Today, Chicago has one of the most vibrant Latino punk scenes in the nation, but it didn't come easily. It was Los Crudos, though, who emerged from Pilsen in the mid-1990s, that many American bands credit with inspiring them to sing in Spanish. He would become one of the founding members of Big Black and Naked Raygun. In the late '60s, Santiago Durango's family moved to the city from Colombia. According to Cris Balls, who lives at Huevos and plays guitar in No Slogan, 'My experience is that every place I've ever lived in, you know going in that they're not going to renew your lease at the end of the year.'įrom the very beginning, Latinos have played an important role in shaping the sound of Chicago punk rock. It probably comes as no surprise that cops and landlords are no fans of loud music or liberty spikes and that a lot of punks have trouble making rent. The average lifespan of a good punk house is only a year. Great venues like El Colibri, Transmission, the Needle House, the Crevice and the Command Center pop up and disappear so quickly that there's little time to mourn them. The rash of venue closings that swept through the city last year did relatively little to affect the punk scene. The headliners are Hit Me Back, from Los Angeles, and Cinder, a skate-punk act from Spain. Condenada is a bilingual girl group with members of Reaccion and Human Order. Intifada, whose members are all still in high school, is one of the youngest. The recently reunited Sin Orden are elder statesmen of the scene. The lineup includes half a dozen different flavors of punk, from political to skate punk to grindcore. The crowd is a healthy mix of trad skins, gutter punks, regular joes, and some well-dressed spillover from the show at the Texas Ballroom down the street. It looks as if at any moment their singer Swave will bring down the supports with a swing of one of his massive arms. Large portions though.Rancho Huevos is a shoddy house in Bridgeport that sometimes puts on shows. The Moscow mule I had was not bad but again, nothing special. A little expensive for my tastes being that the food was only average. The filet of salmon was grilled and topped with pineapple and mango salsa. I think they were fried tortillas but it was good until it got soggy. Vegetable tortilla soup was good when tortillas were crispy. They both came with either a salad or soup and we chose one of each. We ordered the filet of salmon and the New York strip. Depending on your appetite maybe even the entrees. I mean two people can share the sides for sure. Only in Vegas can you get away with skirts short enough you can see panties when they bend over. The uniforms of the lady servers and cocktail waitresses are something else. The server was friendly - Dalila- I think her name was. A friend worked there when he was a teen. An institution with lots of history I’m sure. Laid back campy vibe with fake trees and neuron lighting. We unanimously decided that the next time we come here we are just going to stay in the lounge. Then our table became available so we paid the bill and moved over to the restaurant. There was great music playing and lots of TV monitors playing old music videos and different sports games. The kids shared a huge Peppermill Margarita too.

My wife had a glass of Prosecco ($12) but it was flat so I took it to the bar and they poured her an even bigger glass to replace it. I'm serious - I can not stress enough just how cheesy this plate of nachos was! Incredible! We ordered a plate of nachos ($22) and when it came we were amazed how big the portion was and that it had more cheese than we had ever seen on a plate of nachos. I ordered a pepsi ($4.25), my wife ordered a drink called a Lemon Drop Martini ($12) and the kids had a huge drink called a Coronarita ($16 - basically a Margarita with a small bottle of Corona dumped in it and a drink called Peaches & Cream ($13). Our server was a young girl named Annie who was really nice and quite attentive. Nice and dark and with seats wrapping around a very cool gas fireplace, we were able to sit right at the fire and wait for our table to open up, The hostess suggested that we wait in the lounge and we are so glad that she did. When we went in October they weren't accepting reservations, so we just showed up and there was a bit of a line up and we were told that there would be a 45 minute wait. We really wanted to have a meal at the Peppermill as we had read a lot about it and even seen it in some movies.

Parking near fireside bowl