If you’ve been to Bridgeport’s Texas Ballroom or Wicker Park’s Jerkstore lately, you probably didn’t realize you were there at the end. But the past month and a half has seen the last parties ever at those work/live/play spaces. Occupants of Texas will move out by the end of the month; Jerkstore was evacuated last weekend.
“I didn’t actually see this,” wrote ianchicks, “but someone told me about this guy that was sucking on some girl’s tittie when she was slumped against the wall talking on her cell phone.”
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It wasn’t the first time police showed up at a Jerkstore affair. The only mystery is why the place didn’t shut down sooner. At one party I saw the police come in, look around, dance with a half-naked girl in pigtails, and leave, then return to get a guy with a camera to delete any pictures of them. Love insists he never had an arrangement with the cops.
Fadden hopes to either move into a similar space or try to start her own. One Texas resident will be moving downstairs into another live/work space, Hey Cadets! Batesole already had plans to move out at the end of the month anyway; he and four of the six Jerkstore occupants, including Johnny Love, and another friend are starting a new venue in a 4,500-square-foot loft near Western and Milwaukee.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Andrea Bauer.
