Small Bar Wicker Park
Notes on a new neighborhood space, from last week's Newcity.
With dwindling numbers of licenses and the preordained disappearance of old-style twentieth-century Chicago taverns, there's a new niche for latter-day neighborhood hangs: the nouveau dive. Extending their Logan Square franchise southwards, there's a contender on the Near West side: Small Bar Wicker Park. Building out the Division Street storefront that most recently housed Ohba (and before that, Rambutan), proprietors and longtime friends Troy and Ty Fujimura, Jesse Roberts and Phil McFarland have crafted a clean-lined but wood-dark room, with lighting and bits of decor salvaged from Masonic lodges, schools and churches. There are fifteen beers on tap, including Bass, Stella, Bell's, Guinness and, from this region's own Two Brothers, French country ale drawn from "Domaine DuPage." (It's a tasty amber, not too sweet.) .... Saturday's special is small beers for a small bar, domestic shorties, grenades, or ponies; whatever you might call them, seven-ouncers including Hi Life, MGD, Rolling Rock and Budweiser...
Small Bar Wicker Park, 2049 West Division, Chicago (773)772-2727
With dwindling numbers of licenses and the preordained disappearance of old-style twentieth-century Chicago taverns, there's a new niche for latter-day neighborhood hangs: the nouveau dive. Extending their Logan Square franchise southwards, there's a contender on the Near West side: Small Bar Wicker Park. Building out the Division Street storefront that most recently housed Ohba (and before that, Rambutan), proprietors and longtime friends Troy and Ty Fujimura, Jesse Roberts and Phil McFarland have crafted a clean-lined but wood-dark room, with lighting and bits of decor salvaged from Masonic lodges, schools and churches. There are fifteen beers on tap, including Bass, Stella, Bell's, Guinness and, from this region's own Two Brothers, French country ale drawn from "Domaine DuPage." (It's a tasty amber, not too sweet.) .... Saturday's special is small beers for a small bar, domestic shorties, grenades, or ponies; whatever you might call them, seven-ouncers including Hi Life, MGD, Rolling Rock and Budweiser...
Small Bar Wicker Park, 2049 West Division, Chicago (773)772-2727
