Joe "Greeley" Moore 1931 - 2009

Joe Greeley Moore - 1931 - 2009


Joseph Greeley Moore set the vibe that for several decades sustained the No Exit Cafe in Rogers Park, where coffee-fueled conversation and long games of chess trumped humdrum concerns over dollars and cents.

Mr. Moore, 77, died of complications related to renal failure on Tuesday, Oct. 27, in a hospital in Kentucky, said his wife, JoAnn. He had been living in Kentucky for several years.

Mr. Moore bought the No Exit circa 1959, a year after it opened on Foster Street in Evanston. When Northwestern University decided it needed the property (now a parking lot) in 1967, Mr. Moore moved the cafe south to 7001 N. Glenwood Ave. in Chicago, still hard against the "L" tracks.

He was politically active and a "talker," friends said, and in the No Exit, which took its name from the title of a Jean Paul Sartre play, he found both a profession and a second home.

"He lived in the place, practically," said Sue Kozin, who with her husband, Brian, owned the cafe from 1977 to 2000.

Read more at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obit-joemoore-11-nov11,0,7031897.story .