The Party Starter
Cecil Locke Takes Chess in The Park to the Next, Mobile Level
By Gus Garcia-Roberts
In Grant Park, at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard, men gather around a 30-foot-long, bubble-gum pink table to play, watch, and talk chess on a hot July day. Eight chess sets spread along the three-foot high table are being puzzled over by about a dozen players, standing shoulder-to-shoulder facing their opponents, and a smattering of spectators. Colorful plastic pinwheels spin on rods extending from the table high into the air. “Sweet Home Alabama” plays benignly on homemade speakers. The table has a simple allure, and people emerging from the Taste of Chicago, located a block to the east, stop to pick up or watch a game while they digest. Bright, hand-painted banners announce the table: “Touch and Go Chess Party.” For some chess addicts, this is heaven on earth. For veteran sign-painter Cecil Locke, creator and proprietor of the table, it’s a living.
Locke, 48, is a stocky, black man with a bushy moustache and short, unkempt hair circling a high forehead. He has his eyes locked on the game below him. He wears a reflective yellow vest open over a dirty white T-shirt, and cut-off jean shorts. He’s engrossed in a match against a man in his 20s. In between moves, he collects two dollars from new players approaching the table, the fee to play chess all day (it’s $1 for checkers, but the three boards for that game go largely ignored). He’s holding a bag of Cheetos in his left hand, dipping into it whenever he gets a chance. As a result, his calloused fingers and blackened nails are dusted bright orange; by the end of the match, so are all of his white pieces.
Locke, a mild-mannered man, is often the most reserved person at his table. Players scream, moan and trash-talk incessantly. Locke doesn’t discourage it, and plays along if it pleases his customers.
“Should I let ‘em know, Cecil?” asks one especially spirited player, named Melvin, standing a few mats down. “Should I yell it out?”
“And what’s that?” goads Locke, aware of how Melvin will respond.
“Dead man walkin’!” Melvin declares, swooping a rook and completing a trap of one of his opponent’s pieces.
Locke chuckles. He moves a piece of his own, putting his opponent in check. “Check-arooski,” he announces.
For three years, Locke, with his table, has been a fixture in the Millennium and Grant Park area. From noon until whenever his evening crowd thins (usually around 8 p.m.), whenever the temperature is above 55 degrees, you’ll find him and his assistant, John King, keeping order, collecting money, and if there is no paying opponent available, playing their customers. If they’re not in the park on a nice day, they’re most likely at a festival somewhere else in the city, luring players from the crowds. The Chess Party attracts players of all races and walks of life. Lawyers in business suits play against homeless men, 12-year-old children square off against Eastern European immigrants, Rastafarians take on policemen in uniform. The players, almost all male, might strike up conversations, the beginnings of a friendship, or they may play a few games silently, shake hands, and move on.
“You meet a lot of interesting people playing chess here,” says Jamie Sypulski, an attorney from a nearby office, and a regular at the table. “Cecil’s adding to the unique atmosphere of the city.”
At first glance, the Party looks like little more than a long, garishly decorated table, which it is. It is also, however, a practical collision of art and engineering, reflecting Locke’s sensibilities as a sign-painter. He slathered the table pink because, “it’s a color that stimulates your creativity.” On the sides of the table he plastered large hand-painted signs announcing the “Touch & Go Chess Party.” Thirteen smaller signs, one in Spanish, explain his operation further: “$2 Donation to Play Chess all Day, $1 to Play Checkers all Day.” (He calls the fee a donation, because he operates with a street performer’s license. But if you refuse to pay, he’ll lobby his usually sympathetic customers not to play you). He fashioned pennants, with chess pieces painted on them, and hung those from the sides. He positioned metal rods sticking ten feet into the air, and to these screwed the spinning pinwheels, inexplicably sticking a little painted cat face to the center of one.
Also stuck to these rods are the homemade speakers that connect to a small radio, powered by a car battery, onto which an amplifier is screwed, all secured beneath the table. To collect his money, he fashioned two little wooden boxes with slots in them, situated on either side of the center of the table, and paddles, connected by stretched key-chain cords, to mash the bills into the slots. The bills fall through holes in the table into lock boxes screwed underneath. Every detail has been fastidiously conceived for its practical and aesthetic value.
