A South Side place to hear stories from ‘authentic Chicago voices,’ that’s The Frunchroom
Telling stories is as old as time and the nearest campfire, and even though we live in an increasingly icy electronic age, in certain corners of the city there remain people talking, sharing life.
More than a decade ago, a young man named Scott Smith moved from the North Side to the South Side and “realized that while the North Side has all sorts of public reading events there was little if anything like that out south” so he started one and he called it The Frunchroom.
For those of you unfamiliar with that distinctly Chicago word, it is, by general definition, the front room of a bungalow or flat, the place for a family’s finest furniture and a space mostly used to entertain company or, as one native South Sider put it to me, “Hey, Ma, I’m gonna take my sammich into the frunchroom so I can watch TV while I eat.”
The first Frunchroom took place in 2015 at the pleasant if relatively small O’Rourke’s Office, a tavern at 111th Street and Western Avenue, later moving to the larger, now sadly bygone Beverly Woods Restaurant and, since 2017 in the auditorium at the Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St.
The latest comes at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. It will feature actor James Gordon, Tribune music contributor Britt Julious, poet Adrian Matejka, historian Tim Samuelson and actress Maggie Winters.
That’s a typically diverse group, which has always been Smith’s aim, among his many ambitions for the show. He is not only its creator but its curator and MC.
“I have always tried for a South Side focus, regardless of where the readers may be from,” he says. “Yes, some people are fairly well known but it is good to have one person who doesn’t do this sort of thing regularly. Also, it gives people the chance to see, and hear another side of people they do know.”
A list of past guest readers is peppered with some well-known folks but also with local business owners. None of the participants get paid since The Frunchroom asks audience members for a $5 donation, which goes to Smith’s co-producer, the Beverly Area Arts Alliance. One can also purchase drinks at the venue.
Even though Smith was born and raised in Lansing, Illinois, and after college in Ohio lived on the North Side for a time before moving more than a decade ago to the Beverly/Morgan Park area, you would be hard-pressed to find a more enthusiastic South Side booster.
“This is my way of giving something back to the South Side, to help build a sense of community, to showcase the area,” he says.
Smith works as the chief of staff for the Cook County Assessor’s Office. He has written and edited for such publications as Time Out Chicago, Chicago Magazine, Chicagoist and Playboy.com. He has website (ourmaninchicago.net) and lives with his wife, Erin, and their daughter, Abigail.
He has asked me a few times to participate in his Frunchroom. I have yet to do so. But I have seen and enjoyed a few over the years. Of this next crowd, I have written about and know a couple of them and can vouch for their storytelling abilities. You can listen to some past shows on Apple Podcasts.
But to get a better sense of what it’s like to read in front of a couple of hundred people, I talked with two writers I admire, both Frunchroom veterans.
Dennis Foley is as South Side as you can get. He was one of six children growing up in the St. Sabina neighborhood, went to St. Laurence High School in Burbank and was the starting center for a very good St. Laurence basketball team.
He went to college, graduated from law school, practiced for a decade until losing his license for a couple of years. He then worked as an electrician for the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation and in 2004 wrote the bestselling book “The Streets and San Man’s Guide to Chicago Eats.” He began to practice law again and he kept writing (“The Drunkard’s Son” and “We Speak Chicagoese”), made a movie (“Not a Stranger”) and continues to create.
He was asked to read in The Frunchroom in Jan. 2019 and tells me, “I paid little attention to this when it first started. I figured it would be here today, gone tomorrow. But Scott Smith is legit. He’s an entertaining guy, doing a great job of bringing in a wide array of guests, representing a wide range of perspectives. I am now a true fan of the series. I do not know Scott well. My wife taught his daughter in kindergarten some years back and that was all I knew of him. But I have been impressed with the great mix of readers/speakers at the readings. He emcees the events and his humor is always spot on as he talks about the readers or adds some interesting comments.”
Lee Bey is architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and a member of the paper’s editorial board. A native South Sider and graduate of Columbia College, he is also an acclaimed photographer. Smith asked him to read in Sept. 2019.
“I only knew Scott through social media and some of his writing,” Bey told me. “He asked me to read and I said, ‘Yes,’ even though I had never done that sort of public speaking before.”
Bey decided to read an excerpt from his then-new book, “Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side” (Northwestern University Press). “I didn’t practice, though I probably should have,” he said. “My emotions grabbed me when I started to read from the introduction about the death of my father (when Bey was 15). But it was the warm atmosphere that allowed for the emotions to come out. It was a great experience for me.”
Bey says the night “empowered” him as he went about the very chatty business of book promotion. He also says this, “All of these public readings, open mics are all the more important now that people are communicating and more through devices. These public events give people a chance to share, to see reactions of other people’s faces and in the case of the Frunchroom, to hear authentic Chicago voices.”
