When Max Mirho, a Lakeview resident, lived in Pittsburgh three years ago, he found himself at a secret party. It was a gay, techno sex club downtown, next to a tiny ATM, underneath a gay bathhouse, “in the middle of frickin’ nowhere.”
To get in, Mirho used a passcode found on a Facebook page called “Hot Mass,” which posed as a casual, small music venue promotion page. A DJ came from France to do eccentric, niche dance music sets. Men came downstairs from the bathhouse and sat on their towels. People showed up in leather and animal masks, dancing until 6 AM. Instead of “buying” drinks, attendees would “tip.”
Due to Pittsburgh city law, the sale of alcohol past 2 AM was prohibited—for a few hours, Mirho got a glimpse into Prohibition.
A few months later, he moved to Chicago; as a top city for illicit drinking and underground bars during that 1920-1933 Prohibition era and the land of infamous gangster Al Capone, surely it would have a speakeasy scene of its own. Seeking the intimacy and secrecy of the party he found in Pittsburgh, he started his mission of finding similar spots in Chicago and quickly discovered dozens of so-called speakeasies.
“The vibe of going to a place that’s a little bit secret, a little bit hidden, makes the experience of whatever you’re doing that much more fun,” Mirho says. “When everything is just so commercial now, it feels like there’s very little stuff that’s secret.”
Like Mirho, thousands of people are going to these modern speakeasies. Although there is no official count—as nobody agrees on the exact definition—roughly 50 to 100 speakeasies exist in Chicago today. With no need to drink in secrecy anymore, the authentic version no longer exists—at least, not for the same purposes.
The first speakeasies, also known as gin joints, were born when Congress passed the 18th Amendment and prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages anywhere in the country. The name comes from patrons who whispered or spoke “easy” when attempting to enter the drinking spots run by mobs and gangsters. Law enforcement officers knew what was going on but were mostly paid off to stay quiet. When the Great Depression hit, tax revenue from alcohol sales became appealing to cash-strapped governments. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt made a campaign promise to legalize drinking. On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment was ratified, overturning the 18th.
In the early 2000s, modern speakeasies began appearing across the map. Pioneered by Milk & Honey in New York City, these new, legal establishments were modeling themselves on historical speakeasies to curate an exclusive nightlife experience.
When Prohibition ended and ordinary citizens could get a drink almost wherever they pleased, the cocktail movement suffered as bars began mass-producing quick, easy drinks. The new speakeasies, however, set out to slow down service, enforce rules, make people work a little harder to find the space, and curate craft cocktail menus with exotic liquors and unique ingredients.
The romanticization of the speakeasy aesthetic has revitalized the craft cocktail movement and industry. “Without this speakeasy movement, we might have lost the footing we had,” says Peter Vestinos, founder of the BarMedic, a beverage consulting company. “There was, all of a sudden, a center of attention on cocktails.” Today’s menus even frequently feature mocktails, which never would have been found at authentic speakeasies.
Mike Ryan, one of the early bartenders at the Violet Hour in Wicker Park, saw mixed reactions at the beginning of Chicago’s speakeasy movement.
“In 2007, when [the Violet Hour] first opened, I remember people coming in, waiting in this long line, walking in and saying, ‘I’ll have two sodas, a Vodka Red Bull, and where are all the chicks?’” Ryan says. “I’m like, ‘You’re in the wrong place.’”
When Prohibition ended, hospitality also shifted.
“The pendulum of hospitality had swung so far over to the side of the guest where there was no intentionality, no thought, no curation on the side of the operator,” Ryan says. “They just said, ‘Yeah, whatever the guest wants, we’ll get that right in.’” Speakeasies like the Violet Hour chose to do things their own way, putting focus on the atmosphere and the cocktails, rather than the accessibility.
“They’re not traditionally great moneymakers for the operators or the staff, because when I take away that kind of raucous atmosphere and your group of friends aren’t doing rounds of shots now and then and running up your tab, the bartenders and bar don’t make as much money,” says Charles Joly, who once bartended at the Oscars and won the Diageo World Class Global Bartending Competition. “They’re oftentimes passion projects; you got to really be in it because you love it.”
The people who love it care more about the drink—the natural ingredients, the historical origin, the potency of the bitters.
“Speakeasies were the first type of bars that rekindled a love affair with cocktails in the modern era,” Joly says.
These businesses provide a space where the bartenders can be the stars of the show. People began making cocktails from scratch again—squeezing juices, adding bitters, and identifying when to shake versus stir. Bartending takes skill for any space, but to thrive in a speakeasy setting, according to Ryan from the Violet Hour, there are three necessary skills: people, mechanical, and encyclopedic.
“People skills would be the number one, and that’s everything from being able to put people at ease, to making people feel comfortable with your ability to find what they are looking for, to being able to read somebody,” Ryan says.
As for mechanical skills, it’s the ability to quickly pick up a bottle, pour the right measure into your jigger, add ice, shake, grab a glass, fill it up, and put a garnish on—all while being economical and smooth.
“It feels like this ballet, choreographed and scripted,” Ryan says.
Finally, bartenders should be able to share their knowledge about the liquor. For example, knowing the origin of specific herbs or the provenance of some cocktails can provide value and context to what the customer is drinking.
These ingredients largely came out of Prohibition, which Joly, the bartending champion, says, “changed the palate in America.” He describes the palate as shifting to become slightly sweeter and juicier.
“People masked the shitty alcohol with a lot of heavy juices, mixtures, cream, milk, orange juice, and cranberry juice . . . stuff that was not used as heavily in cocktails prior [to the Prohibition era],” Joly says. Bartenders understood that without recipes to cover up the taste, the liquor that was being produced was nearly undrinkable.
