Hamburger Mary’s

Any place where baby strollers coexist with drag queens and Caesar salads are served with a hamburger on the side is okay in our book, but now that Hamburger Mary’s has expanded, yet again, to the Rec Room next door, they are brewing their own beer and expanding their programming in Mary’s Attic. Plus Ashley and Brandon, the twin brothers and owners of the Chicago location, just bought the national franchise rights with the owner of the West Hollywood location. Look for more Mary’s locations across the country, and world, to look at Chicago as a model for growth.

5400 North Clark
(773)784-6969
hamburgermaryschicago.com

Best of Chicago 2009

Gethsemane Garden Center

During the spring and summer months, Gethsemane is overflowing with every variety of plant and plant expert. They’ll not only teach you how to care for your fifty-pound fern impulse buy, they’ll also instill in you the responsibility to care for it as if it were your child. Gethsemane fills two city blocks in Andersonville, and at the very least, a walk through its sprawling greenhouse is the best respite from the winter blues.

5739 N. Clark
(773)878-5915
gethsemanegardens.com

Audience choice:
Gethsemane Garden Center

Best of Chicago 2008

Cupid’s Treasures

In order to qualify as the Best Sex Shop in Chicago, a store must offer something to make everyone blush. Serving the GLBT community as well as heteros and all of the multitudinous others who lack acronyms, Cupid’s Treasures is filled with an overwhelming array of adult toys, videos, clothing and novelty items. Modest prices for immodest fun allow those with a tight budget to loosen up and experiment with something new. Delivering on their promise to launch us “into the future of pleasure” this trove of exotica also features unusual products such as “The Aliens are Cumming Area 51 Love Doll” with “three out-of-this-world holes” alongside the tragically solipsistic “Make Your Own Dildo” kit that produces an exact replica of your own penis. (“Just add water!”) Whether the future of pleasure lies far outside our own galaxy or deep inside our own pants, the Cupid’s Treasures staff members understand that sex is both serious (see the Spike Punisher: a 12.5” long and 2.25” thick wildly intimidating dildo) and playful (enjoy a selection of bachelor and bachelorette party favors that even your stepmother-in-law would find amusing). With hours to accommodate anyone’s schedule (8am-5am Thursday-Saturday, 10am-midnight Sunday-Wednesday) and a vastly diverse and affordable selection to accommodate everyone’s kinks, Cupid’s Treasures is a Chicago pleasure.

3519 N. Halsted
(773)348-3884

Audience choice:
Early to Bed
5232 N. Sheridan
(773)271-1219

Best of Chicago 2008

Simon’s Tavern

Cheap beer, sea-fare decoration and a jukebox that rivals any other within the city limits, Andersonville’s Simon’s is a major reason to make the trek up north, its regulars as warming as a glass of scotch on a January night. Sure, we like Hopleaf, too, which is just down the street, but it gets a little crowded for our taste, usually with first-timers awe-stricken by the beer menu. Simon’s keeps it simple, and we’re grateful for that. Not bad for an old speakeasy. Wait, is that Pavement we hear?

5210 N. Clark
(773)878-0894

Best of Chicago 2008

The Andersonville Pub Crawl

It was “Night of the Living Dead” in Andersonville on March 26, when local theater troupe pH Productions hosted a throng of more than 300 zombie pub-crawlers. The groaning, moaning, inebriated horde swarmed Simon’s, Charlie’s Ale House and Hamburger Mary’s. Along the way, zombies clawed the windows of passing CTA buses and moaned for beers and brains. pH provided makeup stations to help participants get zombified if they weren’t already dead.

Best of Chicago 2008

Seminary Co-op

Dilettantes need not apply. With rows upon rows of books in its subterranean vault, including the largest selection of academic titles in the country, the Seminary Co-op is for serious readers only. Throw in the ten-percent discount given to shareholders, and you’ve got a bookworm’s paradise.

5757 South University
(773)752-4381

Audience Choice
Women and Children First
5233 North Clark
(773)769-9299

Best of Chicago 2007

Hopleaf

This womb of dark wood and golden suds will lift even the darkest of spirits with its tavern warmth. Serving up the best frites in town with a side of garlicky aioli, goat-cheese croquettes and oven-roasted duck, the menu is a study in La-Z-Boy comfort. With one of the greatest Belgian-skewing beer lists in hops history, this place should be dubbed “little Brussels.”

5148 North Clark
(773)334- 9851

Audience Choice
Hopleaf

Best of Chicago 2007

Huey’s Hotdogs

In most settings, chili dog equals an embarrassing, filthy mess, but at Andersonville’s Huey’s, not only is the dog perfectly charred and dabbled with accouterments to your liking, the charming hotdog-boutique setting makes you forget you’re hand-eating food that really should be consumed with a spoon. And, most importantly, it’s delicious,

1507 West Balmoral
(773)293-4800

Best of Chicago 2007

Andersonville
The city can be a wonderfully bizarre organism, evolving in unimaginable ways. Who could have planned the comfortable coexistence of a traditional Swedish enclave, complete with local delis dispensing lutefisk and herring, Svea turning table after table devouring its fine Swedish meatballs or Swedish  pancakes, with Chicago’s lesbian epicenter and its Women and Children First bookstores and its slightly crunchy knickknack shops? Now the Boys Town boys are moving north, bringing some of their legendary nightlife with them. It just keeps getting more interesting…

Andersonville is located on North Clark Street, between Foster and Bryn Mawr

Women and Children First, 5233 North Clark, (773)769-9299
Svea, 5236 N Clark

Best of Chicago 2002 (Updated 2011)

Felt
When it fell to earth and landed smack-dab in the middle of Boys Town last October, Felt sent out just the right signals that had everyone’s nightlife antennae twitching with curiosity: an illuminated bar, chic velvet furnishings, boy-band-pretty bartenders. Fortunately, the bar quickly dropped its piano/cabaret format (we already have Voltaire and Gentry for that, thank you) and simply continued doing what it does best: provide a hip, trendy backdrop for the gay Diesel/Armani Exchange set. Yes, the space is rather “snug,” but that doesn’t bother this crowd, especially considering that this long, narrow room is somewhat reminiscent of a fashion runway. Features such as a live DJ on most Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Felt martinis, which are served in crushed ice snow globes, prompted Out magazine to name Felt as part of its “Gay-A list” for Chi-Town in its September 2002 Fall Preview Guide. But what we’re most impressed with is that as gays and lesbians continue to migrate to Andersonville and Edgewater, propelled by the notion that Lakeview is transforming into a more heterosexual neighborhood, opening a new gay bar in the middle of Boys Town is a brave (and stylish!) testament to the thriving gay community on Halsted.

3341 North Halsted
(Felt is closed)

Audience choice: @mosphere
5355 North Clark
(773)784-1100

Best of Chicago 2002