David and Jackie on train moving day March 2002 (Courtesy of Jackie Gevercer)

My memories of David Gevercer are not singular.

I see him behind the bar at the Matchbox, shoulder to shoulder with some of the most engaging bartenders I have known. I see him greeting the regular Thursday afternoon floral delivery at the Matchbox, 770 N. Milwaukee in Chicago.

And most of all I see him with his wife Jackie, his forever Valentine. Their crowning cultural achievement was in March 2002 when they relocated a 1947 Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Silver Palm dining car on a 125-foot-long tractor- trailer from the Metra yards at Grand and Western to its current spot next to the Matchbox.

Neighbor Kenneth H. Hirte took a black-and-white photo of Jackie and David in front of the train car as it was being lifted from the trailer. She rested her head on his shoulder. They smiled. They lived. They were married in the Silver Palm in 2004.

David died on Feb. 9 in hospice care in Chicago. He was 78 years old.

David was a big dreamer in a world of Goliaths. If you are reading this outside of Chicago, you should be aware of this. The dream themes from which he worked are universal.

The 460-square feet Matchbox is arguably the smallest public tavern in Chicago. The bar seats 18 people. Over the years, its intimacy, excellent drinks and cheap Cazadores attracted the likes of the Bears Richard Dent, the pre-mayor version of Rahm Emanuel, my late friend Brenda Langstraat Bui, CEO of the Chicago Public Library Foundation, Glen Berry from Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap and many journalists.

David coined the Matchbox “Chicago’s Most Intimate Bar.”

Customers danced on the bar during the Thursday night Jackie-Colleen Bush shift. It was a community of all stripes, birthed by David. I spent too much time there. David and Jackie sold the Matchbox in 2020, and it is still rolling along.

“David always thought large,” Jackie said on Wednesday. “He really lived life. My landlady brought me there. She said, ‘There’s this really cute bartender and it’s a cool bar’. It wasn’t the guy she was talking about, thank goodness. David had this sparkle in his eye and he was extremely flirtatious.

“And then he would disappear.”

David was born in Detroit, Mich. His father, Nathan owned and operated a Ben Franklin store in Ecorse, Mich. He would visit retail conventions and bring his family to Chicago for Christmas shopping. They took the train.

David opened the Gare St. Lazare bistro in Lincoln Park in 1973. That’s where his flower tradition began. He rescued flowers from conventions. “Just watch people’s expressions when they see fresh flowers, especially in taverns,” he told me in 2017. Anthony Gowder Designs, 2616 W. North Ave. was the Matchbox’s agent for flowers since 1999. “For Dave and Jackie, it was part of the culture of the Matchbox, its own rhythm,” Gowder said in 2017. “They allowed us to put the weirdest and most unusual blossoms. There’s been everything from hanging heliconia to fabulous orchids.”

David was also executive chef at the Glen Flora (see?) Country Club in Waukegan and in 1988 David was manager of the Chicago Yacht Club.

Something fun is about to happen. (David photo courtesy of Jackie Gevercer.)

In 1995 David took over The Bohemian Club, a tiny package liquor store established in 1945. It was an old man bar run by an old man who never bothered to expand in the empty lot south of his bar, where the train car is today. His name was Sam and he was an Eastern European immigrant with a thick accent. Sam wanted to change the club’s name to The Matchbook because the sideways layout resembled a matchbook. However, when Sam went to apply for his license, his accent was so thick, the name was misunderstood as Matchbox.  In the early 1990s River West was no match for hipsters.

Jackie said, “It was the coolest bar. David had been open for about a month. I was working at Kiki’s (Bistro) at the time. I told my co-worker I was going there, but if he doesn’t ask me out, I’ve got to lighten up on this place because he’s going to think I’m going to boil a rabbit.”

But things did not go in the direction of “Fatal Attraction.” That same night David asked Jackie if she wanted to go on a motorcycle ride. “That was the beginning,” she said. He was always moving forward.

“David was a visionary,” said his friend and former colleague Tony Mata. “He brought cocktails to life long before the craft thing in a non-pretentious way. You’d get fantastic drinks in a dive bar. A bike messenger could sit next to a lawyer and they’d get long. He did this before anyone else.” Mata recalled David researching drinks from 1930s bar books. David collected vintage menus.

Former Matchbox bartenders-managers Tony Mata (foreground), Chris Fields (right) and David. (Courtesy of Jackie Gevercer).

David and Jackie struck gold with the Silver Palm.

The dining car was first named “The Washington” and constructed by the Budd Car Co. of Philadelphia. By 1949, The Washington was rolling from New York to Florida in a 25-hour, 10-minute run known as The Florida Special.  David renamed the car in honor of the train’s heritage and long-time bartender-Cubs fan Eric Palm. He died way too young in 2019.

Eric’s brother Dan was a Matchbox bartender who created the Three Little Pigs sandwich with Mata for the Silver Palm. The sandwich was a magnificent mash-up of deep-fried breaded pork cutlet, smoked ham, two strips of bacon and melted Gruyere cheese, topped with two fried eggs and sandwiched into a brioche bun. Dan and Mata’s joke was to put an egg on every sandwich. In 2008 the late Anthony Bourdain called the Three Little Pigs the greatest sandwich in America. There were lines to get into the Silver Palm and the Matchbox. Dan Palm died way too young around 2016.

Before she married David, then-Jackie Fields made pastries for the Silver Palm. She eschewed the 220-square-foot kitchen and used her nearby home kitchen to prepare her apple pie, rare chocolate cake, and passion fruit flan. The original Silver Palm closed. It is now Tiki Tiki at the Silver Palm and the last I heard there may be a DJ spinning in the back end of the dining car.

“David liked quality things,” Jackie said. “He didn’t have a soda gun. He only had a couple beers on tap, so they would always be fresh. He kept making interesting, fun drinks. The prices were low. I think he learned a lot from his father. Give somebody a quality thing at a good price.”

Mata is front-of-the house general manager at the Maplewood Brewery and Distillery on the north side of Chicago. David showed him how to pay attention. “He was an old school restaurant guy,” Mata said. “His motto was ‘You sit at every table.’ You’d look at the room from different angles. Then you know what you need or don’t need. He was smart that way. I’ve taken that approach.”

David never stopped dreaming. It might have something to do with the train rides he took as a kid between Detroit and Chicago. He saw muscular possibilities from the train windows, things you don’t see from high skies. In 2012 David and Jackie opened a bed and breakfast called Casa Jacqueline on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. That closed several years ago due to David’s health challenges.

Jackie and David in Mexico (Courtesy of Tony Mata.)

David’s eye for love and detail influenced a generation of Chicagoans and tourists in his establishments. Young David was recruited by his father to organize Easter baskets. “He had a nice eye for stuff,” Jackie said. “A different eye, but that’s what makes us all unique.”

In 2002 he was proud to tell me how the Silver Palm menu was loosely designed to reflect dining cars of the mid-20th century. He went on and on. He even dug up the French National Railroad with its praline cream puff pastry Paris-Brest. I felt like I was talking to Jacques Pepin. David sat in his train car, smiled, looked at the pastry, and said, “That dessert was designed for the bicycle race between Paris and Brest. That’s why it’s [presented] in a circle. It’s supposed to be a bicycle wheel.”

Thank you for the ride Mr. Gevercer, a man who knew the value of good friends and fresh flowers.

A celebration of life is planned early this spring at the Matchbox. “That’s where he was the happiest,” Jackie said.

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