A whooping, incredulous crowd of 100 explodes into cheers as a guy in his twenties strips down to his skivvies. It isn't Chippendales, or underground gallery performance art. It's the closing night of the historic No Exit Café, and poet Noam Paco Gaster has decided to make his last stand at the coffeehouse a memorable one.
"I've always believed that artists should lay themselves bare for their audience, but I never actually stripped naked because I was afraid they'd lose their license here," says Gaster, as a wave of laughter sweeps the room. "But tonight, with ninety minutes to go, that doesn't really matter, right?"
Off come the boxers. The crowd roars as a cop car barrels past in the alley outside, lights flashing yet oblivious to the transgressions inside. Gaster's gotten away with his comical striptease, the perfect event to memorialize the balance of anything-goes loopiness that made No Exit a landmark of city individuality.
Countless folk bands passed through here, finding a home in a place where everyone was welcome no matter how long their hair was or how many tattoos and piercings they had. The Tuesday night comedy open mics drew both John and Jim Belushi on their respective climbs up the entertainment ladder, and offered nascent comics a non-alcoholic audience coherent enough to listen.
The coffeehouse has passed through three locations in its forty years, moving from Evanston and settling into a foreboding alley on the back edge of Rogers Park, where it remained for the past two decades. Its final owners, Brian and Sue Kozin, who took over when they married twenty-two years ago, passed it on to their 19-year-old daughter last year.
As the revelers reminisce, Brian Kozin eyes the festivities with a broad, bemused smile cutting through his Jerry Garcia beard. "I always said that if I had to close, I would go out with my head held high on the one night that we could be sure we'd be packed," he muses. "All the press attention certainly helped bring back some of our long-gone customers. It's ironic that you get all the publicity you need once you've already decided to shut down."
And on this last night of No Exit, supporters abound. Ex-hippie boomers now living straight in the suburbs mingle with the new generation of teenage freaks. An old white man who could pass for Wilford Brimley warmly hugs a young black man in dreads. An elderly woman pushes her way through the crowd, her oversized cowboy hat momentarily deflecting attention from the cigarette dangling precariously from her lips.
"God bless the human lab," Kozin chuckles. "I have a very tolerant, nonjudgmental attitude towards all people. My only rule was: do what you wanted as long as it doesn't hurt others."
A longtime customer catches that statement and adds a coda of his own. "When you think of all the wild shit that went down here, that's my favorite part. And I never got caught," he cackles. Kozin walks to the No Exit doorway and knocks on wood. After all, there's twenty minutes until closing time.
(Carl Kozlowski)
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.