Ask Zach Jacobs about the differences between Europe and America, and you might hear something like this: Travelers in Europe are in constant contact with each other, through an endless network of rail routes, cheap hotels, and cafes. Travelers in the United States have virtually no contact at all, especially in the midwest. With Chicago marooned between the coasts, visitors are more likely to arrive by plane than by any less hurried, more congenial mode of transportation. The city’s only lodging options are pricey hotels and rat-bitten flophouses. And the tourists who pack River North and North Michigan Avenue aren’t travelers so much as people on vacation.
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“I want people to come in and get involved with travel,” Jacobs says excitedly, grinning under a mop of long blond hair. “This is a place for local and foreign travelers to come and discuss their travels, to get information about travel.”
The Map Room’s red walls sport a collection of framed maps. In the back, huge relief paintings of the continents pop out of the black walls and ceiling. Africa looms nine feet high, the Sahara a massive golden swirl above green jungles. Asia sprawls across another wall and climbs onto the ceiling. Couches make the room a cozy spot to quaff beer and dream up new adventures. “When you come here, you’re not in a bar in Chicago,” Jacobs says. “You’re anywhere you want to be.” He keeps 100 rolled maps in a bin behind the bar; on request customers can unfurl any part of the world.
For 1994 Jacobs is working on a “Beer Around the World Tour.” Patrons would be given a “passport,” and each new beer they sampled–from the bar’s soon-to-be-expanded international selection–would have its own stamp. After accumulating a certain number of stamps, drinkers would win T-shirts, beer mugs, etc. Another future event could be a monthly full-moon party inspired by the psychedelic ceremonies of a bar called the Bamba Shack on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. And Jacobs says he’s looking to hire bilingual bartenders.
