CHICAGO — Joe Perl, better known as “G.I. Joe”, stepped inside the Teddy Bear Lounge in Avondale on a recent Thursday night, wearing his white butcher’s coat over military fatigues.
He carried his usual tools of the trade: a stack of yellow paper menus, a silver bucket of sausage links, a knife and a smile. On the menu: over 80 meat products, all stocked in Perl’s pickup truck out front, from salami rolls and steak to “combat-ready” beef jerky and “Bite Me Harder” horseradish.
As Perl began slicing sausages into bar-napkin charcuterie, the bar’s beyond-buzzed drinkers buzzed with new life.
Garbage man Jeremy Soriano, who had stopped by the bar at 3513 N. Pulaski Road after his shift to throw a few back with coworkers, snapped a picture with Perl. Later, Soriano bowed as Perl’s white truck peeled out.
“I’ve been drinking for 37 years and have seen G.I. Joe maybe just a handful of times. He’s there and then he’s gone,” Soriano said. “That’s what makes someone a legend.”
Perl is one of the last of a breed of traveling sausage salesmen still working his way through late-night crowds, offering tastings to tempt patrons and bar owners alike to purchase by the pound.
The Army veteran said he hits up about 20 bars a night and works over 100 hours a week. A lover of “people and crazy women,” Perl said he has 14 kids and many mouths to feed.
Some bar patrons applaud when Perl walks in.
“There may be a few ‘G.I. Joes’ out there, but I’m the only one who can say they’re a real meat man,” Perl said. “I’m a vet and it’s been my M.O. for a long time now.”
While inflation, takeout and food delivery apps continue to take a bite out the market, Perl said he scrapes by using “throwback” tactics he’s mastered in almost 50 years of business.
“This business pays the bills and does me justice, so I ride with it. It’s part of me,” Perl said. “And drinkers are so happy to see me. It’s like a breath of fresh air when I come in. How can I not embrace it?”
Perl doesn’t just remember customers’ names. He knows if they prefer hot dogs or bratwursts, or if they’ve been bitterly divorced or are happily married with kids, “just like a good bartender would,” he said.
During the day, Perl can be spotted slinging sausages at car dealerships, barber shops, post offices, fire stations, bowling alleys, church groups, clown conventions, cemeteries and yacht clubs.
From Chicago to Detroit, he’s sold sausages to “goths, hard rockers, bikers, bodybuilders, military vets, missionaries, strippers, truckers and just about everyone with a pulse under the sun,” he said.
He leaves no barstool unturned, staying out until last call at smoking bars in Indiana and across tumbleweed towns in southern Illinois.
At The Booze Hound, 3734 N. Milwaukee Ave., bartender Joanne Swiderski said she first met Perl way back when he was selling sausages at underground clubs.
“He’s welcomed anywhere in the city,” Swiderski said. “I’ve called him in as backup at every bar I’ve worked at.”
Sausage has always been the family business, Perl said. As a kid growing up in Rogers Park, he helped his father, the late Karl “The Happy Sausage Man” Perl, feed Union Stockyards workers on break and make the rounds at dive bars.
“He taught me that if you go and be a stand-up guy, people will respect you, and you built rapport and relationships from there,” Perl said. “My father was an inspiration, but I made my own way.”
Perl joined the Army in the 1970s, “but if I tell you more, I’d have to kill you,” he said.
When he came back, he tried his hand at commodities trading Downtown but quickly “blew out” and found himself stuck under a mountain of debt. He went back to the trade he knew best.
Business for Perl has been “mixed” — and the pandemic years particularly slim — with Perl surviving off “speakeasies and bars in the southern part of the state that never closed,” he said.
Perl recently invited Block Club for a ride-along in his fully loaded Dodge Ram, shoving aside brown boxes filled with squeeze bottles of hot mustard in the front seat.
As the truck rolled down Milwaukee Avenue on the Northwest Side, Perl pointed out a bar known for its pool players, another run by a former Marine recovering from a stroke, a spot passed on from a father to his son and more than a few empty lots where “shot-and-a-beer” bars once served the neighborhood.
Bars were everywhere “and they were humming” when “old man Daley ran the show,” Perl said.
It was second nature for shift workers to punch the clock and stumble over to the nearest watering hole, Perl said.
“It was the charm of the neighborhood bars that made Chicago,” Perl said. “I’ve been to thousands, but I’d be surprised if there were even a thousand good ones left.”
Still, Perl doesn’t plan to “pull the plug” anytime soon. Anyone can call the “Sausage Emergency Number” on his menu — 773-255-6327 — and he’ll be right there.
“Every bar has its flair, but as long as there’s a good mix of people having a good time, drinking with nobody on pins and needles, that’s a good bar,” Perl said. “I find bars that flow.”
At L&P Liquors & Bar, 4001 W. Lawrence Ave., former restaurateur Brad Chapple marveled at the yellow leaflet that serves as Perl’s menu, calling it “the greatest menu ever written.”
L&P regular Peter Djordjic pulled out his phone to ask his mom what she wanted.
“He’ll give you samples until you can’t help but order a little more. There’s no strategy to it. He just goes with the wind into the places he hasn’t been to in a while, and cuts the meat for you like roses,” Djordjic said. “It feels like it’s just him left at this point.
“It’s welcoming and it’s real old-school Chicago.”
Djordjic downed his drink while Perl brought over a few commercially sized boxes of meat to his seat at the bar.
“He’s a f—ing unicorn,” said Djordjic, another happy customer.
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