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player ready...The Sun Cafe is an oasis.
Way out west on Montrose, where only the occasional strip mall or solitary family business breaks up the view of sturdy homes on residential block after residential block, the Sun Cafe’s tasteful but bright yellow neon beckons.
It is not a cafe in the Starbucks sense, although it does, of course, offer the usual caffeinated libations. And it is not a cafe in the manner of Uncommon Ground, with top acoustic acts gracing the mikes, nor in the Hard Rock style, either, with pretensions of celebrity. It is instead, to put it mildly, a little cozy hole in the wall, a safe space, the blank berth between a pair of parentheses.
Up on the wall, there are painted murals (mostly amateurish “Dark Side of the Moon” views), photographs, a bloated quilt, a clock in the shape of the sun. It’s filled with patio furniture, the chairs white wood and metal. A bookshelf is crammed with board games; a TV sits on top. There’s a pool table where the pool should be. And in the back of the room, like an altar, rises the casual concession stand, where chicken nuggets, stew and munchies are available. There’s a variety of sodas but no alcohol, and that’s by design.
“We designed the whole cafe like my family’s front room,” explains Tim Hoffer, who founded the Sun Cafe three years ago and has managed to keep it going from 6 to midnight most nights. “It was never just the living room or a parlor, but `the front room,’ where everything happened.”
Recently the Sun’s been booking young bands such as Quaint. On a recent Friday night, the Pink Floydish trio offered its spacy, dreamy music to a crowd of about 40, mostly underage kids.
“We used to do poetry readings but they got too `magical,’ ” says Hoffer. “People were, like, casting spells on each other and stuff and, though the place was packed, it just got too intense for me in a way.”
Friendly and warm, Hoffer works as a consultant and also does some personal training for a living. Indeed, his private physical fitness clientele descends down to the Sun Cafe’s basement for the sessions, where a fully stocked gym awaits. A lot of the cafe’s regulars — including a lot of cops from the nearby 16th District — also come to sweat here.
“And anybody who works here too,” says Hoffer, who runs the cafe with volunteers whom he also lets in on the gym.
So who comes to the Sun Cafe?
“Poets, doctors, kids from the neighborhood and, well, yeah, cops, lots of cops,” says Hoffer. “It’s a good mix, it’s all kinds of people.”
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Among the artists featured in Saturday’s “Art by Artists of Rogers Park,” an exhibition at the Northlight Theater (but sponsored by the Anatomically Correct Art in Public Spaces group), is Preston Klik, better known to readers of this column as the front man with the art rock group My Scarlet Life. His mixed-media collages — pieces put together from found objects in the neighborhood — will be on display through April 18. The other artists in the show are William Dolan, Walter Fydryck, Matthew Schaefer and Laurie Sucher.
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Back on April 1,1969, gay liberation pioneer Harry Hay published “Call to Faeries,” a manifesto exhorting personal and sexual freedom. Twenty years later, again on April 1, the Chicago Radical Faeries were founded, a group of paganistic men (and some women) who embrace sexuality as a multidimensional, natural and celebratory experience. Then last April Fool’s Day, the local chapter of the Radical Faeries produced its first ever Feast of Fools Cabaret at the now defunct Randolph Street Gallery.
Since then, the Faeries have taken their high jinks to the North Side’s Big Chicks, featuring monthly showcases of quick, spontaneous pieces. Among the featured artists for next week’s triple anniversary April Fool’s Day show are performance artist and dancer Peter Carpenter, musician Jennifer Trowbridge, tap dancer John Kloss and poet Sukie Delacroix.
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the facts
Every day, 6 p.m. to midnight, Sun Cafe, 5259 W. Montrose Ave. 773-202-5866. Sun Cafe is wheelchair accessible.
Saturday, opening 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., “Art by Artists of Rogers Park,” Northlight Theater, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. 312-514-1802.
Thursday, 9 p.m., Feast of Fools Cabaret, Big Chicks, 5024 N. Sheridan Rd. 773-784-3397. Big Chicks is wheelchair accessible.
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