Step into Yo Mama’s cafe on Milwaukee Avenue and you’ll be greeted by Mama herself. “How ya doin’ honey,” she coos, flitting around the granite and marble tables, taking orders and giving a few herself. “Oh, you should give me that ring girl,” she tells a customer. In red lipstick, earrings, and nail polish and a pretty pink-and-green apron, she’s as sweet as only mothers can be. Except this Mama isn’t anybody’s mother, and his real name is Andy.
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Yo Mama’s looks like a homespun cross between a groovy 60s hangout and somebody’s cozy living room. There’s a small stage in front outfitted with a carpet and pillows for lounging. A green piano faces the stage, and the walls are lined with small tile-covered tables and mustard yellow booths. There’s an apricot-colored couch at the back, surrounded by plants, glass coffee tables, and bright yellow bookcases filled with piles of magazines.
Then there are the strange paintings on the walls. Devoutly religious, Reid says he’s read the Bible five times, and his interpretations can be found in his oddly shaped paintings. One heptagonal canvas shows a nude woman wielding a sword in front of a church. Another painting, done in purple and gold, has a cathedral and a naked woman holding a candle. Still another features the requisite nude woman, floating in the air with a gun pointed at the onlooker.
Looking on the bright side, Reid was persuaded to take advantage of the space to open a cafe. “The location was good, and everything was taking off around it. People were coming to Wicker Park, and Urbus was filled, Earwax was filled, and if I opened a cafe I’d be filled too.” With financial backing from a friend who later bailed out, Reid began building the cafe from the ground up. “There was nothing in here,” he says. “It ended up costing $60,000. We sanded the floors, put sinks in, put water in, built the tables, built the stage, designed the lighting. We were building for a year.”
