Wisconsinites hoping to get your hands on a signed copy of the book: Don't despair! Mike and Allison will be at Milwaukee's Irish Fest August 19-21 to talk about that city to the south and its great Irish gathering places.
See them at the Literary Corner Friday from 4-5 p.m. and Sunday from 7:30-8:30 p.m., and Saturday at the Hedge School from 12:15-12:45.
Get your autographed copy of Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs for $20 plus $3 shipping/handling! Mike and Allison will personalize it for you if you leave instructions during checkout, so order now!
Mike and Allison will be signing books and hoisting pints at Kitty's from about 2 until whenever they get kicked out, so come on down and get your copy autographed!
Danahey’s original plan was to scour the Chicago Irish bar scene, score a few free drinks, hear boozy barroom lore and write.
“The idea was to go into bars and say, “Tell me a story and we’d take the best stories,” Danahey says. “Stories and beer. That’s pretty good, I thought.”
Instead, the project turned into a charming picture book that feels like you’re thumbing through an old family album — more than 120 photos — accompany an oral history of the Irish Pub culture’s place in Chicago history.
The book spends a lot of time at such well-known places as Butch McGuire's, Glascott's, and Cork & Kerry, and it takes readers to such surprisingly satisfying suburban joints as Gaelic Park in Oak Forest and Tommy Nevin's Pub in Evanston.
But back to Shinnick's. It opened in 1938 and is still run by relatives of founding father George Shinnick Sr., who voiced this timeless tavern wisdom: "He who drinks and drinks with grace/is always welcome in this place/He who drinks more than his share/is never welcome anywhere."
Allison Hantschel, a former Daily Southtown reporter, and Mike Danahey, of Sun-Times Media, wanted to use the taverns to talk about Chicago’s Irish history.
“We spent a lot of time in Irish bars,” Hantschel said. “We started talking about the stories we heard. We started digging into how these bars are connected into the city’s history.”
Their resulting 125-page book shows and tells how Irish immigrants made their way through the city, how the Irish won political power and how Irish musicians keep their traditions going.
In the late 1960s, the first Healy's Westside settled in just up the street, and the original family-owned Irish pub, just known as Healy's, was established in Chicago in 1954, he says. It was a treasured and popular neighborhood place, Hosty says.
Healy's Westside, along with about 50 other family-run Irish pubs in Chicago and the near suburbs, are spotlighted in a new quick read, Images of America: Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs (2011, Arcadia Publishing) by Mike Danahey, a Chicago Sun-Times Media Group reporter, and Allison Hantschel, an Oak Park author.
The Irish pub, of course, isn't about the "knuckleheads drinking the green beer and wearing the silly hats," said Mike Danahey, co-author of Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs.
It's a place for family gatherings, a place for community. A place to talk politics and to talk with neighbors. A place to find a sweetheart and to find solace after funerals.
A: The idea for this book came from hanging out with Shay and Traci Clarke, and a good part of it is their story. See, my parents left me to the Clarkes when they wisely moved out of state, and the Clarkes took me in like the middle-aged orphan I am. The Clarkes got an Irish Fest started in a town with a Scottish name and German roots. Now that’s America.
So is the tale the Clarkes tell of coming to Chicago, hitting Kitty O’Shea’s in the Hilton, at the suggestion of friends back in Ireland, and asking for Eamonn Brady, who still runs the place. That was the Clarkes’ entry in Irish Chicago, which they now call home.
If you read the book you’ll learn that Brady and his musical family came to Chicago decades ago and wound up getting their instruments stolen. When Mayor Richard J. Daley heard about it, he made sure they got replacements - and that’s just one of the great stories you’ll find in “Chicago’s Historic Irish Pubs.”
The Brady bunch went on to open the Kilkenny Castle Inn in 1977, and in 1986 Eamonn Brady helped launch Kitty’s, which demonstrated there was green to be made going green and ushered in the ear of the Irish pub as we know it today - places that hope to replicate the look and feel of being in Ireland. In the best cases, they succeed in creating something that is both Irish and American and fine places to grab a drink.
From dancing at Hanley's House of Happiness to raising pints at Kelly's Pub on St. Patrick's Day, the history of the Irish community in Chicago is told through stories of its gathering places. Families are drawn to the pub after Sunday church, in the midst of sporting events, following funerals, and during weddings. In good times and bad, the pub has been a source of comfort, instruction, and joy--a constant in a changing world. Based on interviews with tavern owners, musicians, bartenders, and scholars, Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs explores the way the Irish pub defines its block, its neighborhood, and its city.
Excerpts & Photos from the Forthcoming Book: Chicago's Historic Irish Pubs, by Mike Danahey and Allison Hantschel
About the Authors
Mike Danahey is a reporter for the Sun-Times Media Group. He lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, where he unofficially has been adopted as their eldest son by the Clarkes, who came to America from Dublin. His own family left him for the West Coast and better weather. Danahey is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Denver, but that was a long time ago, and they threatened to take his key away if he didn't finally publish.
Allison Hantschel is the author of It Doesn’t End With Us: The Story of the Daily Cardinal (2008, Heritage Books) and edited the anthology Special Plans: The Blogs on Douglas Feith and the Faulty Intelligence That Led to War (2005, William, James & Co.). She is a 10-year veteran of the newspaper business. She publishes First Draft, a journalism and politics blog, with her partners Adrastos and Jude. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the Daily Southtown, Sirens Magazine, and Alternet. She lives in Chicago with her husband, three pet ferrets, and approximately 60 tons of books.
