Though the red awning of yesteryear has shifted to black and smoking is no longer allowed inside, Lange’s Lounge has otherwise largely remained untouched by time since opening in 1963. Lange’s fits into the comfortable mold of corner Chicago dive bar, a formula replicated countless times across the city responsible for a slew of cozy, neighborhood-focused, intimate dive bars with an allure based on the community inside rather than the flash of any single amenity.

The Southport Avenue corridor that serves as a warning sign to leaving the friendly confines of Lakeview is filled with a number of upscale bar and restaurant offerings, making Lange’s an approachable change of pace to pop in for an Old Style or six. Close proximity to the Southport CTA stop on the city’s Brown Line elevated train offers an additional dimension of convenience, the Chicago dive bar a popular one-beer-before-home stop for area commuters.

The Lange’s Lounge signature amenity might just be its close-but-not-too-close relationship with Wrigley Field, making the bar a popular (but not too popular) pre-game and post-game stop. For Cubs fans interested in a few beers among likeminded fans without cramming into an overpriced Clark Street theme restaurant, Lange’s Lounge offers just the right level of insulation from crowds that intensify with every block east of the bar.

A string of neon beer signs lines the bay of Lange’s Lounge exterior windows under a black awning inscribed with the name of the bar and its founding date of 1963. The all-brick facade fades largely into the residential block that houses the bar, another telltale signature of a classic Chicago dive bar. Inside, that nondescript exterior is replicated by exposed interior brick flanking the same set of windows. The space has seen fresh paint (a shame, of course) with clean wood paneling painted black encircling the space.

The bar here is positioned in the center of Lange’s single room floorplan, 360-degrees of drinking convenience available atop an updated bar. Shelving suspended from the ceiling doubles as both home to reserve liquor bottles and location of stained glass-style signage that depicts the name of the bar. A handful of tap beers are available, as are every classic Chicago dive bar bottle and can imaginable.

Little else clutters the Lange’s Lounge structure with only a few lines of stools available for seating (there are no low tables to be found here). A well-positioned pool table can be found toward the rear of Lange’s Lounge, offering really the only dive bar diversion outside of a handful of televisions mounted just under the bar’s drop ceiling. Though wall decorations are spares, be sure to spy the wall next to the pool table where a small set of historical photos of the Lange’s Lounge building are framed and mounted.