The Boozehound Strikes Back: Why Drinks Over Dearborn needs to be saved
News and Dish, Spirits Just Sound Happy, Don't They?, The Fine Art of Mixology, Wine is Poetry in a Bottle No Comments »By Michael Nagrant
“Second floor retail is murder,” says Kyle McHugh, aka “The Boozehound” and owner of boutique wine, beer and spirits retailer Drinks Over Dearborn (DOD). Though McHugh learned this truism in business school, he opened DOD on the second floor of an old office building called The Raleigh on Dearborn between Erie and Ontario anyway.
It wasn’t that he was the Evil Knievel of liquor retailers interested in spitting on MBA textbook theories. Rather, a greater truism trumped all: rent prices in the Gold Coast (an area he preferred for its affluent traffic) were a straight-up serial killing. McHugh figured he could better avoid the death of his business by executing his business plan the right way: get a bigger space to conduct classes, tastings and host a wide variety of interesting stock instead of compromising and blowing his life’s savings and small-business loan on a dinky little box on the first floor.
And in a business climate where faux anonymity and cloak and dagger is the new version of the Vegas-style blinking neon sign, who could discount McHugh’s decision? After all, the Lincoln Park restaurant Alinea doesn’t even have a sign and the popular Wicker Park cocktail lounge The Violet Hour looks like a graffiti-covered abandoned building.
If you build it, they will come, right? Read the rest of this entry »
A piece of “The Sopranos” has come to the Midwest with the Chicago-area launch of The Sopranos Wines. Sopranos Wines was originally launched in November 2008 in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut mainly for the large Italian population and wine-drinking market, managing partner Mark Gonsalves says. Over the past few months, after getting their key markets up to speed, Sopranos entered into conversations and contracts with Franklin Park distributor Stoller Wholesale to bring the wine to Chicago. “We’re always attracted to family-run trades,” Gonsalves says. “The Sopranos is a family business. We liked what [Stoller] had done with other products.” Gonsalves says Chicago is a great market because of the high concentration of Italian-American families. Prior to coming to Chicago, the brand was launched in Arizona and California. They plan to take their wine to Vegas next then to the northwest United States and eventually throughout the rest of the Midwest. The Sopranos Wines has three main tiers of pricing per bottle—$9.99, $14.99 and $24.99. “In today’s market, people are looking for value, a brand they can trust and that they can enjoy with their meal,” Gonsalves says. “The Sopranos fits the bill. We want to communicate that our wine is serious wine, family made and Italian-bottled. It’s value.”
Before Goose Island was even a brewery, Quenchers Saloon was doing the “beer thing,” offering Chicagoans an impressive variety of fermented refreshments. Started in 1979, the bar is now throwing a massive thirtieth-anniversary celebration, from August 16-23. The week-long event will provide attendees with a lot of beer, and a lot of music. “We have three events that we’re focusing on,” says Steve Segel, the bar’s manager. Besides a slew of giveaways and prizes, and a possible vertical beer-tasting to be announced, there’s a bluegrass jam session Saturday afternoon and a rock show on Saturday night. The rock show will include The Lovers, The Amino Acids, The Runnies and The Livers. “The Livers do a great audio video setup behind them,” says Segel. “I’ve seen a lot of shows but this really blew my mind.”
Granite floors, two custom-fitted bars and gleaming cherry wood walls are some of the highlights of what used to be a “basement dive bar” just two years ago.
Entering Simone’s is likely to induce memories of walking through a summertime carnival funhouse. Gazing at a massive bar fashioned out of Fresnel lenses, bowling-alley remnants and pinball machines that have long since been forgotten can be disorienting at first, but still intriguing enough to keep wandering through to see what lies ahead in the next section.
When Jason Hammel describes his experience of opening Nightwood in Pilsen, he draws similarities to being the new kid in town. “It’s a process to get introduced to a neighborhood and the people here,” he says. “To be a newcomer is not easy, it’s like the first day of school for us.” Yet in terms of popularity, this summer has proven that Nightwood is poised to become one of the neighborhood’s favorite upscale haunts.
Two bars, nestled directly across the street from one another at the intersection of Milwaukee and Fullerton in Logan Square, offer quick indications of clientele even from just a cursory glance outside—The Whistler, on the north, is glittered with an assortment of fixed-gears, and the Two Way Lounge, on the south, rattles and rumbles with the sound of gathered motorcycles. Thirty feet across from one another and a whole world in between.
