Anybody been to Sonotheque?

Going there next week for my bday.

Unless you plan on making a meal out of olives and other bar garnishes, you probably won't find much in the way of food there.

Not looking for a food review just a bar review

I've heard the drinks are reasonably priced for the club scene. You might have better luck posting under "Non-Food Chat" instead of "Eating Out in Chicagoland".

Which night are you going, and what are you looking to find?

It's a neat little spot with a fantastic Funktion One sound system, but it's more of a lounge than a club. It's a long and narrow space, split by tiers of 2" steps to the left, facing the rear. (3 in total.) Prompting a friend of mine to say that "Sonotheque is suited to dancing only if one of your legs is shorter than the other."

Drink prices are firmly on par with other places in the neighborhood - not really cheap at all. When it's crowded, bartenders get busy and take forever to serve you.

A friend does a monthly night there called Dark Wave Disco, I generally only go for his night. Here's some pics from last Tuesday's show.

Geez, I thought I was the only old guy working the Jack White angle.

JeffB wrote:Geez, I thought I was the only old guy working the Jack White angle.

Ah, yes, Señor Holmes, my College classmate.

You know, "He hasn't changed one bit," is so rarely a compliment.

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The CS at the CL?

What a laugh.

E.M.

Pete wrote:Here's some pics from last Tuesday's show.

I think my hipster meter just blew a gasket

Back in the good olde days when I was an idiotic hipster we had things like loft parties and basement rock shows and club nights: why, I remember Jack Smith, himself, and Tony Conrad making out...chipped fingernail polish everywhere.

Sonotheque's peaked my interest for awhile, but after seeing those fotos; yeesh.

Erik M. wrote:The CS at the CL?

What a laugh.

E.M.

Yano, I'm not sure I get that place. It's owned by the people behind Moonshine, so some friends and I figured we'd check it out one night. For starters, the bouncers DO NOT find it amusing if you give them the "Cobra Kai" arm gesture from Karate Kid. (Ok, we might've had a couple few cocktails before going there.)

Once you get inside it feels like... well, it almost reminds me of a scaled down Shakey's Pizza - but they're blasting metal. Like, Slayer - Dead Skin Mask, metal. That, combined with the large seating area in back and all of the red and black tables had me waiting for a clown with a mullet to burst out of the back room with a birthday cake.

I like the bars at that place - nicely designed, shaped to give extra standing/sitting room, and they stock Booker's. The "dj booth" if you could even call it that is about 14 feet over the bar though, so you can't really even tell if there's someone there or they've just got a CD going. Of course, my enjoyment was hampered due to sitting next to a guy that had spikes of hair pointing out in every which way (quite like sputnik, to borrow from Mike Meyers) so that he'd poke me with them if he moved his head too quickly.

What was this place? An old Italian restaurant? It's just got an odd feel to it.

Pete wrote:What was this place? An old Italian restaurant? It's just got an odd feel to it.

It used to be a snack shop/diner-type place.

And, the sort that would service a hardworking crowd by opening in the middle of the night and closing at 2pm.

Anyway, I was at the new Cobra Lounge with friends, last night.

I think of it as Le Passage for burnouts.

E.M.

Is Le Passage still even open? I haven't so much as thought about that place in years. I used to pop in regularly for the M101 nights, but those ended ages ago. I think the last time I was in the place was in 2003 for an Armani-sponsored party with Miguel Migs and Lisa Shaw.

Never really was my kind of place.

Back around 2000, when MarchFirst (formerly Whittman-Hartt) was a dotcom bubble still inflating, we were taken to see the headquarters (under construction, and now a hulking unfinished shell on Elizabeth Street). Afterwards, I checked out the food possibilities in the area-- which were, if one did not plan to eat lunch at One Sixty Blue every day, basically limited to that working man's lunch spot. Great to know that by now, even it would be gone, but we'd sure have an uberhip place for our Christmas party.

