Ron Slattery

Unexpectedly lost one of the architects of my life a few days ago...

I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into. A real restaurant kitchen. An amenity to a nightclub hell-bent on bringing the joyous, hedonistic iniquity of the post-Reagan era Lower East Side of Manhattan to the North end of Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis.

My second or third day on the job, a broad-shouldered, gap-toothed hulk with dark, stringy hair, owlish eyeglasses and commendatore energy thrust his meaty right hand in mine and barked, “You the new guy? Hey, I’m Ron!”

He had a grin like the grill on a boosted Cadillac.

After Ron left the kitchen, one of the cooks explained to me that Ron was the General Manager of the nightclub - our Capo di Tutti Capo.

Up to that point in my life, I hadn’t met or spent a lot of time with people from other parts of the country (aside from Wisconsin). I would come to learn that Ron Slattery exemplified the energy and culture of his hometown of Chicago: brash, curious, confrontational, kind but not necessarily nice, suffered no fools, equal opportunity ass-kicker, rabidly enthusiastic about all forms of music, protective, pathologically loyal until betrayed…

When a series of petty thefts in the employee changing room was discovered, Ron posted a notice above the time clock to the staff to be more protective of their belongings and added a direct message to the pilferer:

“Fair warning to the thief, you will be beaten before you are jailed.”

One particularly busy night, Ron strode through the kitchen as if he were being chased. I asked how he was doing, if everything was okay.

“No worries,” he called over his shoulder, “I just need to find out why my maitre’d has his head up his ass!”

Despite the best efforts, my first year in the Rogue kitchen passed with all of the grace of a pig on roller skates, but I loved the job and the food and how much I was learning and the people with whom I worked. Ron recognized that before I did - and when many of those employing me had written off my inexperienced efforts, Ron coached and encouraged me. After the chef who had hired me and mentored me moved on to greener pastures, Ron made sure I got the dollar an hour raise I had been promised after my three month probationary period. When the restaurant began slowing down and the new chef cut my hours, Ron scheduled me to train as a bar back and told the head of our security team to start me on checking ID’s at the door (despite the fact that I was five foot seven on a good day and weighed 130 pounds soaking wet).

Ron himself departed the club soon after that, unable to remain loyal to a friend and patron who he recognized would not be able to lift himself out of addiction. Before he left, he encouraged me to stay in the kitchen and continue to pursue that path - and to keep writing about it.

“You’ve got something special. You really fucking care. You have no idea how rare that is. I hope you get to find out how far it can take you.”

Social media brought us back into contact a little over a decade later. Ron had become a photography junkie and was traveling the country to swipe up rare finds and forgotten caches at swap meets, conventions and flea markets. Every time he swung to the Upper Midwest, he made a point to visit any place I worked. We had more than one meal together. He was still Ron - beyond enthusiastic about everything (the stranger and more audacious, the better) but some health issues had made him a little more vulnerable. Ron shared a lot of stories about his abusive upbringing in Chicago, how hard he’d worked to be nothing like the people who reared him. He told me a hilarious story about the bittersweet revenge he propagated on the ashes of a recently-deceased stepfather who used to beat him, starve him and force him on fishing trips to the dark lakes of Northern Wisconsin. He shared the effort he was putting into getting royalties and the profits of an estate to the surviving relatives of a Depression-era photographer from rural Arkansas whose work had been illegally appropriated by generations of predatory gallery owners and art brokers.

He asked me to help him write a book about it, but I had just taken on a new job and we couldn’t work out the timing it would require.

I guess that was one of the things I learned to admire and adore the most about Ron - despite being built like, and possessing the demeanor of, a semi-pro hockey player or a bare-knuckle brawler - art, the people who create it, and their stories were deeply important to him.

That’s likely why he thrived in the role of General Manager of The Rogue Bar and Nightclub - you couldn’t throw a stick in that place without hitting either a patron or an employee who was hustling as an actor, a sculptor, a painter, a musician, or a screenwriter.

I’ll always credit that for helping me wake up to my life. The culture welcomed me in. I had discovered my people.

The family I found working in that nightclub, the acceptance I felt in the roles that welcomed me there changed the course of my life forever - moreso even than the tribe of skaters that reared me just a few years earlier in my hometown.

Ron Slattery gave me that.

Ron Slattery helped me find my place in the world…

A world that has become less genuine and less technicolor now that he’s left it.

Thank you for everything you gave me, shared with me, and built for me, Ron Slattery. I will miss you forever.