March Madness at Crabby Kim’s
D. Hoekstra portraits
Crabby Kim’s is a warm and shabby sports bar near the corner of North Western and Waveland avenues in Chicago.
It is the kind of place where the jukebox is muted when basketball games are on. Old Style Tall Boys are $3.
Owner Kim Kirchoff grew up in the neighborhood; he graduated from Bell School in 1964. The sorta Hemingway look alike admits to being crabby. But he hires happy female bartenders who wear skimpy bikinis. This place gives me goose bumps.
And it gives the women goose bumps.
I’ve driven by Crabby Kim’s thousands of times but have never been in the bar. Did it have something to do with Kim-Jong-un? He loves basketball.
A couple months ago I decided to stop in.
I wanted to see how the bikini bartenders were getting through the tough winter.
I met Rachel (she does not want to reveal her last name). The 33-year-old bartender wore a thin purple and red bikini, accented by leg warmers and low cut Chuck Taylors. I couldn’t make it to Key West this winter.
So this was my Key Western Avenue.
She said the weather hasn’t bothered her. “I’m a Chicagoan, I’m used to it,” she said. And the six female bartenders do have hoodies when it gets extremely cold.
Paul the Manager just celebrated his 12th anniversary at Crabby Kim’s next month. He didn’t want his last name to be used either. “I don’t dig being in the newspaper, man,” said Paul, 35. We here at Dave’s Word Press try to reveal as much as we can.
“The women bartenders and the weather?,” he asked. “They complain in the summer when its hot outside and we have the air conditioning on. It’s too cold. They complain in the winter when it gets below 50 and we crank the heat to 100 degrees. And if they tell you anything different, they are liars. I’ve worked with 40 different girls. They all complain. But they deal with it.”
Pretty soon they won’t have much to complain about.
Crabby Kim’s is for sale.
The Crabby Kim
Kirchoff has been dealing with health issues and by summer Crabby Kim’s may be a Mexican restaurant.
Crabby Kim’s began as a bar in a 1962 joint called The Cameo Lounge. Kirchoff opened Crabby Kim’s in 1989 in the two-story brick building.
“We were at a Crabby Bill’s Crab Shack in Florida,” said Kirchoff, who attended the Florida Air Academy (in Melbourne). “We thought that would be a good name.”
Crabby Kim’s is known for its burgers ($4 with fries) made on an open hood range behind the bar. “We used to have a little space heater behind the bar,” Paul said. “Customers would ask, ‘How come the girl never moves from that spot?’ Well, because there’s a space heater you don’t see. But during the interview and hiring process they are made aware that it could be cold. You’re hired to wear a bikini and that’s what we deal with.”
Crabby Kim’s is different from your neighborhood Hooter’s because Kirchoff does not allow children in the bar. The south wall is blessed with a wall of fame of past bartenders.
Rachel knew what she was getting into, so to speak
“I was just looking for a job at the time,” said Rachel, who has worked at Crabby Kim’s for 10 years. “When I got behind the bar it was a little strange. It’s like your first time on stage in front of people. Everyone is watching every move you make. I was a little nervous. I didn’t expect to be here this long.”
Rachel is studying to be a radiologist. Paul said, “This has always been a place where you can make a sustainable amount of money, pay your bills and get a degree.” Rachel has worked at other bars but can’t say for sure if she get better tips because she is in a bathing suit. “When the economy was better, the tips were better,” she said.
Despite an urban beach motif, don’t expect lots of tropical drinks at Crabby Kim’s. “We don’t do too many umbrellas and Margaritas,” Rachel said. “We’re more of a neighborhood beer and shot place.”
Rachel of Crabby Kim’s.
Around 10:30 on a Saturday night there were about a dozen people in the bar, four of them women. Two couples had just come in from bowling across the street at The Waveland Bowl.
“There’s never women in there,” Paul said. “We used to get a lot of business from the bowling alley when they were open 24 hours.”
I was watching highlights on ESPN until a customer asked Rachel to find motocross competition on cable. I went to the bathroom and saw a rusty condom machine that looked like it hadn’t been used since when “Surfer Girl” was a hit. But props go to the cool 9-inch table side color television sets along the south end of the bar. Each television has its own non-HD table box. “They’ve been there since I started,” Paul said. “We used to have those four and in the corner we had a 25-inch boob tube.”
He said that, not me.
Crabby Kim’s, 3655 N. Western [(773) 704-8156] is open from 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Monday through Sunday, until 3 a.m. Saturday. There is no website.
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