Hip Replacement
Although it’s difficult to learn what band is tickling patrons’ eardrums behind tiny ear buds or oversized headphones, the gentle deflation of pretense here leads one to believe that “you’veprobablyneverheardofthem” would no longer be a popular answer.
Tucked under a three-story apartment building on Milwaukee Avenue, just between Wood Street and Wolcott Avenue, Filter is a hushed recapitulation. Its new home, which it has inhabited for a week, sits on the thirteen-hundred block of North Milwaukee: a street whose calm confidence few boulevards in Wicker Park can pull off. The coffeehouse shares a foyer with its next-door neighbor, Copenhagen Cyclery, whose window displays shiny bicycles and shimmering, pink disco globes dangling from the ceiling (A bicycle attached to a child carrier fills the entirety of the floor space). Filter looks sharp next to this over-peppy window display, and more welcoming: its picture window offers a preview of the humming coziness within. Beneath a sign declaring Filter “now open” are three lines of gray capital letters: “Filter,” “Coffee Lounge,” and “Wireless Café.” Each phrase precedes a series of dots stacked in threes, which immediately evoke the painted-cement, industrial-chic sign that marked Filter’s former location (For many years, this was an iconic feature in images and photographs of the six-corners intersection of Wicker Park—where Milwaukee, Damen, and North avenues collide). Inside, through an entryway framed by brick archways and a kiwi-green accent wall, the counter remains invisible until one turns a corner at the café’s midsection. An illuminated glass box hanging above the condiment counter, bearing a painting of the neighborhood’s infamous “crotch,” is the only relic that manifestly commemorates Filter’s first life.
Like the once-gangly adolescent child who has undergone his last growth spurt, [Filter's] backbone has straightened and elevated the whole of its body.
After a two-and-a-half year period of quiescence, “Wicker Park’s living room” has not, at least at first glance, seemed to change in any substantial way. The lounge area remains a maze of vintage couches, hefty café tables, and bloated armchairs; the ground remains strewn with limp white cords connecting Apple computers to outlets; the teabags still come skewered on sticks, suspended above tall mugs of hot water; the bathroom walls are already primed for a new generation of chalk graffiti; and the menu remains a series of chalkboards with classic Filter fare neatly listed and priced in white (Popular menu items include “Hipster Hash,” “Sweet Potato Fries and Horseradish Dipping Sauce,” and “Tofu Reuben”). Most former regulars approve the attempt to re-create the Filter of lore.
Other welcome nuances include free access to the Internet along with a purchase (previously an hour-at-a-time luxury) and a fresh young staff, who, in contrast to their misanthropic predecessors, are almost friendly. On the whole, they seem as green as the space itself. Filter’s present iteration claims to be “the only coffee shop in Chicago with LEED-Gold certification.” According to the official blog of Moss, a small green-architecture firm that worked with Filter’s owner, Jeff Linnane, in reopening the coffee shop, Filter will be “saving 36.5% in water usage through efficient toilets, faucets, and urinals, 34% in lighting power usage, and Energy Star rated furnaces, condensing units, and appliances.”
The new Filter is a streamlined product—even the exposed brick has a sheen. Two illuminated, rectangular glass boxes frame a church pew positioned against the back wall at the center of the lounge area; they cast a hazy red glow over the faces of those chatting in the middle of the lounge area. A hodge-podge of vintage lamps, as eclectic as the customers, float throughout the room. Yet these and other small discrepancies begin to make an impact on the patrons of old, who knew Filter as a mildly grungy, disarmingly unvarnished place. Self-serve water now sprays from the spigot of an opulent glass jug, whereas it used to trickle from an orange plastic water cooler (the type spotted at tailgating events and construction sites). The menu that was once a scrawled mess of colored chalk is now neatly laid out in white-on-black, with bold colors preserved for the smoothie selections. Likewise, the bathroom mirrors seem shockingly immaculate to those who once searched for their faces in labyrinths of graffiti.
Although cleanliness is always expected of a freshly built space, Filter’s pristine condition appears unnatural. Yet after spending some time on the new epoxy floors and spotless couches, one can’t help renouncing the old cement floors and filthy sofas. Like the once-gangly adolescent child who has undergone his last growth spurt, here Filter’s face and limbs are largely the same, but its backbone has straightened and elevated the whole of its body. The era of self-consciousness and shamefulness has finally subsided, and a proud look of elegance is beginning to show.
