The Mystery of Tropical Shipwreck Cafe

My 5-almost-6-year-old is going to karate camp this summer, up in Rogers Park. So twice a day I go up and down Western Ave, as always watching for any minute change in the culinary offerings (the long-dead Kabob Corner, up near Foster, suddenly had its front door open yesterday-- my guess is it's about to become something else).

Anyway, a whole little saga transpired in the last several weeks. In the strip just north of Lawrence, where Parker S's ill-fated Carmen restaurant is as well as a number of presumably Balkan coffeehouses with dark windows and, presumably, sullenly smoking soccer-watching clientele, a sign appeared: Coming soon: Tropical Shipwreck Cafe.

Probably another Balkan place, as so many of them have that tropical theme which seems to suggest the exact opposite of Kosovo and Sarajevo to emigres from that part of the world, conjuring up a cheerful and enticing image of escape even when the normally unappealing word "shipwreck" is worked into it. (Then there's the record shop named optimistically for Dayton-- yes, Dayton, Ohio, city of peace accords. Imagine an American naming a record shop for Versailles or Appomattox.) A painted sign over the top showed a Spanish armada-type galleon (or a ship of the line, to you O'Brien readers) cast up on a sunny beach.

So Tropical Shipwreck Cafe was coming soon, and coming soon, and coming soon for weeks and weeks. I went to Traverse City around the 4th of July and it must have opened while I was there, because when I came back it had big posters in the window for sugary creamy coffee drinks.

And then suddenly it was closed. Not just closed, but downright scavenged. All the furniture was gone from the inside, even the painted scenes on the wall seem to have been ripped from their places, leaving jagged teeth of art on the walls. My guess is, it was coming soon for three months, and closed within three weeks.

That they ran out of money to stay open, that they didn't draw a crowd because nobody knew what the hell it was (a place to have coffee? a place to smoke all day? a place where non-whatevers were not welcome?)-- all that's easy enough to guess, and mundane. But the violence with which they seem to have closed, the way a dream seems to have been angrily obliterated, scribbled out, stomped, is more compelling. What was the secret, who has the answer to the mystery of Tropical Shipwreck Cafe? Like so many mysteries of the deep blue sea, we will likely never know.

But the violence with which they seem to have closed, the way a dream seems to have been angrily obliterated, scribbled out, stomped, is more compelling. What was the secret, who has the answer to the mystery of Tropical Shipwreck Cafe? Like so many mysteries of the deep blue sea, we will likely never know.

I have my own little restaurant mystery to report on, once I figure out what's happened. You could do what I did do one evening: each building in Chicago must have the management company's phone number prominently posted. Why not call them? Maybe you can get tour of the ravaged store front.

Maybe it is best not to know.

Laws mean nothing without enforcement. Must have the landlord or "landlord agents" name posted doesn't mean it happens. A pesky law that the City is completely uninterested in enforcing.

You'd be better off trying the for lease number that will undoubtedly soon be posted.

Laws mean nothing without enforcement. Must have the landlord or "landlord agents" name posted doesn't mean it happens. A pesky law that the City is completely uninterested in enforcing.

You're right. However, I have successfully reached people dialing the number posted on the building. I have friends who recently left the landlord business who were once fined when vandals pulled down this sign. So in my very small piece of the world, I have had success in contacting and have evidence of enforcement.

And yes, the leasing agent will always be the next resource.

I stopped in the Shipwreck Cafe for a take out iced coffee and fruit drink. A man was eating hummus at the time and said it was made fresh. They were extremely pirate themeish and gave my son a hat when we walked in. The next week we noticed they were closed. We never had the chance to try their hummus. They also served hot dogs.

Damn, Chicago's only pirate-themed hummus, hot dog and iced coffee restaurant and it closed before I got there...