Ringing Endorsement: Pat O'Brien

Welcome to Ringing Endorsement, wherein The A.V. Club speaks to local people of note to get their hearty recommendation of an event, restaurant, or whatever strikes their fancy. This week, local improviser extraordinaire and Second City Main Stage understudy Pat O’Brien offers his ringing endorsement of 3540 N. Clark St., a great street corner to “watch people struggle.”
 
In front of Mullen’s at closing time, watching across at [John] Barleycorn’s, nobody even notices you’re watching them.You go there with a Coke and Twizzlers and watch basically the movie that is people screaming at each other [and] falling down. The cops have one guy over by their car and his five buddies are trying to talk his way out of whatever he did. Some other couple is making out and her shoe is like 10 feet away and you can tell she’s going to leave without it. It’s just a spectacle. There are times where you can see the physical, literal struggle of humanity just trying to survive. [You just] realize how dumb you look sometimes. In that situation I’m up and stumbling out of iO, probably making an idiot of myself. You kind of assume no one’s watching, but the next day you go, “Oh man, I left my cell phone in a cab, and in the subway I tried to kiss that girl. Oh man, I hope no one saw me in that state.”
 
Pat O’Brien’s partially improvised one-man show Shatter runs at Second City’s e.t.c. theater through July 29 with Nicky Margolis’ one-man show Split. O’Brien’s improv troupe The Reckoning performs Tuesdays and Thursdays at iO.