapping these inspectors. We did not want to do that.

12:25In order to avoid entrapment, and if you have an inspector who's obviously fishing for an envelope of money, we just stood there like the dumbest kids on the block. We didn't make a move to the point where some of the inspectors were almost frustrated having to move this thing along and get their pay off. We looked like just dumb beginners, which is what we were. We weren't going to say, well, can we pay you off in order to ignore the violation? That was absolutely not going to happen. We needed to either have them ask for the money or hint that they wanted the money. The language and dance of the game was, well, we really want to work with you, and oh, you're nice people, and we want to help you, and things like that.

13:24But they didn't know the dance. They didn't know the language. But luckily, they had found this accountant. He was straight out of Central Casting. His name was Phil Barish.

13:43Phil Barish is a very colorful character. He drove a Rolls Royce, and he bragged about his gambling habits in Las Vegas. He was constantly talking about how much money he had. He had to tell us that he gets lots of sex, lots of trips, nice trips. He also had a criminal record. He was the most honest, dishonest man you'll ever meet. He was of the city of Chicago. He taught us, you've got to follow the rules if you're going to break the law. And Phil Barish showed them the exact steps of the corruption dance. The bribes were small, but they were coming in from hundreds of bars across the city. So they added up.

14:28He said, okay, I want you to put$10 in an envelope for the fire inspector,$15 in an envelope for the building inspector, along with my card. And when they come in, give them the envelope. Tell them that Phil Barish told you to give this to them. In other words, he wasn't just their accountant. He was also their corruption broker.

15:00That was extraordinary, because that was an easy way to get ourselves into the corruption angle without being accused of entrapping the inspectors. So the photographers climbed up into a hidden loft, positioned behind a fake air vent, and they waited. And remember, before it opened, the bar had serious code violations, things that really were dangerous. So the first big test came with the fire inspector's visit. I was outside the bar waiting. This was the date and the time that our Mr. Fix-It, Phil Barish, had told us to expect an inspector. And he came just as Barish said he would. And he was the fire inspector, a lieutenant.

15:50And he came in and he looked around. I don't know what he was looking for, but it certainly wasn't fire violations. He asked about the condition of the basement, and Jeff Allen told him, well, we never use it. And the fire inspector said, well, as long as it's clean, no trash, no junk down there, which was laughable because it was a fire hazard. There were all kinds of open ceilings that plaster had fallen off the ceiling. A fire could have gone right through there. He never went near the basement.

16:30And then, out of nowhere, he started talking about how much he liked beer and how he loved, loved beer. And it got to the point where we thought that maybe what he was hinting at was that he wanted beer or a keg of beer as his payoff. At that point, it was obvious that the inspection was done, if you call it an inspection, and Jeff Allen had the envelope that we were supposed to give to him, according to Barish, and there was some hesitation, nervous hesitation, and then he just scooped it up and acknowledged that he was done and he was leaving and he wasn't citing us for any code violations. And he walked out.

17:27He said, it's a beautiful day and walked out. We'll be right back.

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19:13Teach me, Sildana. I couldn't possibly. At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Impressive. Let me try. At T-Mobile, you can save up to 20 % versus the other big guys. You heard them. T-Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible trade-in in any condition. Check them out to see how much you can save versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. We wanted to make sure that we got a shot, so we put bar stools up on the bar so that they would have to do their business, fill out their reports, do whatever it is that they do at a key spot where the cameraman could get a picture.

20:02and you can see in the picture of the building inspector you can see the barstools up on the bar behind him yeah yeah i can at one point he looked up at the grill that our cameraman had put in the loft so that they could shoot down on top of the bar and capture what was going on he looked straight up at that ventilation duct, and the cameraman thought that they were spotted. I mean, they froze. They didn't want to make a move, and they wound up, though, getting the picture that we wanted of him scooping up the envelope. That was, yes, one of the iconic photographs is he took the envelope. The same thing happened with the building inspector that followed.

20:57And I should say, both the fire inspector and the building inspector, the fire inspector is like in his uniform, but he's got the cigarette dangling. There's a huge amount of, it's a very smoky cigarette. And then the building inspector's got the world's perhaps Most amazing haircut. You like that, huh? But he's also got a cigarette dangling from him, too. They both did.

21:28I mean, we were very excited about those photographs. And, of course, the cameraman told us that right away, they told us that they had nailed it. And, you know, it happened over and over again. You asked me at what point did I think that we really were accomplishing or proving the point that this was systemic. My wow moment came as we progressed through the different specialties and the ventilation inspector and the plumbing inspector. And then the liquor inspector just telling us, go to the cash register and get some cash. Did I imagine going into it that we found all the things we did? No. It was incredible.

22:15And there was something else that Pam and Zay and the Sun-Times were able to document. Not only did they find and prove incontrovertible government graft over and over again, but in creating a bar, they had also created a tiny new world. And that tiny world was peopled with stories.

22:38A tavern is a city, a whole city come in off the street for a beer. You know, you're caring for a community every day.

22:52There quickly grew this cast of regulars at the Mirage. We call them the Mirage Menagerie, and they range from Cheeky the gunrunner, A little old guy who suddenly came in one day with a handgun he was trying to sell wrapped in a newspaper. There was a guy named Cowboy Don. Well, Cowboy Don, you could tell from a distance that he was a cowboy. He had a buckskin jacket and a cowboy hat. There was a guy they named Football Hero. But I remember one moment when he looked down at a bourbon he was drinking and said, And sometimes all I can remember are football plays in my serial number. And that was Football Hero.

23:36Then there was the guy they called Lost Weekend. Well, Lost Weekend was the most intellectual member of the menagerie by far. He was very smart. And he said he was a writer. He said he wrote a piece for the New Yorker once, but he hasn't written anything else. And we couldn't find any record of the piece he said he wrote for the New Yorker. but he had a little problem with liquor. And then, of course, there were fights because, you know, it's a bar.

24:10There had been a full-blown barroom brawl. And what happened was it started with a simple argument about can I dance with this girl. That developed into a fist fight and suddenly everybody in the place has a reason to punch out the person next to him. And we had a guy smashing the beer bottle repeatedly on the bar trying to get it to break, and it wouldn't do it the way it would in the movies. Everything settled down, and then we noticed that there was an old tipler sitting quietly in one of the booths, and he had somehow managed to remain unnoticed sipping a martini throughout the brawl. And he just said, can I have another drink?