A Drag Icon Is Reborn in Edgewater as Hamburger Mary's Reopens

Eater

3 days ago

After five years, Hamburger Mary's, the admired burger bar and drag-centric entertainment venue, officially reopened its doors over the weekend to a new Edgewater location and welcomed queens back to a glittery and red-curtained stage. The lights have flickered back on in one of Chicago's most celebrated drag dressing rooms.
Chicago's original Hamburger Mary's stood in Andersonville for almost 15 years before shutting its doors in 2020; it's now a Sweetgreen. The original location closed for a variety of reasons, chief among them being the COVID-19 pandemic, but limited physical space and disagreements with the previous location's landlord were also considerable factors. Gentrification, a persistent issue in Chicago and one that has also affected the city's queer nightlife scene, played an integral part in re-establishing the restaurant in Edgewater.
'It's getting very, very expensive,' says Ashley Wright, co-owner of Hamburger Mary's. 'We're getting more space for less rent here, and we have a beautiful space that's bigger than we had before. So I don't think we ever really looked to go back into Andersonville, only because of the cost.'
Wright opted for a public preview weekend instead of a more subdued soft launch; the re-launched Hamburger Mary's embodies the belief that anything queer and worth doing is worth overdoing. The new space echoes this ethos, with boldly painted hot pink and rich purple walls adorned with a myriad of camp iconographic memorabilia, including souvenir Pleaser-shaped glasses; numerous purses, high heels, and hats nailed to the walls; and various framed vinyl albums featuring Donna Summer, Dolly Parton, and other queer icons. Ashley Wright and his twin brother, Brandon, brought Hamburger Mary's to Chicago. The chain started in 1972 in San Francisco, and there are 10 locations across the country.
As someone who's enjoyed a meal at Hamburger Mary's, and as a gay man in this city who loves Chicago's drag community, walking into a reopened space for my community felt refreshingly optimistic. The number of longstanding queer spaces in Chicago has slowly shrunk, which includes the semi-recent closures of Boystown (now redubbed Northalsted) bars DS Tequila and Berlin, the latter of which was open for 40 years.
'I've actually heard a lot of people who are really glad that Mary's is open because of the fact that so many queer and LGBTQ businesses have closed,' Wright says. 'Living in a city like Chicago, we maybe don't need as many as other places, but it's still important to have queer-identifying businesses that people can feel safe in.'
The response from Chicago's performance community has been overwhelmingly supportive as well. Fewer queer nightlife and entertainment venues translates to fewer stages for our local queens to book gigs and get experience. When Hamburger Mary's put out their official casting call, Wright shared that there were over 200 applications within a matter of a few days.
One of the queens who was able to secure a spot for the venue's preview weekend was my personal friend, Aja Ajani. The restaurant booked her as the first Hamburger Mary's Saturday evening host in five years, warming up the already excited crowd that had managed to secure tickets online.
'It is literally pure art, you know what I mean? I make everything that I wear. I mean, this hair I sewed in from the bundles, I colored, cut, and dyed it. I sew everything that I make. I made the lashes that I'm wearing. I don't know how much more art you can get than in drag, because drag is like 50 million different art forms all put into one character,' Ajani says after the show in a well-lit dressing room as the other queens packed their wigs and tear-away dresses into hardshell suitcases.
After three years performing in Chicago and over 14 years in drag entertainment total, the politicization of drag has been something Ajani has had to grapple with personally. 'It's hard for people to empathize, I think, in this day and age, and people are scared of what they don't understand, and they unfortunately don't want to take the time to learn more about it,' Ajani says. 'I think that all that we as queer people can do is just do what we love and be ourselves and hope that somehow, someway, that'll translate to the people who want us gone.'
And although gentrification continues to be an unignorable force that pushed Hamburger Mary's to reopen in Edgewater, the issue has affected the queer community's physical presence in Chicago for more than a century. Politics and social norms often attempt to determine what being queer in Chicago ought to be — they always have — but our community is resilient and determined to define itself. Change and adaptability are important instincts for our culture's survival. Hamburger Mary's is a testament to that.
'It's really important now, especially in today's political climate, that the world knows that we're not going away,' Wright says. 'Not only are we not going away — we are going to be bigger and bolder and more fabulous than we were before.'
Hamburger Mary's, 1055 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue, open Wednesday through Sunday, reservations via Toast