Television was inn its infancy in the mid-seventies and a breakthrough program called Saturday Night Live exploded on the scene being so different than any other program at the time. With their edge comedy an d adult humor it soon found a following and is a program that I have often often said will always be on television at the same time and same network a hundred years from now. Saturday Night Live is so loved through this culture as long as there is television this program will air as it does in its current format. One of the least glorious legacies of this program is it making a bigger thing of a dive dump in the city of Chicago called The Billy Goat Tavern.
The Billy Goat tavern was only famous because of a cheeseburger cheeseburger bit on Saturday Night Live. The pink slime type burgers are small and nasty. The skunk flat beer of its tap tastes like mold and beer that was ship tree months ago from Bavaria and has lost any flavor resembling anything that can be called beer. How the Billy Goat Tavern is deemed a local tourist spot and indeed sought after from out of town and out of state tourists is amazing and anyone who thinks Billy Goat is a great experience is out of their mind.
You can pick a random place in say Des Moines or Akron that has equally better or as disgusting shit to digest as you will find at Chicago's downtown Billy Goat Tavern. The Billy Goat tavern as it stands is as tasting and gross as the place from the seventies era Saturday Night Live bit appeared. I wonder why they just didn't do a reality program on the Billy Goat Tavern but I guess they figured the workers and owner there are so old and boring it would be worthless. I will admit that while I was never a fan of Saturday Night Live I cannot understand the appeal of this bit and why people that it was humorous or cutting edge. Most likely people recall their favorite SNL actors and remember the movies that came after their work on Saturday Night Live and the popularity of the program allowed the Billy Goat Tavern to slide by and remain at their key downtown location where many other similar businesses didn't have the support and power to remain as a downtown institution. I once went to this place and got a tiny burger and maybe twelve fries and a local newscaster walked in and the host cowtowed to him and gave him a huge burger with fries triple of the serving I received. The bad food and impartial service of this place is deserving of a closure but it continues to survive and make Chicagoans fondly remember Saturday Night Live and remind people how bad hamburgers use to be in many restaurants a at one time.
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