Old Timer’s | The Loop, Chicago

I haven’t seen the snowmobile parking spots myself, but they must exist. How else can you rationalize the blaze orange and camouflage and Starter jackets? It doesn’t make any sense without it.

* * *

I’m at Old Timer’s with two of my coworkers. We’re in the minority — this is a blue collar bar and we’re t-shirt collar internet nerds. I ask for a Budweiser — the Old Style and PBR taps are covered in plastic cups. Mark orders a Jack and Coke. The bartender slides me my beer, fills a glass with Jack and leaves the room to use the Coke machine in the main dining room. He returns with Mark’s drink.

One drink to go, Mike asks: “Do you have a mixed-drink menu?”

The bartender doesn’t hear him.

“Do you have a mixed-drink menu?” he repeats.

“No,” he says shaking his head.

“Can you make a lemon-tini?”

“No,” the bartender cannot make a lemon-tini. He doesn’t care how it’s made or what’s in it.

“You have a order a drink with two ingredients — probably best if they’re in the name,” recommends Mark.

“How about a gin and tonic?”

The bartender nods, fills a glass with gin, a lime, leaves to get the tonic in the other room.

Within sight of Millennium Park, the Hard Rock Hotel, and Morton’s Steakhouse, there is this perfect bar that thumbs its nose at the cosmopolitan mediocrity of the city.