Behind the butcher counter of a century-old former auto body shop, the 1st Ward is a 5,000-square-foot concert and event space tucked inside the Chop Shop complex at 2033 West North Avenue in Chicago's Wicker Park neighbourhood. The building sits just west of the Milwaukee-Damen-North intersection, one of the city's busiest nightlife crossroads, and brings together encased meats, craft beer, cocktails, and live entertainment under a single roof. Designed by event professionals, the venue holds .....

A parish built it; Chicago theatre never gave it back. The Athenaeum at 2936 North Southport Avenue in Lakeview opened in 1911, designed by architect Hermann J. Gaul for the Redemptorist Fathers of St. Alphonsus as a home for the intellectual, physical and social intercourse of their German-Catholic parishioners - opera, dance, orchestral and dramatic productions from day one. More than a century later it is Chicago's oldest continuously operating Off-Loop theatre, now run as the Athenaeum Cente.....

An old Polish ballroom turned Latin club now works for everyone on Milwaukee Avenue. Avondale Music Hall at 3336 North Milwaukee Avenue - technically in Irving Park, named in tribute to the neighbourhood next door - is the 350-capacity venue that promoter Chris Bauman built out of Club Mambo, the Latin dance club that held the corner of Milwaukee and Keystone for two decades atop an earlier Polish nightclub history. Bauman, whose portfolio also includes the Patio and Olympic theatres, bought th.....

A travelling exhibition of giant inflatable art set up inside a film studio on the city's Northwest Side, the Balloon Museum's EmotionAir show opened in Chicago in late October 2025 for a run scheduled through early April 2026. The wider Balloon Museum project began in 2021 and has toured cities including London, Paris, Rome, New York and Singapore; this edition, first staged in London in late 2023, frames its inflatable works around the theme of emotion. Rather than a permanent collection, the.....

The butcher shop in the back became one of Chicago's hardest-working stages. Beat Kitchen at 2100 West Belmont Avenue has anchored the Roscoe Village corner of Belmont and Hoyne since 1990, serving live music, food and beer out of an 1889 building whose back room spent its first century as the neighbourhood butcher's before conversion into the venue's music room. Owner Robert Gomez - whose portfolio also includes Wicker Park's Subterranean - has kept the formula steady for three decades: a prope.....

The Moorish castle of Uptown has been Chicago's dream palace for a century. The Aragon Ballroom opened on 15 July 1926 at 1106 West Lawrence Avenue, built for 2 million dollars by brothers Andrew and William Karzas to surpass their own south-side Trianon as "the Wonder Ballroom of the World." Architects Huszagh and Hill wrapped the block in Spanish Baroque stucco while John Eberson - America's master of atmospheric movie palaces - designed the interior as the courtyard of a Moorish castle under .....

Chicago's last honky-tonk survived the neighbourhood, the taxman and two years of darkness. Carol's Pub at 4923 North Clark Street, at the corner of Clark and Leland in Uptown's Sheridan Park enclave, opened in 1972 as Pam's Playhouse under Ted Harris, an Alabama transplant who knew exactly who his customers were: the huge wave of Appalachian and southern migrants who had turned post-war Uptown into "Hillbilly Heaven," a district of honky-tonks, diners and drag-strip streets. When Ted died in 19.....

A century-old Wicker Park auto body garage now butchers whole animals in the front and books indie tours in the back. Chop Shop at 2033 West North Avenue opened in October 2013 as Chicago's only sustainable butcher, deli, restaurant and bar attached to a full concert venue - the two-story building, vacant for years, was bought in August 2011 by investor Nick Moretti, who brought in Mario Minelli of Minelli Meats to run the food side and Matt Woodburn to book and manage the performance space. The.....

Three festival promoters bought a nightclub to fill the hole the Congress Theater left, and built one of Chicago's hardest-working mid-size rooms. Concord Music Hall at 2047 North Milwaukee Avenue in Logan Square opened in August 2013 - Adam Ant played the first show on 1 August, with the official opening on the 17th - after React Presents, Silver Wrapper and Riot Fest, the teams behind Spring Awakening, North Coast Music Festival and Riot Fest itself, converted the former VLive nightclub just u.....

Few bars in America have a more storied address than 1059 West Addison Street, directly across from the Wrigley Field marquee in Chicago's Wrigleyville neighbourhood. The Cubby Bear has occupied the corner of Addison and Clark since 1953 and has earned Best Rock Club from the Chicago Music Awards, number-one Neighbourhood Bar in Chicago from Maxim, and a seventh-place ranking among the best sports bars in the United States from Sports Illustrated. The venue spans over 30,000 square feet and hol.....