The Billy Goat Tavern: Beers, Ball Games and Cheezborgers
The Bourdain, Belushi and Bill Murray approved dive bar is an American icon
While dwarfed by a collection of the finest architecture in the United States, it feels like borderline sacrilege to disappear below street level in Chicago. But subverting your gaze from north to south on Michigan Avenue will ultimately lead you to a subterranean institution just as iconic as any skyscraper along the Windy City’s breathtaking skyline.
Sunk into the bowels of the Magnificent Mile, the Billy Goat Tavern demands a descent that, in unprepared hands, could spiral into a positively hellish experience. Hidden from the gargantuan Neo-gothic grandeur of Tribune Tower, this near 60-year-old dive (at this location at least, the original took over from the old Lincoln Tavern in 1934 across from what is now the United Center on West Madison) could comfortably feel like home to down-on-their-luck gambling addicts fresh from another lousy day at the track, shirts and sports jackets as crumpled as the remaining $5 bill they drop onto the bar.
You could also just as easily picture James Caan shaking down some low-level hood here in the early ‘80s, taking umbrage to this punk kid calling him ‘slick’ while pleading faux ignorance over the whereabouts of the fellow con who has skipped town with 100 large of Jimmy The Dream’s money. In the case of my three visits to The Billy Goat in September 2017, however, we found a couple of exhausted-looking beat writers from the Chicago Tribune, a smattering of Cubs fans taking in the series against the Brewers and a rag-tag band of regulars who appeared to desire nothing more than a handful of half pints in a familiar seat in between snippets of semi-polite conversation with the bar staff.
In short, it was perfection.
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