Yahoo News Daywatch: A South Side place to hear stories from ‘authentic Chicago voices’
Good morning, Chicago.
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 the Tribune’s Rick Kogan, “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. The latest will be held Thursday. It will feature actor James Gordon, Tribune music contributor Britt Julious, poet Adrian Matejka, historian Tim Samuelson and actress Maggie Winters.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Rick Kogan.
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