[1]
On a night when freezing rains and wind kept much of Chicago inside, a handful of Chicago comedians hit the streets to rally for a bizarre cause: preserving a massive street hole in north Chicago.
Their gathering sure looked a lot like a protest. Setting up outside the Brown Line’s Montrose station at 5 p.m. the plucky band waived home-made signs and declared their love for “the Chicago hole” by chanting, singing and shouting.
But this was no protest, it was performance art. These weren’t demonstrators, they were local jokesters hustling to score publicity. And they succeeded. Despite the 13 degree temperatures, they attracted a small crowd made up entirely of reporters assigned to cover the event. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the protesters didn’t seem to mind.
“We’re here to raise hole awareness,” said Ken Barnard, the North Side comedian who organized the event. “In the end, the hole is a part of each and every one of us.”
The Hole: Huge in Ravenswood
For almost a week, the hole in Montrose Avenue was the biggest thing going in Chicago.
Its ascent to stardom began around 1 a.m. Tuesday, January 22, when a 36-inch water main snapped beneath the 1800 block of Montrose Avenue in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood. Water from the broken main washed out the soil beneath the road, collapsing an 80-foot section of it that swallowed parking meters, an entire section of sidewalk and partially submerged parked cars in the 15-foot deep chasm.
With old pipes running throughout the city, breaks like this happen often, city officials say. Rarely, however, do they wreak so much havok. In this instance, several small businesses were forced to close. Also, close by residents faced heavy flood damage. One man wrote to the Burning Man Chicago e-mail list on the day of the collapse to vent after basement water wiped out his “whole life’s work.”
In the days following the collapse, Chicago commuters inundated Flickr [2] and local blogs like Chicagoist [3] with snapshots of the pit. Overnight and unexpectedly, Ravenswood picked up its very own celebrity.
The Organizer
This idea of the Montrose-hole-as-celebrity helps explains, at least in part, Tuesday’s rally. Hours before the gathering, Barnard (above, with a young pro-hole advocate) explained how the collapse put his neighborhood on the map.
“Nice as it was, the neighborhood really didn’t have any identifying qualities before,” he said. “A lot of people in Chicago have really identified with the hole.”
According to Barnard, the idea for the protest itself came during his morning commute, as he watched people snapping pictures from the El platform.
“It was amazing to see people staring at it,” he said. “To see that a simple fissure in the ground would captivate people.”
Barnard, who works for a Chicago marketing company by day and performs what he calls “performance comedy [4]” by night, said he smelled an opportunity to bring his “unusual style of humor to people in a different and engaging way.”
On Friday the 25th, four days after the collapse, he created a MySpace profile page for the Montrose hole [5]. In a blog post [6] he announced Tuesday’s rally, to be sponsored by the ficititious “Pro-Hole Action Committee,” to protest filling in the hole. Barnard says he then sent the link out to several comedian friends of his “and a few of them latched onto it.”
The Rally
The “Pro-Hole” rally begins with a whimper. Barnard and a few of his cohort appear on the street at 4:45 p.m. toting a bullhorn, a plastic bag full of signs and a digital video camera. In character as the head of the Pro-Hole Action Committee, Barnard interviews a reporter waiting for the event to begin, asking him about his stance on the Chicago hole. The reporter plays along, giving the sort of absurd, rambling response befitting such a question. Another reporter suggests Barnard interview employees at the hair salon across from the hole. Barnard declines.
Just fifteen minutes later, the rest of Barnard’s troupe arrives…
…and fifteen minutes after that, the networks show up. Reporters from the Pioneer Press and the local Fox and CBS affiliates were on the scene, along with two journalists from TimeOut Chicago (and me, of course). Much of the event ressembled the photo above: Barnard and friends shouting out about the hole–cameramen jostling for position
The Signs
Barnard’s posse had an impressive host of signs on hand for the event. Highlights include:
- “No Hole = No Soul”
- “There’s a Hole in my Heart”
- “Hole No, We Won’t Go”
- “Craters are Greater”
- “Support the Chicago Hole: Not a Natural Disaster”
- “We Want the Hole Truth”
Overheard at the Rally - Part 1: Cheers and Chants
They also had a seemingly endless supply of songs and cheers. Here’s a breakdown of the highlights (click a play button or link to hear it)
-
“Dig it up!” [7] - the go-to cheer all night long - “Keep the hole!” [8]
- A stunningly bad version of “Silent Night, Hole-y Night” [9]
- “Hole No, We Won’t Go” [10]
- “God built the hole!” [11]
- “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Dig up the Chicago hole!” [12]
- “You ain’t got hole? You ain’t got soul!” [13]
Overheard at the Rally - Part 2: Improvised One-Liners and Quips
Perhaps the most amusing parts of the rally were the improvised, at-times incoherent one-liners that Barnard and friends peppered pedestrians with. Here are the highlights. Click a play button or link to listen.
- “What’s your favorite Courtney Love band?” *pause* Chorus of voices: “Hole!” [14]
- “I hearby declare this neighborhood Hole-ville” [15]
- “Remember Barbaro!” *pause* Ken: “Who’s Barbaro?” [16]
- “Anyone who doesn’t want to dig up the hole is probably a satanist” [17]
- “There’s a hole in my heart” [18]
- “The hole has helped people get off drugs and get pregnant” [19]
- “The hole would never try to fill you up!” [20]
Overheard at the Rally - Part 3: The unhappy camper
Not everyone found the fake rally amusing, however.
Ravenswood resident, Jonathan Harper, above right, came to the rally after hearing the commotion from his apartment. There he met Eliot Rahal, a 19-year-old stand-up comedian and DePaul University student [21], who dished out a blast of “pro-hole” enthusiasm that left Harper blinkered.
“[He said] it’s a hole to be celebrated like the Grand Canyon,” said Harper, whose been unable to retrieve his dry cleaning since the collapse, when his Montrose Avenue cleaner shut down. “I guess I’m not really getting it right now.”
Rahal shrugged off Harper’s puzzlement.
“To quote the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda,’” he said, “you see something horrible and you say ‘That’s Horrible.’ but then you go right back to eating your dinner.”
Listen to Rahal’s take on Harper. [22]
Tom LaPorte, a spokesman for the Department of Water Management, charged with repairing the collapsed road, echoed Harper’s sentiments.
“I applaud people who celebrate the neighborhood,” he said, “but I’m more thoughtful about the business owners who’ve faced hardship. I’m all for lighthearted celebration, but I don’t want to eclipse what we’re still working on.”
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Just after 6 p.m., the false jubilant mood of the “faux-testers” finally breaks. Someone suggests they split for home after the next batch of El riders walks out of the station. The others agree immediately and without discussion. One can only pose for so many pictures, spout off so many sound bites and jeer at so many pedestrians in a day. A few minutes later, signs are packed, people have left and Barnard stands alone under the track, 50 feet from his beloved hole.
Looking back on his stunt a day later and out of character, Barnard describes the protest as a surprise “viral phenomenon.”
“On the surface, it was definitely about the hole,” he says. “There’s something there that I really enjoyed about it….I’ve done a lot of stage work but never a comedy stunt. And it’s fun because everyone sees it and you’re not limited to people who pay for a ticket. I think it sort of takes that to get people’s attention in this day and age.”