I don’t remember if I came up with the name or if it was Chris Bradford. Café Bombay. The recollection is faulty but the name was perfect.

It is 1974, it is Chicago, we’re on Gerry Ford’s watch and we stand in front of 6135 North Broadway, a five-story brick warehouse, craning our necks up at it, drunk on the squat industrial splendor of our new home. Windows on only the street-facing side, the second floor newly christened as Café Bombay. No Café, nothing even remotely Bombayish, simply named Café Bombay for no apparent reason other than it is fun to say. Still is.

You have all seen shelter porn shows on HGTV or layouts in home design magazines of redone lofts, white walls, open floor plans, bleached wooden floors, high tech minimal…. Yeah, it was none of that.

If you play in a band there are two things that are religion: First, the ability to play at any time day or night as loudly as you need to. Even if you are a thoughtful jazz rock band it is still loud as there are Sunn Amplifier stacks, Hammond organs, fuzz tones and full drum sets. No acoustic guitars or dulcimers to be found. The second is security; getting your equipment ripped off—no one then could afford insurance—meant game over. It was the ultimate fear and it happened all the time. Steel doors and two foot thick brick walls were as good as it got.

Now to the bonus round: you have a freight elevator? You have a room we can turn into an inside basketball court? And it is somewhat affordable at $375 a month?

Now $375 is not as cheap as it sounds, remember this is ’74. It would still not have been that cheap except that the former tenant was a failed fig importer and this space was his warehouse until he walked. But still how can we turn this down? What might we be willing to give up in this negotiation to live and play in Café Bombay?

Take a breath, it is a long list.

Let’s start with heat. Not in the sense that the $375 does not include heat, it can’t because there is literally no heat. As in no furnace. Now we will counter that obstacle with, hey it is late March and it will be getting warm soon and we have months to figure something out…all code for the heart wants what the heart wants.

Second on the list of deficiencies that you won’t see on HGTV is no shower or bathtub. If you walked into the bathroom you would see a nice corporate business sink and commode. But what is that to the left? It looks a lot like a kiddie play pool with a garden hose connecting it to the sink, apparently something to do with the maintaining of personal hygiene.

Third on the list would be an actual stove. There was, however, a full sized refrigerator. There was also a cool office area off the “kitchen” area with one of those half walls of frosted glass and a nice antique desk that we brought in. There were dishes and hot plates.  But if you just turned 22 and you can walk the tightrope that is the poverty line like freaking Papa Wallenda then the lack of double gas burner is not exactly a deal breaker.

So what is there?

There is 5,000 square feet of industrial madness that seemingly overnight was made to look very presentable, except for the figs but I will get to that later. Randy Nutt, our bassist, is also an excellent visual artist so we have enough big ass contemporary paintings for a gallery opening, which in a way was not that far off. There are huge carpets, four colored parachutes denoting personal living space for said Mr. Nutt, Steve Capillo, Chris Brad – Ford (the President’s son) and me. Walking east from Broadway you go through the living room and two “bedrooms” on the left and then the third as you get to Randy’s art studio. The bedrooms were huge; I had two regular apartments post-Bombay with less floor space. Walk north and you hit the recording studio we installed which kills: sound insulated, mixing area, a separate drum room with two drum sets, room for the organ and electric pianos and basses. Somewhere there is also a large (but not life sized) cow that plugged in and lit up that might or might not have once been part of a fairly tacky crèche scene.

Turning around and walking back west towards Broadway as you leave the recording studio on the other side of the loft you pass the freight elevator and walk into the self-contained basketball court. Continuing, you are now by the bathroom, then you are standing in front of the front door looking straight ahead into the kitchen / office. Take a left and you are back into the living room where you see two massive Wilder PA columns and stacked stereo gear on a raised level between the two large second floor windows. It is loudly playing Henry Cow or Hatfield and the North. To the left there is a large book shelf taking up the entire wall at a 45 degree angle so the books are angled, the shelf goes from floor to ceiling, modern-cool and mildly practical. There are cassettes and vinyl. Don’t bother looking for CD’s; they won’t be available yet for another decade at least.

