Mickey’s Tavern in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood died a few years ago. One of its beloved regulars died in December. I first met Dr. Pelz at Mickey’s when I moved to the neighborhood. It was my first night on the block and I headed over to the dive bar on Medill and Leavitt before my bags were unpacked. It may have been Dr. Pelz who brought my first beer. It’s hard to tell. There was more than one free beer coming my way from longtime patrons who I would come to know well over the next few years. Bill Pelz was his name but to me he’ll always be Dr. Pelz. Dr. Pelz, a history professor at Elgin Community College, hosted an annual Christmas party.…
Essays, Interviews, Observations, Pop Culture, Stories, and other Dodginess
Posts by Liffey
This past summer I was at the Pilsen Food Truck Social, enjoying a Chocrute Kabob from Dusek’s Board & Beer and reading Chicago reclusive author Clive Javanski’s latest essay, “Am I Some Kind of Asshole?” when Mosquito walked over. Mosquito, also known as Monkey Wrench or Spider, is a longtime acquaintance who does work on my Jeep and many other friends’ cars. He’s our group’s mechanic. Mechanic of the assholes. His hands are perpetually dirty but he gets the job done. He doesn’t go on the Internet a lot but when he does it’s usually odd. Like the time when he found a dead mole in his backyard and was perplexed by it. He said he went online to see if moles have eyes.…
Not long ago I traveled to Austin, Texas with my friend Mosquito. We called it the “Beers, Barbecue, and Biking” tour. “You guys don’t look ready for biking,” said the friendly bicycle rental man. “But my man, we are ready for beers and barbecue,” I said. The man runs Streamline Cycles where Mosquito and I were renting our bikes. Maybe he thought we didn’t look ready for biking because it was 100 degrees and Mosquito had his bike shirt tucked into his blue jeans. I had a cotton T-shirt and shorts that only became shorts because they unzipped from the lightweight hiking pants I wore. We biked along the pea gravel trail around the Colorado River and Lady Bird Lake. Just off the bike…
The Dodgy 