On an afternoon made for flinging open windows or basking in the sun, Scott Schiro and two friends sat at one of Chicago’s many outdoor cafes and celebrated something important-a fine spring day.
“The breeze is so nice,” said Schiro, 22, as street life whirled around his cafe table. “Everything is going on, and you’re in the middle of it.”
He certainly was right in the middle of it.
The wide sidewalk along Ontario Street was crowded with cafe tables, leaving a narrow 29-inch path behind Schiro’s chair for pedestrians, in-line skaters, cyclists, baby strollers, wheelchairs, mail carts and dogs.
In the last decade, cafe umbrellas have proliferated across Chicago like dandelions on a lawn. Suddenly, a city known for workaday foods like pizza and hot dogs has turned truly pedestrian in its eateries. Alfresco is in, indoors is out.
But now people who actually use sidewalks for walking, not eating, find that a stroll along the street literally takes them down the aisle of a busy restaurant or two. Their glares can melt gelato. And there may even be the ingredients for something of an aldermanic crackdown.
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Thinking of dining outdoors at Tempo Restaurant at 1 E. Chestnut St.? Let us recommend the Slenderella Salad. That way, you’ll be able to make it through the 39-inch passageway between the rail of the outdoor seating and a light pole on the street.
Headed to TGI Friday’s at 153 E. Erie St.? Try the Gardenburger from the Lite menu, because on the way out, the normally wide sidewalk on this busy street just east of the Magnificent Mile narrows to 45 inches. When bicycles are parked in a bike rack outside the cafe walls, the passageway squeezes to just a little over two feet.
Like a car waiting for traffic to clear a single-lane bridge, Betsy Haas recently found herself stopped on the sidewalk awaiting her turn to pass through the narrows outside TGI Fridays. Eventually, she got her turn to walk past those supping on her sidewalk.
“I think it’s just awful,” said Haas, 74, who lives in Old Town and enjoys outdoor cafes herself. “It’s great to dine outside, but this kind of thing that impedes progress of people walking is ridiculous.
“There ought to be a city ordinance about this,” she said.
There is, of course.
According to city regulations, the cafes are supposed to leave a 72-inch (6-foot) passage between the cafe and either the curb or any obstruction, such as a light pole or bike rack.
Most cafes are set exactly on that 6-foot line, giving plenty of room for two or three people to pass at a time. But many fudge that line when they set up their tables each morning, and the line keeps moving throughout the day as customers move tables around.
Ald. Burton Natarus, whose ward includes the restaurant ghettos on the trendy Near North Side, patrols his neighborhood for 6-foot-lane violators.
“There are some where the sidewalks are small, and we may have to insist that they only have one row (of tables),” Natarus said. “Maybe we’ll see how it goes this summer and then make it 8 feet.”
So far, several cafes have been ticketed for either having too many tables out or for taking up too much room, according to John Holden, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Revenue. No licenses have been revoked, however, Holden said.
“A lot of people don’t like these, but a lot do,” said Natarus. “All and all I think it’s a worthwhile activity, I really do. It’s good for people to be out eating in the fresh air.”
Natarus noted that for many of the restaurants, the outdoor business, especially attractive to tourists, makes their year profitable.
It is said that during the 1960s and ’70s, Mayor Richard J. Daley steadfastly opposed outdoor cafes in Chicago because he thought they would create a health hazard.
In 1982, the city permitted sidewalk cafes outside two State Street department stores, a kind of pilot program to see how alfresco would play in Chicago. In 1984, the city began issuing licenses to other restaurants, but it is only in the last five years or so, though, that outdoor dining has boomed.
Last summer was the peak for outdoor cafes in Chicago, with about 300 restaurants applying for sidewalk licenses from the Department of Revenue, according to Holden.
This year, about 250 restaurants have applied, Holden said, but he added that the number of applications can vary with the weather and might yet increase this year.
Restaurants pay a licensing fee of about $500, plus a fee for use of the city sidewalk. In the neighborhoods, the fee can be as low as 68 cents per square foot. Downtown, it can be as high as $7.28 per square foot, Holden said.
Doug Rapp, a 49-year-old resident of the Streeterville neighborhood, would rather some of that sidewalk space remain for pedestrians.
“In this neighborhood, you can’t walk on the sidewalk,” Rapp said. “Between the bicycles and the cafes, there’s not enough room.”
Unlike those who find them continental and attractive, Rapp doesn’t care for the atmosphere the cafes create.
“Some people clean it up, but even when they do, there is ketchup stains on the sidewalk,” Rapp said. “If you walk past, you are confronted with cooking odors.”
But throngs of people, lovers of the painfully short Chicago summers, crowd to the cafes.
At the West Egg Cafe, Sandro Serra, a 27-year-old who works in advertising, sat down with two friends at a table set for two, then pulled up a third chair, blocking the sidewalk.
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A waiter moved them to another table, opening up an aisle for pedestrians.
Still, the squeeze was a tight one for many who had to pass through. But the hustle and noise made the scene for Serra and his companions.
“It’s nice to get out of the fluorescent lights and air conditioning,” Serra said as the waiter brought him a turkey sandwich and iced tea that sparkled in the sunlight. “You get to people-watch and just be outside.”