Big Star will look a lot better than this, we swear.
The most talked about bar that hasn’t opened yet has become a little easier to talk about: The Terry Alexander/Donnie Madia/Paul Kahan joint in the former Pontiac space has been named Big Star.
As previously reported, Big Star will be a taqueria (see the simple—but enticing—menu below), but also a kind of honky-tonk dive bar: the beer will be cheap (some of it, anyway), the music will be country (again: some of it), and the vibe will be as debaucherous as a bar in the middle of Wicker Park can be these days. Which Alexander hopes is still pretty debaucherous: “One underlying reason we chose to take over an ‘iconic’ location was our long history with the neighborhood and our desire to see Wicker Park remain interesting and creative and not filled with sports bars, Starbucks and Jimmy John’s,” he says.
A sneak preview tour of Big Star is included in the Publican’s Oct 18 James Beard dinner. Big Star is slated to open by the end of the month.
Full menu and publicity text after the jump.
“A dive bar. A small taqueria. A honky-tonk in the middle of Wicker Park, inspired by the Depression-era Bakersfield scene. Inexpensive, approachable and committed to excellence in food, spirits and service. Turntables and country music. Sounds simple, except the kitchen is led by James Beard award-winning chef Paul Kahan, co-owner of Blackbird, avec and The Publican; the dive bar is directed by Michael Rubel from the Violet Hour; and the music is selected by DJs from Danny’s Tavern and Reckless Records.
Between 1935 and roughly 1942, tens of thousands of working-class people from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri descended on the West Coast — particularly Los Angeles and California’s Central Valley. The Depression-era migration was also connected to the devastating 1935-1938 dust storms of the Southern Plains, but the majority of the exodus was economically based.
The honky-tonks of Bakersfield and Kern County included places like Ethel’s Old Corral, The Pioneer Club, the Rhythm Rancho and the Texhoma Club, which made their rural Southern association in name and with “rude decor.” These clubs were often rough and embraced drink, violence and rebellion. This was a society of extremes: sobriety and drunkenness, piety and hell-raising, wild Saturday nights followed by Sunday religious revivals.
In the early ’40s, the Big Star location was a gas station called The Pierce Street Garage. Later it was abandoned; then it became a little-used car wash before it was resurrected into the Pontiac Produce Company in 1993, a small indoor-outdoor produce store. As the neighborhood began to prosper and gentrify, the Pontiac transformed from a market to a quintessential Wicker Park hangout. A week before Halloween, 2008, the Pontiac closed.
“When the opportunity arose to purchase the Pontiac,” said partner Terry Alexander, “one underlying reason we chose to take over an ‘iconic’ location was our long history with the neighborhood and our desire to see Wicker Park remain interesting and creative and not filled with sports bars, Starbucks and Jimmy John’s.”
Adding, “Bakersfield, in the late ’30s and early ’40s, was one of those rare unions of people, place and time, talent, opportunity and purpose, that symbolized a city transformed by music. In this spirit, we have created Big Star.”
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