On the stairway down to the street there is a black and white television mounted showing only snow, tuned to a dead channel that a casual observer might mistake for a security camera on the fritz if they ventured up the stairs or so we pretended. Why we bothered I am not sure; the padlocked steel door that awaited them was pretty daunting as were the brick walls.

Unless people were knee deep in partying and arrived at our door that way, reaction to Café Bombay was always mixed, at least initially. Men swooned, women did not. On her first visit, Randy Nutt’s girlfriend sat on the nicest couch in front of the art and stereo in the living room and actually burst into tears, saying “I can’t believe you live here.” Not ten minutes later a friend in a different part of Bombay said to me admiringly “I can’t believe you live here.” Of course he was a guy and a musician, an eye of the beholder thing…

The basketball court was a crowd favorite. If you came to Bombay you had to play—the ceiling was 12 feet so we put the new backboard and rim at eight feet (instead of the regular ten) so basically a new game was invented. As Wally-ball (which came much later I might add) was to volleyball, Bombayball was to basketball; while all dribbling and passing rules remained intact you could ricochet the ball off the ceiling at very high velocity into the basket or even off the wall. You could also now dunk. The room was huge so there was no problem with an actual half court game; it was addictive but as there was no meaningful ventilation, games did not last long and disfiguring injuries were kept to a minimum.

I mentioned the figs.  So… just south of Café Bombay was a small Dominick’s supermarket separated from us by an alley that they used as their loading dock area. We took the loft “as is” which was OK except that we quickly discovered that as the loft’s previous owner had been a fig importer, boxes of figs, wooden crates of dried figs still filled the main room. They were not rotten or anything, for all I know figs last forever. But there they were. I came up with the genius idea that we stealthily and neatly stack these fig boxes near the shipping and receiving doors of Dominick’s late on a Sunday night. Monday arrives and this food store’s shipping and receiving sees a “fig delivery” in boxes. “Hey the figs are in” they might say as they are happily stock the figs. They are used to receiving big shipments and for all we knew figs could be very expensive. As no bills of lading are there to dampen the enthusiasm of this fig bonanza, Dominick’s is happy and we have solved our fig problem.

Monday morning comes, we are still in our moving in process and when we arrive we are informed by our extremely pissed off downstairs neighbor—European Auto Body—of a much bigger “fig problem.” Not only was Dominick’s not excited one bit at the “fig Bonanza” or had it confused with an actual delivery for even a nanosecond, but they were apparently so free fig adverse and obviously also knew of the building’s fig history that they had stacked not so neatly all of the fig boxes in the main entranceway of European Auto Body.

So, we have now successfully antagonized our neighbors below and to the south in a single stroke before even fully moving in—the high end auto repair body shop owners screaming at us in what might have been Yugoslavian to get rid of the 30 or so crates of figs right now. Having a wall of busted crates of figs blocking the front door to your business was somehow seen as an impediment to commerce.

It is somewhat terrifying to be screamed at in what we interpreted as hung-over Yugoslavian where the only idiomatic that we totally understood were out of sequence compound curse words. Most of it was their specific abuse and threats but we also got the drift that they were, for our benefit, conveying the threats of the Dominick’s shipping and receiving guy who was also of some Eastern European revenge based bloodline.  We were immediately motivated to “make the bad man go away” — as they say— and quickly. I barely got out the first line of our defense, namely “ but we thought they would want them” when the cursing stopped for a single second, replaced by a withering look of  incredulity / pity at our very public stupidity before it started up again. Now it was mixed with scary derisive laughter that was even worse, making us very happy at that moment not to be able to understand even a slice of Serbian.

I believe I referred to a freight elevator on premise. I might have mentioned that the three stories above us were completely vacant. I possibly suggested we thought that figs could age forever without too much decay. You figure it out. We did.

