Shirley Mooney remembered a grubby mattress on the floor where a man who repaired dentures for a living was rumored to have slept. The “before” pictures she kept have a pond-scum tint, as if mold had run riot in the one-room space.
But she and her friend, Tim Sullivan, saw promise in the spot on Belmont between Clark and Sheffield that they would lease on the spot for about $800 a month in mid-1983.
A baby-blue formica bar went in, glass-brick columns behind the bar and splashes of pink. And thus, Berlin Nightclub was born — a spot that celebrated its otherness with sequined body suits, sapphire-blue wigs, a live petting zoo (on at least one occasion) and, as former patrons, performers and staff fondly recall, a we-welcome-everyone-here warmth.
“You could just go in — whether you were queer, straight, trans, a sex worker, it didn’t matter,” said Michael Shepperd, one of the original bartenders.
‘There was this crazy propulsive energy.’
Berlin closed last month, while the current owners, Jim Schuman and Jo Webster, were at an impasse with their employees, who complained they deserved to be paid more than minimum wage. The nightclub owners cited “expenses of increased security, insurance and licensing, equipment, rent, and more” as some of the reasons why Berlin shut its doors.
“The party ended at 5 a.m., November 19, 2023 — nearly forty years and more than 10,000 nights from when it all began,” the nightclub said in a statement on its website. “So the doors are locked. The music is silenced and our dreams are now memories. We hope you made some memories with us and that you smile when they visit you.”
Memories plastered a Berlin Facebook page, where patrons — many from the club’s earliest days in the 1980s — expressed sadness at its closing and gratitude for a place like no other in the city.
Dion Labriola, now 58, was 21 when he first got hired — to do the lighting. He later moved into the D.J. booth, where the crush inside the tiny space and a frenzy of excitement inspired his musical choices.
“There was this crazy propulsive energy — like nonstop. ... It was nuts,” said Labriola, who worked at the club from 1987 to 2000. These days, he lives in Los Angeles.
It might be a B-52’s song, something by the industrial band Revolting Cocks, or a nightly must-play music video: Les Rita Mitsouko’s “Marcia Baïla.”
Labriola came out in the mid-1980s in Akron, Ohio — a town with little going on musically in its gay bar scene to get his pulse racing.
Berlin offered an “edgy” thrill, he said.
Shepperd, who also lives in Los Angeles, got a job tending bar in the early days even though he had no experience.
“I walked in there at 21 years old —this 6-foot-6 queer Black man — and I was absolutely welcomed right away,” he said. He had his friends use “flash cards” to help him learn how to mix drinks.
One of the original bartenders told Shepperd his name was too drab; so he was given a new one: Modesty Blaise.
Shepperd wasn’t the least bit offended.
“It gave me a whole other side to explore,” said Shepperd, who occasionally dressed in drag while working at Berlin.
‘Our gay bar lives began.’
Paul Campeol, 57, first went to Berlin in 1985. He had to sneak in because he was 19 at the time. Someone suggested a Corona. So he ordered one and sat with his buddies.
“We’re sitting there, and our science teacher from high school walks in,” said Campeol, who lives in Norridge. “He’s looking at us and we’re not saying anything. And he’s not saying anything because he’s not supposed to be there — because he’s a Catholic school teacher. ... Our gay bar lives began.”
But Berlin wasn’t just a gay bar.
“I would go there with my female friends and they would always find a straight guy because it was a place to meet straight women,” Campeol said. “Straight women hang out with gay guys.”
All were welcome “as long as you didn’t tread on us,” he said.
Joseph Giannini got a job in the late 1980s as the MC of the Sunday-night drag show. He was 17 and had never done drag before, but he knew he wanted to be a performer. Sullivan loved his audition — Swing Out Sister’s “Breakout” — hiring him on the spot.
Giannini, who lives in Hyde Park, took his role seriously, spending hours getting ready for the show — plucking unsightly hairs, dabbing his eyelids to create a “smoky eye base,” squeezing his 6-foot-2 “big girl” frame into a sequined body suit or some other glamorous gown.
On stage, it was often pure silliness. One night, after Chicago’s huge downtown flood of 1992, Giannini — performing as Gina Taye — came out singing Petula Clark’s “Downtown.”
“I had shopping bags full of water and goldfish, and water was flying everywhere,” Giannini said.
Another time, he came on stage dressed as “fat Cher,” singing her hit “If I Could Turn Back Time” and cramming donuts into his mouth.
‘It was successful pretty much from the day we opened.’
Mooney, now retired and living in North Carolina, owned the bar with Sullivan for just over a decade. Mooney is straight and Sullivan was gay, she said. Before they opened Berlin, they would occasionally go to gay and straight bars together.
“Why can’t there be a place that it wouldn’t matter [about] your sexuality?” she said they both wondered. “So we said, ‘Why don’t we open a bar?’”
“But we just knew it would be successful,” she added. “Literally, it was successful pretty much from the day we opened.”
Sullivan died of complications from AIDS at the age of 43 in 1994, according to the Chicago Tribune. Schuman and Webster took over the club later that year.
Mooney said it’s “heartbreaking” to see Berlin closing.
“But in the same sense, it’s heartwarming,” she said. “I’m amazed at how many people have reached out to me to let me know who much Berlin changed their lives.”
