The decor is strictly zebra here, with lots of black and white stripes. The music is top notch, with all the piano bar classics from old rat pack standards to Billy Joel and everything in between. There's never any cover charge at the Zebra Lounge, and this small piano bar has a very loyal patronage thanks to their friendly bartender and attentive staff. Four different live music venues and three different dancefloors! This is a very popular live music venue in the Chicago area, so get in there early if you plan to get a seat, and be sure to check their website for the current schedule.ġ220 North State Parkway - Telephone: (312) 642-5140 If you're interested in the other rooms, they have The Grand Bar, The Retro Club, The Lounge, and The Outdoor Cafe. The Jazz Lounge is incredibly comfortable, and you can't beat the quality of the music here. The Joynt has live music six nights per week, and with many different rooms to enjoy, you'll be treated to several different kinds of music. Located just a block off the Magnificent Mile.Ħ50 North Dearborn Street - Telephone: (312) 573-2233 The live music begins at 8:00 PM each night. The bartender and waitresses are all very friendly, and the drinks are fantastic. Another perk is that you can rent the entire bar out for large parties.
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We love Grape Street Piano Bar for their cozy and inviting lounge atmosphere and talented piano players. Big Chicks and Tweet are hulking, living art projects-experiments in business and community.226 East Ontario Street - Telephone: (312) 202-1933 Those hours forced her to stop making art, “but that’s fine,” she says, and it sounds like she means it. And like that, she was working 80-hour weeks again. In 2003, long after Big Chicks stopped keeping morning hours, Fire opened an all-day restaurant next door, Tweet. She’d open her bar in the morning, when the old guys would come in, and work a shift at the Loading Dock at night. In the early years she worked 80-hour weeks. When the bar that became Big Chicks came up for rent, she had just enough money to grab it.
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She’d eyed the art deco terra-cotta buildings on the North Side forever-it’s what she used to draw. She knew she never wanted to borrow money, and she knew she wanted to be prepared. She started saving, though she didn’t know what for. bar.” That’s when she decided to, as she says, start participating in capitalism. In 1984 she landed that job at the Loading Dock-an “all-consuming, very exhausting 5 a.m. For ten years, she hustled, making drawings and prints, tending bar, working catering gigs, manning the temporary tattoo stand at street fairs. She studied art at UIC and made a place for herself in Chicago’s art scene. Nothing could be beat out of Fire she’d just fight through. “It’s called safety,” she says.įire peeking through the windows. Did that make sense? I’m having a hard time articulating myself, I can’t find the words.
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When I was here, I felt like a citizen, of the city and of the bar. Did she know what I meant? I felt calmer there, and maybe a little hopeful-like Chicago, a city that could be so backward, could be as good as I thought it was. Now I’m telling her how I used to feel those nights at Big Chicks, how I wanted to become part of the place, to be bolted to the wall like the photographs. I tried to look tough, like I owned the place, like the floor was mine. I philosophized, drunkenly, that nobody gets to live with art like this nobody gets to flirt and make out and spill beer in a museum. I sucked on a cigarette (this was back when people still smoked inside) I exhaled on the Diane Arbus photograph above me. But at Big Chicks-and only at Big Chicks-a bear could not intimidate me.
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Sometimes it seemed like it was only bears in the place-muscle bears, cubby bears, ginger bears, otters. Cruising the trans boys, the black girls, the grizzly raising eyebrows at me from the bar. I’ve been that boy leaning against the wall, lightheaded, cheap gin in my glass. She trails off, but I spent ten years of the aughts going to Big Chicks-I can fill in the rest.