The front door of the Park Bait Shop at Montrose Harbor opens toward the water, away from the high-rises that line Marine Drive. White letters nailed to the rust-colored wood spell out everything needed for a day of fishing: nightcrawlers, redworms, minnows, coho bait, tackle, coffee. Inside there’s a doughnut tray for early risers and glass cases full of safety-orange bobbers and sinkers that look like Civil War bullets.
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Willie Greene has owned the shop since the 1950s. He’s 78 now, and though his daughter Stacey handles the day-to-day business, he’s still hale and crusty enough to putter around. “Give me half-a-dozen Montrose fishermen, put ’em anywhere in the world, and they can catch anything,” he likes to say. With his bait they’ve caught perch, smallmouth bass, rock bass, salmon, smelt, and “nice-sized crappies.” On sunny days the line at the counter is full of Bosnians, Mexicans, and old retired farts hoping to talk shop with Greene. If you want his undivided attention, you have to stop in when it rains.
When Greene took over the Park Bait Shop, Lakeview was a neighborhood of first- and second-generation Chicagoans, people still in touch with rural or old-world traditions. They’d grown up fishing in Mississippi or Poland and wanted a honey hole they could reach by streetcar. Fishing was such a popular activity that features on the spring smelt ran on local TV, and at night, Greene says, “the whole lakefront was lit up with Coleman lanterns.”
