For those inevitable times you ache to escape the city’s tenacious pace, when you flinch from the luster of yet another slick nightspot, when you are dismayed by the stampede of trendiness from one neighborhood to the next … you don’t need another round of bar hopping.
You need to go bar diving — that is, to seek out a dive bar. It’s good for what ails you. There’s no cover charge and the drinks are cheap.
A proper dive possesses a unique energy or flavor that helps it rise slightly above a down-and-out dive.
A downtown antidote
Anyone weary of unwinding after work with $8.50 martinis (and the excessive preening that goes with them) should re-route to Monk’s Pub, a friendly place under the L tracks at Lake and Wells.
Imagine a classic college bar: spacious, peanut shells littering the floor, wooden booths and tables, exposed brick, a foggy dimness, antiques and movie memorabilia, signature burgers with creative variations, decent drafts, pool and darts.
Now imagine all that without the college students. Fill it instead with nice folks of all stripes minding their own business, and plunk it down in downtown Chicago.
Monk’s is not a spend-your-paycheck-before-Monday dive, but a total and comfortable retreat from the pomp and circumstance of cosmopolitan Loop bars.
Lincoln Park tonics
Synonymous with the “Y” word that applies to no one and everyone these days, Lincoln Park still has outposts for those needing a little deviation from popular partying.
Stepping into Rose’s Lounge off Lincoln Avenue is like being sucked into a black hole and spit out somewhere else, somewhere not at all Chicago. Though the whitewashed exterior decorated with a single, painted pink rose can seem menacing alongside the neon and velvet of nearby windows, Rose’s is just a slow, dark and completely innocuous place to imbibe.
Stop in next time you’re in the Sheffield/DePaul neighborhood for dinner and a movie. The $1 taps are a great alternative to the $6 margaritas you’d buy while waiting for a table a couple doors down at Lindo Mexico and Cohiba. The fake grapes and green streamers (the vineyard look?), a plaster bust of Elvis topped with a Bacardi visor, religious and Victorian prints, faded foreign bank notes papering the back bar, and a couple of seashell roosters are a few of the attention grabbers visible through the smokiness.
You’ve just screened something experimental at Facets Multimedia, had a cheap dinner at Hog Head McDunna’s Bar & Grill, survived a first date at Stefani’s or couldn’t muster power kickboxing at the Lake Shore Athletic Club. A trip past the manicured shelves of Mattick’s liquor store to the bar in back may be in order. A suitable substitute for a paneled basement hideaway or a VFW hall, you can sit on a metal folding chair underneath the Bicentennial banner or at the bar, with a good view of the decorative gargoyles and Schlitz statuettes. The bathrooms are fresh; the Slim Jims, Planters nuts and videos are perfectly aligned; the cardigan-clad bartender is quite civilized; and there’s nothing on tap.
Cabrini Green was the only thing in the neighborhood when Weed’s owner Sergio Mayora’s parents had the place years ago. Now it’s a welcome haven at the fringes of the Clybourn Corridor renaissance. Candle-lit with Mexican blankets covering the tables and bar, Weed’s now finds itself functioning many a weekday as the classic dive or corner joint for upscale professionals: a joint where strangers sit around the three-sided bar talking casually, swapping jokes, drinking beer, and buying shots (mostly tequila) for newfound acquaintances.
Neighborhood remedies
Other chief neighborhoods to scout for worthy dives are those undergoing some sort of transition … neighborhoods like Ukrainian Village, Lincoln Square and Uptown.
If you’re boot shopping at Alcala’s Western Wear or getting stuffed with a giant burrito at Tecalitlan Restaurant — and you’re overcome with a Guinness craving — you’re in luck. Tuman’s Alcohol Abuse Center, actually a dark and atmospheric corner tap in a hip and scruffy way, claims to have the cheapest pint of the Irish stout in the city. (It used be a mere $2, until the price was raised 50 cents to help pay for a new floor.) There’s choice seating at the battered old bar, on couches above and behind the entranceway radiators or in a barber chair kitty-corner to the pool table.
Unassuming and pleasant, Ola’s Liquors can provide a pat on the cheek to those numb from the uninterrupted gleam washing over Wicker Park. Where others have glassware behind the bar, Ola’s has orderly, fluorescent-lit shelves lined with bottles great and small — each carefully labeled with a price tag in neat script. A cooler stocks beer-to-go in sixes, twelves and quarts — choose from selections including Poland’s Zwiec. What the bar lacks in amenities on the order of toilet paper, it makes up for with disarming touches such as inflated beer promos hanging from the ceiling and cheery fare on the TV.
A Western Avenue strip lined with used car lots, small car insurance outfits, auto glass places and mechanics roughly forms the western boundary of the major developments taking place in North Center and Lincoln Square. Here, divers can seek refuge at Penny Lane Lounge and Just Because.
Penny Lane is brighter and tamer with video trivia, darts, a golf game and video poker. Psychedelic paintings cover support columns, a mural of the Beatles in Sgt. Pepper garb graces the back wall, and plastic stained-glass style panels brighten the ceiling. While a Leine Weiss on tap costs only $2, a sign announces that there is a $10 fee assessed on grouchy people.
Down the road at Just Because, quaint lanterns above the tables won’t fool you into thinking this is a charming place. And the dart league action, pool tables, Bears paraphernalia and TV won’t ever lead you to dub this a sports bar. This, quite simply, is a dive. It’s harmless, but why would you go? Just because. (By the way, only one at a time in the bathrooms, please. Violators are subject to removal.)
If you and your cronies are getting a little obnoxious at the Green Mill — unable to mellow out and shut up for the jazz — it’s best you step outside and across Broadway to Saxony Liquor and Lounge on Lawrence. There you can raise a ruckus, fall asleep or gaze bleary-eyed into your Old Style. In any case, it will cost you a lot less money. No matter how many people you’re with, $10 here always seems to buy a round of drinks, a generous tip and change for the next go. Pastimes may include nonsense debates with the regulars about country vs. rock ‘n’ roll on the jukebox or watching neighbors walk up to the takeout window for six-packs.
For slightly more structured activity in Uptown (or not), there’s Carol’s Pub. Among those on Carol’s barstools pining for their youthful days in rural settings, you can always find a partner for pool, darts or viewing day-time talk shows. Come Friday and Saturday evenings, this place is hopping with live country/rockabilly music and dancing. Some say they come to watch the fights –and they don’t mean pay-for-view.