Mike G wrote:Back around 2000, when MarchFirst (formerly Whittman-Hartt) was a dotcom bubble still inflating, we were taken to see the headquarters (under construction, and now a hulking unfinished shell on Elizabeth Street). Afterwards, I checked out the food possibilities in the area-- which were, if one did not plan to eat lunch at One Sixty Blue every day, basically limited to that working man's lunch spot. Great to know that by now, even it would be gone, but we'd sure have an uberhip place for our Christmas party.

Fortunately, for those of us working at the older, refurbished buildings on Elizabeth Street, there was the bunker-like take-out place that used to be in front of Peoria Packing (good source for pork chop sandwich). Of course, that was when we actually had to buy lunch -- there was usually a free lunch every day in the cafeteria (they'd have training sessions catered, and there was always mediocre food that could be quickly consumed, enabling us contractors to quickly return to our absurdly overpaid jobs).

Hammond

Pete wrote:Is Le Passage still even open? .

Pretty sure that it is.

Peoria Lunchbox.

Was La Luce there back then?

JeffB wrote:Peoria Lunchbox.

Was La Luce there back then?

Yes, but that was further away from the abandoned shell of a dot com disaster MikeG and I worked for (which should rightly have engraved on the half-finished cornice: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!")

Hammond

Is La Luce open for lunch?

I exaggerated slightly, of course. There were a handful of restaurants, but still, this was a company whose official instructions how to find their offices included the words "turn right at the adult bookstore."

David Hammond wrote: there was the bunker-like take-out place that used to be in front of Peoria Packing (good source for pork chop sandwich).

Hammond,

This was the only, in 25-years of living in Chicago, hot dog stand that ever, without being asked, not that I'd ever ask, served me ketchup on a hot dog. I was absolutely flabbergasted!

Enjoy,
Gary

G Wiv wrote:

David Hammond wrote: there was the bunker-like take-out place that used to be in front of Peoria Packing (good source for pork chop sandwich).

Hammond,

This was the only, in 25-years of living in Chicago, hot dog stand that ever, without being asked, not that I'd ever ask, served me ketchup on a hot dog. I was absolutely flabbergasted!

Enjoy,
Gary

And is it any wonder why I fondly recall it?

Hammond

Mike G wrote: There were a handful of restaurants, but still, this was a company whose official instructions how to find their offices included the words "turn right at the adult bookstore."

Believe it or not, that adult bookstore is a landmark of sorts. The Loeb Apartments, an Adler and Sullivan project, once stood on the site but the building has been mostly demolished. The entrance now serves as the back door of the Erotic Warehouse. Frank Lloyd Wright almost certainly had a major role in designing the Loeb. This website has a nice discussion of the less-known work of Adler and Sullivan.

Elizabeth Street, Looking South Toward Randolph

Erik M. wrote:Anyway, I was at the new Cobra Lounge with friends, last night.

I think of it as Le Passage for burnouts.

E.M.

I note that Cobra Lounge now has a huge banner advertising a "Full Menu." Not the type of place I'd expect to be serving 3 courses + wine. Has anyone tried it? I'm curious but not curious enough to take the bait.

aschie30 wrote:I note that Cobra Lounge now has a huge banner advertising a "Full Menu." Not the type of place I'd expect to be serving 3 courses + wine. Has anyone tried it? I'm curious but not curious enough to take the bait.

I drove by this place last night. It is, to say the very least, forbidding and, as you suggest, unlikely to be focusing on food as much as ambiance and security. I believe the glass on the front door has already been tagged.

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:I drove by this place last night. It is, to say the very least, forbidding and, as you suggest, unlikely to be focusing on food as much as ambiance and security. I believe the glass on the front door has already been tagged.

It's far from forbidding, honestly. It just doesn't have much to draw people in from the circles I tend to run in, either. (The highly lucrative 25-30 well-heeled lush group, that is.) The ambiance is just odd. Not threatening, not hostile, just bizarre.

As far as the etching, take a look around at the glass in Wicker Park and Bucktown - etching is rampant on lots of it. (Including the glass front doors on buildings throughout the area that several of my friends live in.) It doesn't say much about the place, more about the morons that are near it after hours.