Bar #34: Windy City Lounge

4735 W. North Ave.
7:00pm, Wednesday, September 14
Price of Old Style: $2.50 cans

Windy City Lounge is the first bar we have been to that has been in a predominately African-American neighborhood.  It's in the Austin neighborhood on West North Avenue, which if you've lived in the city, is near some pretty rough areas of the city.

Some of you may wonder why we bring up race or nationality in the bars we review, and we think it gives you, the reader, a good gage of the different neighborhoods we are going to.  And if you ever feel like going to any of these bars, I think you may want to know what types of people will be there: white, black, Latino, gay, firefighter/cops, or even frat-boy douchebags...

So we walked in and no, this didn't happen...  There were just two guys in there playing pool.  We ordered an Old Style and started chatting with them.  It was Mark, the bartender, and Sam, a guy who has always lived in the neighborhood and has been coming to this bar since he was underage.  He also told us that back in the 80's this place was a big biker bar, and then eventually turned into a hang out for African-Americans.  It was called Shorty's for a while, and then about 10 years ago turned into Windy City Lounge.  They were telling us about how crazy the weekends get at the bar, about the free food the offer during the football games on Sunday, and were trying to convince my brother to have his bachelor party there.  We then got to playing pool, and my brother, who if you remember cannot beat me in darts, proceeded to hustle me, Sam, and Mark.  He was playing the best pool of his life, got a few breaks, and took our money.

Sam headed off to work (yes, work), and Mark asked us where we were going next.  Basically, he wanted to make sure we weren't going West...nope we were going back East, so we were okay.  Mark did say that he would be willing to take us around to other places in the 'hood if we ever wanted.  Sounds fun, but I think we'll just be back for that free food on Sunday...