The Party

As you might imagine there were constant get-togethers, soirees if you will, at Café Bombay. But in the ten months that we lived there (more about the end days later) there was exactly one official party.

Right now in 2012, I could ask about 25 people to name the best party they ever attended and they would say, “Are you talking about Glinda’s Wedding reception at Café Bombay?”

Yes I am.

Glinda, a corruption of Glen and Linda Zazove, were a couple all through college who decided to get married. Weddings can have different vibes; some of the time you are thinking this is not going to end well, I am taking the under.  They have only known each other for X time, she/he has no idea what they are buying into, etc. , etc…we have all been there. But with other couples, like Glinda, it is obvious that this was inevitable and right, that you could fast forward, check in on them using marriage time travel and see that they would still be happily together decades later. So it was truly a celebration. And it was held at Café Bombay with about 60 guests and a whole heck of a lot of champagne.

So here is a question: if you are inside a 5,000 square foot brick loft/warehouse with no other tenants as it was Saturday, exactly how much noise do you have to make for the Chicago Police Department to show up? What exactly is the algorithm for that?

I am not saying that in 1974 in addition to the champagne there were refreshments being consumed that were indigenous to the period. No, I am not. But I can tell you that at one point, I walked to the rear of Bombay to discover guest and friend, David Whatley, on the back fire escape in what was immediately apparent as very reasonable negotiations with the two squad cars parked below and the officers out of the vehicles looking up at David in his requisite shoulder length hair.

“Yes, it’s a wedding reception. Is there a problem? Are you coming up here?” David was polite, sensible, smiling and succinct.

I am also not saying that when they answered in the affirmative that certain guests decided to immediately start up the freight elevator, which was becoming our best friend, to perhaps higher and safer ground with the three empty floors plus the roof to choose from.

Somehow and without real incident this passed without any damage to the extremely good atmospherics of the party which was still in mid stride. There had been an admirable cleaning job of Bombay for the reception and it looked good. Champagne, a lot of champagne was being consumed thanks to the parents of the Bride and Groom, obscure English jazz rock records blared, you could hear the dribbling from the basketball court, sounds were coming out of the studio as guests were messing around on the instruments. On and on.  One couple, once boyfriend and girlfriend years earlier in High School, commandeered the sole bathroom rediscovering each other at least for that day, that hour in a heartfelt rendezvous despite the frantic knocking.

The party swoons, rebounds and collects itself again, drawing in deep breaths of a warm Chicago day in June. It is sweet even as it winds down, no spastic lurching of over-served guests, no flashes of drunken bad behavior or inexplicable arguments. In the coda, the falling action, most of the party moves to the roof, with the typical Chicago roof gravel crunching under our feet as we look over the wall down on Broadway Avenue. The sun is going down. We know we have had total fun; we are tipsy, we are young, and we are at Café Bombay.

Music is recorded, ensembles rehearse, every gig triggers praise now bordering on idol worship of the freight elevator. Funds are always an issue. As an example we know exactly how much an egg salad sandwich at Dominick’s costs including tax.

Summer begins to fade into very early fall.  (“Summer’s leaving, backwards breathing and we like to play for you” – Merz Is) Bombay looks really good with its giant paintings, studio and parachutes—it still has the art gallery meets studio meets industrial loft shimmer under just a slight patina of dust. The ambient temperature, helped only occasionally by space heaters is still fine. But we know it is time.

Bombay had to look good because it was hiding a big secret; no heat. The reality of adding a $3,000 furnace, the tenant’s responsibility, is a tad out of our reach. Tick –tock.

Early September we put out the word to other bands that we might, just might consider subletting and if you are interested come by. Literally within a week we are doing our first Café Bombay “showing.” I am selected to be the HGTV guest realtor for that day and, honestly, I am feeling some considerable pressure.

