Wrigleyville bar owners chafe under Daley's edict: "This seventh-inning crap is going to kill us"

Though the Cubs may finally end their 100-year World Series drought later this month, it’s Mayor Daley’s seventh inning dry-out that concerns most tavern owners in Chicago’s Wrigleyville neighborhood.

Daley has strongly "encouraged" bars to stop serving alcohol after the seventh inning of games in which the Cubs could clinch a playoff series.

Though Ray Orozco, head of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, assured reporters in a news conference Monday that the city had “100 percent cooperation” from bars in the area immediately around Wrigley Field, many bar representatives feel that Daley’s suggestion is a heavy-handed one.

"It’s not really voluntary, as far as I’ve understood it,” said Phil Kuhl, a product buyer for Wrigleyville tavern Sheffield’s. “They can’t physically say ‘You have to do this,’ but they can make other things more difficult for us.”

Permits, inspections and regulations on the opening of new locations are a few ways Kuhl expects the city to turn the screws on bars that don’t comply with the cutoff.

Passive aggression from City Hall isn’t the only concern for the neighborhood’s barkeeps. Sheffield’s partner Gus Poulos says his bar sees “about 10 times” the revenue on Cubs’ home game days than on non-game days, a figure that is “pretty much across the board” for bars in the area.

What does a two-inning dry spell late in the game (selling may resume after the game) mean for the bottom line on those normally lucrative Cubs days? “It could be a couple thousand dollars in sales,” Kuhl said. “It’s right when things get crazy.”

Stephanie Warren is a bartender at Wrigleyille lounge and bar Moxie, which she says does $10,000 to $15,000 more in sales on Cubs’ game days and stands to lose “a couple thousand” dollars per game when the cutoff is in effect. “This seventh inning crap is going to kill us,” she said. “It’s going to hit us hard because we’re a smaller bar and we bank on games and playoffs to make it through the winter.”

Despite Kuhl's and Warren's concerns, Wrigleyville bar patron and Cubs fan Anthony Gensler, 29, doesn’t think the neighborhood’s watering holes need to worry about the cutoff. “I don't think it gives Cubs fans enough credit. We're resourceful,” he said. “A cutoff after the seventh will just mean that more booze will be purchased in the seventh for consumption through the ninth. ‘Yes, I'll take 2 pitchers of Old Style. No, I only need the one glass.’"