Safety was a concern, too. Since liquor was being transported illegally from person to person, place to place, it was nearly impossible to track down its origin. Members of the upper class who belonged to social clubs could get high-quality booze. But in working-class neighborhoods, people often drank whatever was available to them, even at the risk of ingesting something dangerous.
Many producers conjured up ingredients to produce alcohol illegally from their homes, resulting in “bathtub gin,” a phrase that came from making liquor in a bottle so tall that it could not be topped off with water in the sink—so they used a bathtub. The process of converting impure or wood alcohol (methanol) into a drinkable form was not always successful, so some batches of gin were poisonous and caused blindness or even death. Coupled with the federal poisoning program in which the U.S. government intentionally poisoned alcohol to try to discourage people from drinking, somewhere between 1,000–10,000 Americans died every year, according to Ken Burns’s documentary Prohibition.
Aside from alcohol, the quality of the speakeasy experience depended greatly on social standing and neighborhood. Since people mostly went to drink and see their friends, they stayed nearby. More upscale places used nice silverware and glassware and maybe even hung pictures of women on the walls. Less fancy ones might have had peeling wallpaper, dust in every corner, and an unkempt atmosphere. Many establishments removed clocks to avoid reminding anyone of the time spent drinking.
Whatever the experience might be, Hollywood movies have created an image with secret hallways, doorways, passcodes, and tunnels. In actuality, they were escape routes, not entrances. Many had a green door or light on the outside to signal it was a speakeasy (like Green Door Tavern in River North, which is still open today).
“They really weren’t much more complicated than high school and college parties,” guide Jonathan Knotek says on a recent Chicago Prohibition Tour, a three-hour tour of various downtown spots rooted in Prohibition history.
“They feel secretive but not in a way where you’re saying some stupid password and someone is dressed up in period clothing,” Knotek says. “It’s much more in keeping with the time, and I think people enjoy that. . . . Everybody wants to be a part of something where they feel a little bit more exclusive, where they feel like not everybody knows about it or it’s a little bit harder to get into.”
Mirho, the uber-fan, describes the feeling of finding a speakeasy as a “victory.”
To Mirho, the new speakeasy is “something that maintains a very high quality, while not being obscenely popular.” He has visited nearly 35 speakeasies in Chicago and says each one provides high-quality drinks—not like the beer served at Wrigleyville sports bars like Sluggers, Deuces, and Old Crow Smokehouse.
“That doesn’t mean cheap drinks, it just means that this place is great, and sometimes it will get packed, but it’s not Old Crow Smokehouse,” Mirho says. “It’s not, like, stupid-packed like most of the top-quality and popular places in the city.”
Some modern Chicago speakeasies disguise themselves as other businesses or operate inside other businesses. Blind Barber is situated behind a barber shop. Dorian’s is through a record shop. Bodega Taqueria y Tequila West Loop is hidden inside a taco bar. Others, such as Bordel, the Drifter, and the Roar Chicago, attempt to mimic 1920s culture and pay homage to the era through burlesque shows, flapper-dressed servers, and live music.
At these establishments, customers nurse drinks that typically start at $15. “I wouldn’t go to a speakeasy before a night out, because on nights out, you want to get the bang for your buck,” says Sara Ganas, a 24-year-old West Loop resident, while leaving the Press Room. On a Saturday night, while looking for a quiet spot to have a drink with a friend, she chose a speakeasy over her usual going-out spots. “I’d rather have one good cocktail, sit down, have a good talk,” Ganas says.
Ganas discovered the Press Room while on a walk when she saw the green LED light that read “down for a drink.” She stepped inside and thought it looked cool, imagining it might be a speakeasy. Later seeing it on TikTok, she realized she was right. The Press Room still feels like a hidden gem.
But often, going viral can ruin the appeal.
“There’s a laundromat speakeasy that is now filled with people because it went viral, and that does kind of ruin the charm, especially if you can’t get in because it’s so crowded,” Ganas says.
In addition to TikTok, speakeasies are being discovered through Yelp, Instagram, Thrillist, GetYourGuide, and even Google Maps, making it nearly impossible for anything to be kept truly secret. Almost all the bars today have public websites where customers can look up the address. Their aspect of secrecy usually comes from finding the door. In instances like the Drifter, no clear sign indicates that it is underneath Green Door Tavern. But for Booze Box, Suski Dokku’s underground extension, one four-star Yelp review from user WordTravelingWombat reads, “Dropped star for the lack of ‘Speakeasy-ness’ that I expected.” They had no problem finding the underground spot.
When Mirho first arrived in Chicago and wanted to discover the less popular speakeasies, he spent time simply going onto Google Maps and zooming in on different neighborhoods.
“If you zoom in on the different neighborhoods and get closer and closer, Google Maps will give you more specific results in that area, and basically every single Google review that has ever been left for any bar in the city that mentions the word speakeasy,” Mirho says. By making posts in Reddit groups and talking to people around the city, he sifted through his 20+ hours of research and compiled his list.
Even though he loves the secrecy aspect, he publicly shares his list through a website called chicagospeakeasies.com. (He created it as a passion project but would consider taking advertising or selling it to someone if the opportunity arose.) He gets around 200 site visitors per month. But if he were to receive thousands of visitors, and see the vibe of the speakeasies being ruined, then he would consider changing his sharing method.
“The only authenticity that I’m looking for is that they are very much trying to cultivate a very specific aesthetic and vibe when you go in there,” Mirho says. “It feels more like an art project than a business.”
Even though Mirho knows they aren’t Al Capone–like underground places, he still likes going. It’s almost as if he’s in on the secret: speakeasies today are meant to be found.