I give the tour to a rock quintet (I hate most rock music but I am name dropping their probable musical influences like a banshee) and the showing could not be going any better. They are clearly smitten and by the time we get back to the studio and freight elevator they are in love. We had to have imagination to see and create Bombay, they have to have none, not a single ounce of vision is required as it is all done and before them, available for viewing.

Standing in the studio I ask them if they could see themselves living and recording here, where they could play anytime day or night?

I thought so.

At that exact moment, Fred Simon our phenom keyboardist, blurts out to the assembled tour group, “But what about the heat?”

I am so amazed at his lack of timing, his zero comprehension of salesmanship, his ignorance of the subtleties of Caveat Emptor that momentarily I can only think about punching him in his Adam’s apple. Rather than address it, I ignore it and keep talking. Because I understand at that exact moment, staring into their still crazy-in-love-with Café Bombay eyes, all ten of them, that I have a lucrative career waiting for me in sales. I am also inhaling intuitively the sales dictum that people buy on emotion and backfill on logic.  (We sure did.)  Knowing that it was time to seal the deal I was also glad that musicians are typically not logic engines.

I know what you are thinking and you can stop. There was no bait and switch. Moments later, when the timing was right and they were completely besotted, I told them explicitly that there was no furnace and there was no heat.  No equivocation. I told them what our landlord told us, that he would work with you on this but it was the tenant responsibility. Now, this exchange might have occurred when they were high fiving each other in Bombay glee, picturing themselves in our little Café nirvana, but they were absolutely told. But it simply did not matter, they were in love. The heart wants what the heart wants.

Like the bad Hollywood film where the director yells, “strike the set” and the delightful interiors come tumbling down, so did Café Bombay. All of the rugs, the important art, the red velvet curtains, the studio gear, instruments, the furniture, the vibe, the mystique, the essence of Café Bombay all disappear. We leave the basketball room intact and some of Randy’s pieces simply because we had no place to put them. We leave all the parachutes and our impressive security monitor in the stairway. We are gone as is Café Bombay.

That following February, Randy Nutt and I do a surprise drop in on what was. I kid you not: we open the unlocked door and peer in on what seems to be a very small tribe of Plains Indians circa 1800 huddled on a very bad day. Three of the parachutes were repurposed into actual teepees, suspended conically from the ceiling. We could see shapes and movement in the teepees and each one contained a space heater. Apparently the Landlord/heat/rescue party had yet to arrive.

To tell you the truth I was kind of surprised because during the last moving day exchange I had with them, their lead singer said that the landlord was a great guy, I think he actually said “the landlord is a Prince” —which seemed oddly Holden Caulfieldish to me— and was working with them to get the heat thing done. Karma being what it is I was happy to hear that.

We gave the quick yell – hello as we sensed a brief visit would be a happy visit and we were there only to pick up the last of Randy’s paintings. We went to where they were stacked and they were still there but had all been smashed to shit.

Obviously we were not happy to see that but we also understood that Caveat Emptor is a funny thing. We did not hang around to shoot the breeze. It was also sad because this was definitely not what I wanted my last memory of Café Bombay to be; honestly it looked like it had had a stroke.

I needed to remember Café Bombay bouncing down the stairs, Soft Machine still blaring from above through the industrial strength stereo, pre-game ritual completed, appetites stoked, on our way down the block to have the best deep dish pizza in Chicago at the Winery. Knowing that when we returned amps would be turned on, drum sets would be tuned and played and the Hammond organ would get jump started. Or if it was too late and we were too fagged and fashed, Randy might just insert matches randomly into the keys of the organ sending the drone thru an EchoPlex tape delay at high volume. He would then walk the equivalent of half a short city block back to the living room where we would recline and enjoy distant, pleasing, undulating, ever micro changing harmonics. For that moment you knew you were at Café Bombay, you were home and everything, even the gradually shifting organ chord that never really changed, made total sense.

John Trimble / Indianapolis / 2012