Joshua P. Ferguson
SOUND OFF This mural serves as a musical Rolodex of influences at the Shrine.
Photo: Douglas Fogelson
As we enter the club, Roy Ayers, Bob Marley and Erykah Badu beam at us from a backlit mural. A noteworthy late-night addition, the Shrine (2109 S Wabash Ave) perfectly complements a string of recent dining offerings on the Wabash Avenue strip in the South Loop. The collage of more than 75 seminal album covers spans not only the Shrine’s 20-foot-long entryway but also the musical influences channeled into this venture, the latest from nightlife impresario Joe Russo.
One can’t help but notice that in the mural—a musical mission statement—the palest race is conspicuously absent. That’s no oversight: The Afro-centricity is central to the club’s theme. Kente-cloth-patterned wallpaper adorns the walls, while black-and-white photos of ’70s-chic, scantily clad Nubian models hang prominently above the main bar. When Russo, a curly haired Italian-American, describes the programming, it’s like a roll call of the history of black music. “We like to think we’ll be the premier R&B, funk, soul, hip-hop, dancehall, Afrobeat, house and disco club of Chicago,” he says during our behind-the-scenes tour.
That vision has been many years in the making. Born and bred in Chicago, Russo got his start 20 years ago in men’s retail; he dressed up many of the scenesters he still considers his core clientele. “Most of my best customers at the store were restaurant owners or nightclub guys. I loved their lifestyle,” he says. His passion for fashion on the wane, Russo switched gears, becoming a manager at the Metro before setting out on his own in 1996.
Russo made his debut as an owner with the Funky Buddha Lounge, where, along with then-partner Mark Klemen, he gave Chicago its first taste of hip-hop as the preferred soundtrack, which had yet to become the pop staple it is today. “That sort of changed nightlife,” he says. “We were able to do something that hadn’t been done. There weren’t any owners that wanted that type of sound. They were scared of it.” Funky Buddha expanded from one storefront to two, and then to three.
In 1998, Russo left the Buddha to launch Sinibar and his restaurant Thyme. It was at Sinibar that Russo connected with the multi-culti crowd of hip-hop, house and soul enthusiasts that he anticipates will regularly make the pilgrimage to the Shrine. “It was a way of life for all the people that went there,” Russo says of Sinibar.
Yet Thyme and Sinibar shuttered in 2004. “I decided to call it quits and ended up moving to Brazil,” Russo explains. In the following two-year sabbatical-of-sorts, he learned Portuguese before touring all of Africa’s Portuguese-speaking countries. There, the seeds for the Shrine were sown.The Shrine takes its name from Afrobeat innovator Fela Kuti’s legendary Lagos club. “The way Fela spoke about the Shrine, it was like a religious experience,” Russo says.
“So with all these genres of music I am going to play here, we’ll serve as a sort of shrine to the people that like these styles of music.”
To provide his clientele an ideal house of worship, Russo spared no expense. The Shrine’s dance floor dominates the center of the room. It’s surrounded by speakers and a 45-foot semicircular bar with a live stage elevated behind it. The DJ booth sits on the dance floor across from the bar, and elevated platforms with bottle-service seating bookend the room. To accommodate its VIP in-crowd, Russo is also launching Coup D’Etat, a guest-list-only venue next door to the Shrine with its own bar and DJ booth.
Russo has taken note of bottle service’s dominance over club culture but makes clear it won’t be the central feature. “We want people to dance again,” he says. “My crowd was always interested in the music coming out of the speakers and the finesse of the DJ. People can come here to dance, flirt with each other and feel sexy. It’s not about showing off.”
Now open, the Shrine celebrates its grand opening June 4.