It has not been a particularly remunerative time for some of the city’s countercultural vortexes. Leigh Jones, the proprietor and co-owner of the Wrigleyville performance space Club Lower Links, recently had to cut three days a week from the club’s programming. What appears to be a static overall audience, slower liquor sales, and new taxes have put the club in a precarious cash-flow position, one that doesn’t allow for much in the way of routine upkeep; this weekend, it has arranged a variety-show benefit to raise money to replace some dilapidated furnishings and broken equipment.
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Located deep in the basement of Link’s Hall, Club Lower Links is a dark and intimate room with jet black walls, illuminated solely by red light bulbs. Jones, a friendly 33-year-old with a distinctive bear-claw bracelet tattooed around her upper arm, can generally be seen there on weekend nights, picking her way through the crowd to take drink orders. She thinks a number of things have contributed to the club’s fix. “I blame it largely on the economy,” she says. Besides that, the continuing gentrification of Lakeview means that more and more of the club’s local audience is moving away to less expensive neighborhoods like Bucktown and Ukrainian Village. Those may be the people the club needs to keep it going. “When we get press, the phone rings off the hook, and my ego gets boosted,” says Jones. “But ultimately I don’t see the audiences increasing.”
Such undertakings can sell out the club (“A lot of people say, ‘Gee, every time I go there it’s packed,’” notes Jones) but they leave plenty of other nights to book. The club’s financial situation–particularly taking into account its strong press support–brings up the question of whether Chicago can actually provide a big enough audience to sustain such a place. “A lot of the stuff we do, if you go to rock shows, is hard to get: it doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end,” she says. “It makes you think.”
