Foxy Ed’s: A Shot of History with Bill Savage

May 25, 2018 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm Foxy Ed's Saloon

A Shot of History with Bill Savage brings anything-but-basic history lessons to your happy hour. Tonight’s topic – Closing Time: Chicago Saloons and Prohibition

The production and consumption of alcohol, with all of its attendant industries from cooperage to transportation, was the fifth-largest industry in the United States in 1919—when the Nineteenth Amendment brought in Prohibition and shut it all down(at least in theory). How could such a thing happen? Not to blame the victim, but the Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union won their transient victory thanks in no small part to the politics of Chicago saloons. Bill Savage will delve into how the honest corner bar became the shady speakeasy.

Foxy Ed’s will open for regular service at 5pm.

About Bill Savage:
Bill Savage teaches Chicago literature, history, and culture at Northwestern University and the Newberry Library of Chicago, where he teaches the seminar “The City that Drinks.” He co-edited (with Paul Durica) an annotated edition of “Chicago By Day and Night: The Pleasure Seeker’s Guide to the Paris of America” (Northwestern University Press, 2013), a guide to nightlife in the city outside the 1893 World’s Fair. He also introduced and annotated Chicago Athletic Association member George Ade’s “The Old-Time Saloon: Not Wet, Not Dry—Just History” (University of Chicago Press, 2016), a 1931 polemic in favor of Repeal of Prohibition. Besides these scholarly credentials, Savage also worked as a bartender for over 30 years.

About Foxy Ed’s:
125 years ago, the Chicago Athletic Association opened its doors amidst the World’s Fair. Today, the hotel narrates the past with Foxy Ed’s. Step inside the saloon that never was, where Mid meets West, fact meets fiction, and time stands still. Open Thursdays-Saturdays at 5pm in May. Learn More