Drawn Together at Bernice's Tavern
Updated: Sep 21
Art by Alex Nall
For our latest Art on Tap Chicago shoot, our team spent the day in Bridgeport with cartoonist Alex Nall and Steve Badauskas, artist, musician, storyteller and proprietor of Bernice’s Tavern.
It was an especially fitting place to talk with Alex. Much of his work is about people, the communities they create and the places where their lives intersect. Bernice’s has been doing just that for generations.
The tavern at 3238 S. Halsted predates the Badauskas family, but it has been part of Steve’s life since childhood. His father, John, took over the bar in 1965 and later purchased the building. The tavern was named for Steve’s mother, Bernice, who became a familiar presence behind the bar. When his father died in 1998, Steve left his career as a machinist and returned to the family business.
Over the years, Steve has nurtured Bernice’s as a place that welcomes just about everyone. A tavern once frequented largely by working-class Lithuanian immigrants has evolved along with Bridgeport. Today, longtime South Siders share the bar with artists, musicians, teachers, students and newer residents.
Steve has also given people reasons to come together. Wednesday nights bring hugely popular Stingo—Steve’s own idiosyncratic version of bingo—while Thursday nights have long featured an Open Mic, giving musicians a chance to perform in the intimate space at the back of the tavern. Steve has summed up his philosophy simply: “I want this to be a place of fun.”
That sense of openness and community made Bernice’s an ideal setting for our conversation with Alex.
Alex grew up in tiny North Henderson, Illinois, and moved to Chicago just days after graduating from college in 2012. He arrived with Xeroxed mini-comics in hand and quickly found the community of cartoonists, zinesters and independent publishers he had been looking for. An early visit to the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo—CAKE—helped convince him that there was a place for him in that world.
That community remains an important part of Alex’s life. He has participated in Chicago Zine Fest, CAKE and other independent publishing events, while also organizing informal opportunities for artists to get together, including Saturday Night Drink n’ Draw.
During our conversation, we also talked about Alex’s practice of journaling through his drawings—using drawing to record experiences, observations and moments from everyday life. It seems particularly appropriate for an artist whose work repeatedly finds stories in ordinary people and ordinary places.
Alex’s artistic life is only part of his week. His day job is as a librarian at the Oak Park Public Library, another community-centered institution and, in some ways, another reflection of his longstanding interest in books, stories and the ways people connect.
His most ambitious current project is Town & County, an ongoing comics series set in an imaginary rural Illinois community of roughly 200 people. Alex keeps a hand-drawn map of the township along with a document tracking its characters and their developing stories. His ultimate goal is an audacious one: to give every person living there a story.
And Steve understands the relationship between art and community from both sides of the bar.
A self-taught artist, he has been drawing and painting for decades. His work has appeared in exhibitions including Bridgeport All-Stars, and his 2016 solo exhibition The Longest Night That Ever Was featured predominantly black-and-white works in pen, ink and marker. More recently, Steve exhibited his work at Inside Town, the Bridgeport art collective that also happens to be home to Alex and his wife Hannah Larson’s studio, Hardscrabble Cafe.
That connection gave us a natural second stop for our day of filming.
After wrapping at Bernice’s (and devouring sandwiches from nearby Ricobene's!), we headed to Inside Town and Alex’s studio. There, surrounded by drawings, comics, paintings and works in progress, we got another view of his creative life. Alex and Hannah founded Hardscrabble Cafe in 2021, and its home at Inside Town gives them a place not only to produce their own work but to participate in a larger community of artists and independent publishers.
The two locations gave us different views of the same creative ecosystem.
At Inside Town, we saw a place where art is made. At Bernice’s, we experienced a place where artists—and plenty of people who would never describe themselves that way—can meet, talk, listen, perform, draw, drink and simply spend time together.
That is a big part of what Steve has cultivated at Bernice’s. He hasn’t tried to preserve his parents’ tavern by freezing it in time. Instead, new people and new traditions have been allowed to become part of it. The family photographs, Lithuanian artifacts and remnants of an earlier Bridgeport remain, but they now coexist with contemporary artwork, live music, Stingo and generations of new customers.
Now the story moves into post-production. Director of Photography Ryan Kolegas captured the character of Bernice’s and the creative energy of Alex’s studio at Inside Town, while Director/Editor Chad Rispalje will bring those images and conversations together in the final film. We’re looking forward to sharing their work—and Alex and Steve’s story—in the next Art on Tap Chicago film.
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