"The phrase 'cheezborger cheezborger' entered the pop-culture lexicon and made the Billy Goat and Mr. Sianis a tourist attraction. During the summer of 1978, at the inaugural ChicagoFest festival on Navy Pier, Mr. Sianis set up a booth where he and Mr. Belushi recreated his quirky grill for thousands of fans."
May 22, 2026
"Among the early regulars was a group from the Second City comic troupe, including Don Novello, John Belushi and Bill Murray. They downed beer and coffee..."
"... and marveled at Mr. Sianis’s kind but firm handling of first-timers who expected his tiny grill to turn out anything other than cheeseburgers...."
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23 comments:
Sam was a character for sure. When I worked in downtown Chicago in the late 80s, I spent a lot of time in the Billy Goat. Mike Royko was there most days, as were a host of other local worthies. It was a dive for sure, but the burgers were cheap and the beer was cold. RIP.
i grew up reading Mike Royko..
He made me GLAD that i didn't live in Chicago :)
Royko wrote about a Chicago coroner who ruled people as suicides.
one stabbed "himself" 18 times..
another shot "himself" in the back of the head.. TWICE
Our cities are gone. Maybe, maybe Trump will bring them back. Or maybe technology has made them obsolete. Hope Sianis didn’t feel too bad living long enough to see Chicago go down the shitter - twice! CC, JSM. (This time it stands for Chicago Chai!)
We were lucky to have had those early crews at SNL, as well as SCTV. There are some great individual comedians out there these days, but what shows up as ensemble comedy on TV these days is horses***.
I grew up in Detroit, but have spent so much time in Chicago for pleasure and business over my lifetime that it easily became my favorite US city. I miss it. I have not been there since early 2020. And it seems like it has changed so much since then- from what I read, not from having been there. Crime, vacant store fronts on Michigan Avenue. I hope that's not the case anymore. I need to get back there. Just reading about Mike Royko and the Billy Goat Tavern brings back so many memories.
One of Belushi's best sketches.
No Coke. Pepsi.
Was it near Abe Froman's ? The Sausage King of Chicago ?
i grew up reading Mike Royko..
As did I. Royko was a gem. He shined the light on so many "colorful" characters. Sam Sianis was only one of them.
One of my favorite columns was when he asked why there were no slurs for Norweigans after describing the slurs for other ethnic groups. He would definitely be cancelled today.
The freeze on the video shows Jane Curtin. I used to see her in the Wellesley Bread and Circus all the time. She deserves a tag on my blog…
I love the pacing on those old skits. The little woman and I are streaming best of Carson lately and it is amazing how calm those shows from 1975 are. Clarinet player? Let him do two tunes. They had long conversation!
Royko wrote for the Sun-Times starting in the mid 60s. I grew up reading the Tribune. David Condon was their sports columnist since after the War. He often wrote about Sam Sianis and the curse of the Billy Goat regularly. In fact, Condon may have been there when Sam and the goat were kicked out of Wrigley Field. I suspect that Royko’s credit for popularizing the story was his own puffery.
My favorite line was Royko as a kid. His dad came home with Christmas presents and he called the cops to tell them his old man rolled Santa.
Temujin.
My stories are a little different.
And the original Billy Goats is still there in the grimy tunnel at lower Michigan and Hubbard. An outlier of the famous “Hubbard’s Cave” at Hubbard and lower Wacker. The lower streets are a consequence of the flow reversal of the Chicago River in 1900.
Chicago used to do shit, 130 years ago.
Loved the place.
Love the skit.
The only thing, I don't love is, "No Coke, Pepsi" - that's just wrong!
Now, in Chicago, if I can't pick up a really good Chicago hotdog and an Old Style beer, I'll make sure that I get to a Lou Malnati's for pizza. It's really not my style but it's a classic. And of it's kind, it's damn good!
I'm a Geno's East kinda guy, but there's a Chicago pizza for everyone!
My favorite Royko column was about him going to the wrestling matches one evening and coming home to find a plumbing problem that could not wait until the morning. He got ahold of a plumber and who shows up at his door but one of the wrestlers he had watched that night in one of the opening matches.
I used to watch wrestling on cable TV from Indianapolis, for a wrestling outfit owned by Dick the Bruiser, The World's Most Dangerous Wrestler.
Sam Sianis was only two years older than Garrett Morris, still kicking at 89.
Josephbleau
Never get out of your car on lower Whacker. It's basically an outdoor toilet for the homeless.
I take exception to referring to it as a "dive bar". It's a very good bar with good basic food - a block off the main drag - but which just so happens due to some oddities of Chicago street networks to put it partly under another street. All with a bit of an attitude - representative of the owner - as superbly satirized by SNL in its heyday. Now replicated by the family in other locations in the City.
“Now, in Chicago, if I can't pick up a really good Chicago hotdog and an Old Style beer”yes in the day we would leave work at 11am and take the red line to wigglley field and get fully kroisened on old style.
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