Okay, they offered a very limited wine list and their tonic was usually flat.  (All the more reason for ordering a martini, I suppose.) Still, I loved going to Katerina’s.

It was a great funky jazz bar that featured a lot of favorite Chicago musicians and served real food, not just chicken wings and potato skins.  Decorated with posters of Miles (Davis) and Edith (Piaf) and other icons, it radiated an ambiance that was part 52^nd Street in the fifties and part Parisian bordello in the twenties.

It was painted a dark red and, besides photos of the great ones, its walls sported ornately framed mirrors.Table lamps with fur trimmed shades filled alcoves. Narrow at the entrance, it did not really open up much more at the back where they had a small stage and tables for patrons.  Regardless of whether the musicians played to a crowd or not, whether they were featuring gypsy jazz, Balkan folk music, or a big band, Katerina’s always had a lot of soul!

I Googled their calendar when I was planning to host visitors just weeks ago and learned they were closing.  They were making June their farewell month.

I recalled when I first walked past the neon lettering of the storefront’s sign years ago.  Its location, away from fancy downtown eateries and tourist haunts, felt like a real find, a discovery.

I was very wistful about June being its farewell month. Was Katerina’s closing because people like me only patronized the place for special occasions or because they didn’t charge enough or for some other reason?

I went one evening during their last week. They were showing a documentary filmed there a few years earlier and followed up with a couple sets by a female vocalist and saxophonist. Patrons snapped photos with their cellphone cameras. Many platters of fried calamari were shared.

I kept thinking about the Joni Mitchell song, Big Yellow Taxi, the refrain that goes “Don’t it always seems to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

Favorite places, your health, relationships… Things die. They disappear. They change.  Changes can be challenging.  It seems natural to resist them.

I tried to find out what was behind Katerina’s closing and couldn’t get an answer that satisfied me.  One local music writer quoted the proprietress as being ready for “a new adventure” after fifteen years of running the club. Was this true?

It felt so sad, so wrong, that an anchor of the neighborhood, an institution that kept jazz alive, accessible, and, dare I say it, COOL for younger generations, was shutting its doors.  I read the article a little further and saw that plans were being made for the space’s new owners to feature some kind of music performance.

While the new place might not be a quirky home to gypsy jazz or the wailing of big band horns, I wanted to think about discovering the special qualities of the new music venue when it opens.

No doubt, it will be perfect for whatever its special qualities are – and it, too, will be close to home — and that’s no small thing.