It must have been the very on-trend “exposed brick” that first tipped me off: something is incredibly wrong here.

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With its ratty neon sign promising ENTERTAINMENT, the Gold Star bar on Division Street in Chicago looked mostly the same from the outside, even if every other storefront on the walk from the subway looked very different. The post office had become a gym, the dentist had become an upscale probiotic dispensary – the usual replacement of useful services with a relentless appeal for self-improvement. That old neon sign, then, became a beacon, pointing to an oasis of self-deterioration.

But once I sat down at the bar and started looking around, I felt out of place. I was back in town, visiting from my new home of Baltimore. It had been a year since I had last been to my old neighborhood joint, but how could it change so quickly? Where was the plastic patio furniture in the back of the bar? What was this music, a French cover of some innocuous pop song? Which suburban twat put that on the jukebox? I wondered. I had a couple of dollar bills; I could add some songs to the jukebox queue. Except, where … is … the … jukebox?

More than just different, the place looked nice. Gone was the “horniest bathroom graffiti in Chicago,” as my friend called it. There was real, sturdy furniture that you were unlikely to tip over after a few drinks. Gone were the barflies and day-to-night-back-to-day drinkers who gathered at the far end of the bar. The bartender handed me a cocktail menu. I ordered a Jameson and ice as a reflex – asking a bartender to add soda or ice to your drink used to be as close to a cocktail as you could get here. It cost two dollars more than it used to. There was a carefully curated list of craft beers above the bar.

I hated it.

It used to be a real scumbag bar. Although known to tourists for hosting the ghost of Nelson Algren, or for being a place to splash around in an ironic way with the underclasses – you know, a real authentic dive – it was known to the neighborhood as a comfortable place where you could get a cheap beer or whiskey, scream to your friends over the Pantera playing from the jukebox, and hide from an outside world that was demanding you be employable, toned, and cheerful.

Yes, it was gross, but that bathroom graffiti didn’t just announce deep thirst, it warned others of the patrons of the bar who had committed sexual assaults, stolen wallets, or started fights. The place also kept the whole neighborhood flush (heh) with toilet paper, since everyone I know regularly stole rolls from the giant stacks in the bathrooms. (I stole so much toilet paper from the Gold Star.)

I had made most of my worst decisions in this bar, making it a sacred space. Friendships ended in sloppy arguments here. Married men were made out with. I went home with Rolf – a Libra, of all things! I made the dumb decision not to go home with Ramsin – another Libra – despite wanting to. The Gold Star had this way of convincing me I was attracted to Libras, is I guess what I am saying. And a couple days after I got married, I had a full-blown panic attack about that decision, went on a walk “to clear my head” and found myself six miles later, pulled by an invisible force back to the Gold Star, with a whiskey, a bowl of free popcorn, and my Henry James book on the bar.

But now the place has a fresh paint job and better lighting. How is anyone supposed to behave in a self-destructive manner surrounded by such tastefulness? It’s hard to argue against self-improvement in this day and age: no, I don’t want to tone my thighs; no, I don’t want to try this miraculous 17 step skin care regimen that will change my life; no, I don’t want to go for that promotion or Instagram my relationship or enhance my gut biome.

I can’t help but think that this relentless urge to make ourselves better, richer, prettier, shinier is just a desperate attempt to hide our empty, rotten cores, and it’s the same with the Gold Star. The new owners’ good taste can’t hide their firing of the entire staff, most of whom had worked there for years, via a text message with only a few days’ notice. According to that former staff, the new owners fabricated accusations of theft to justify their decision.

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What made the Gold Star good wasn’t that Nelson Algren drank there, it was that the kind of people Algren wrote about drank there. The misfits, outsiders, and losers, the sluts and dummies, those who sold bodies and stolen televisions to be there, the angry and sullen, those hiding bruises and track marks, those who dreamed the big American dream and woke up on cold concrete.

I’m overselling it a bit. By the time the recent sale happened, the clientele was mostly made up of the new neighbors, kids who grew up in the tidy Chicagoland suburbs fantasizing about gritty urban adventures. But by “making improvements,” they made it look like every other cocktail bar in the city, catering to the same socioeconomic class as every other cocktail bar in the city. Like all the other cocktail bars, it’s a place that doesn’t come out and say to the scumbags they’re not welcome, but makes that message clear with its appearance and prices. But those people don’t stop existing, they are merely pushed out of view where they can’t make the moneyed uncomfortable with their rowdiness, their problems, and their bad taste.

But the pretty people of the world already have so much. Couldn’t they have let us keep this one pure thing?