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way to confront the demons that were plaguing us … an opportunity to once and for all,
makelifeforusmorecertain…andtobuildasatisfyinglife.”Previously,aworklifeof
odd jobs, stay-at-home raising kids, and bartending had raised the materialist fear to a
haunt.Throughout,foodinsecurity,shelterworries,andmaterialist survivalgrippedher.
SouthSideChicago, thenandnow,washerhome,ithasalwaysbeen,inherwords,“the
loveandhate of[her]life, aplace of“strong[intense] symbolic attachment” andaplace
of perceived ensnaring and material insecurity. These twelve years, as Susan Berger's
(2008) “neo-citizen” of Chicago, have been tough and trying.
One day, she hopes, Beebe's will be remarkably successful, beyond her wildest
dreams. Jackie hopes for a lucrative club that features the best known blues bands in
America. “I would one day love to bring the best here—ya know, B.B. King, Buddy
Guy,AlbertKing,StevieWonder—butI'mnotthereyet…butagirlcandream!”Inher
words, “to bring this talent and inspiration to the South Side folk around here would be
the ideal.” But shealso knowsthat making this areality incurrent neoliberalized Chica-
go will be extremely difficult. Jackie understands current race-class relations and polit-
ical times, noting to me the discursive and material obstacles Black South Siders now
face.“Wearenotparticularlyliked,ortendedtobythecity,it'sprettyobvious…weare
seen outside the area [South Side]—by many—as threatening and scary … you know
…weare made tobethat way.”ToJackie, “the politics andthe laws are stacked against
us … there used to be more concern for poor black folk than there is today … the focus
today is building up the downtown, building those skyscrapers, not helping our neigh-
borhoods or families.”
Jackie is a self-identified “grower” of the club, initially having a muted enthusiasm
for the club's possibilities when her husband (now deceased) owned and managed the
facility. But with his death in 2010, she says, her interest in and ambitions for Beebe's
skyrocketed. There is, in her words, now a “thrill of the hunt” involved, that is, to see
how far she can make the club a thriving and successful entity. “For a black girl from
the South Side to make it in business, let alone in the rough-and-tumble music world,
would be quite a story … something to be cherished,” she says to me. Jackie knows that
black women face enormous obstacles to being successful business people. “The sex,
the race, the lack of money, these things work against black women, especially from the
South Side,” she notes. But Jackie never seems to forget her difficult past and the club's
role in potentially alleviating her materialist worries. This is at the core of her “drive to
therapeutize” the self, what Dennis Mumby (1993) calls “the human construction of the
self-therapeutic motif.” Beebe's, in this sense, is a direct pipeline to her deepest aspira-
tions and her darkest fears.
ButJackie alsodesiressomething elseforBeebe's: aspaceofself-happiness andself-
affirmation. Club interiority and exteriority, using Miranda Joseph's (2002) terms, is in-
