- Credibility:
WICKER PARK— The owners of Angry Pig Tavern aren’t angry, they’re just flummoxed over why anyone would want to steal their beloved pig statue.
Standing just over 2-feet-tall and weighing in at 6 pounds, 5 ounces, the pig statue was stolen from the vestibule of Angry Pig Tavern at 11:24 p.m. Thursday.
General manager Chris Trylong, who filed a police report, showed Block Club Chicago footage of the incident on Friday night from the establishment’s surveillance cameras.
In the videos, a man and woman who’d been customers at Angry Pig Tavern, walk out of the bar, 2039 W. North Ave., and then return to snatch the pig.
Watch them take the pig statue, below.
When they leave the restaurant, the woman is holding the pig but the man she is with playfully grabs the pig from her and runs off. The two appear to be laughing at their antics.
Trylong said the pig, wearing a chef’s hat and carrying a wooden spoon, was missing from the restaurant on Friday morning, so he looked at surveillance camera from the prior night.
That’s when he discovered that the people who stole the pig had been Angry Pig patrons.
“One of the two told their bartender where she worked [at a local nearby bar], I don’t know why they would do that if they were going to steal the pig,” Trylong said.
Theresa Hemmer, wife of Angry Pig co-owner Chris Hemmer, reached out to Block Club on Friday to help get the word out. Since then, she’s posted messages on Facebook and “Missing Pig” signs up around the neighborhood.
Hemmer said that the manager of the bar where the woman works said the employee confessed to taking the pig, but she did not keep it and “left it on the street somewhere.”
The pig normally sits behind the hostess stand at Angry Pig Tavern, which opened in April.
Trylong said that the incident is not the first time the pig has been stolen, though the other six times all occurred at Downtown’s Bridge House Tavern, which the owners of Angry Pig previously owned before relocating to Wicker Park.
“It usually comes back. They wake up the next day and come and drop if off.. .. If it was left in the street, I don’t know, I guess we will try to find another [pig],” Trylong said.
As of Tuesday morning, the pig remains missing. Hemmer and Trylong say they’ve owned the pig for 19 years.
“Angry Pig was first purchased by Mark’s mom for his sister’s chef birthday party and then gifted to Mark when he started culinary school,” Theresa Hemmer said.
