Alice’s Lounge occupies a space once operated as a bar known as Sullivan’s & Helen’s after a prior life as a butcher shop. The dive bar’s opening in 1986 was one pushed by Alice’s husband and brother-in-law but after Alice’s sister and brother-in-law moved away and her husband passed away, Alice was left as unexpected owner and sole operator of the space. Her leadership has guided Alice’s Lounge through all manner of trial and tribulation since then, notably the global pandemic that threatened dive bars just like Alice’s Lounge with heavy restrictions and an obvious incompatibility between group karaoke and an airborne illness.
For such a strong association with karaoke, Alice’s Lounge isn’t necessarily a space that looks built for the purpose at first glance, the corner spot of a large brick building housing really just a single long room with no stage or alcove to tuck away inebriated singers. Instead, karaoke happens ‘in the round’ so to speak, a small booth in the middle of the room serving as nerve center for free-walking karaoke singers very much intermingled with the crowd. On crowded nights, that can mean both a unique karaoke experience as well as a perpetual traffic jam as bar patrons attempt to navigate the karaoke ‘island’ in the middle of the space.
On evenings without karaoke, Alice’s Lounge looks like a classic Chicago dive bar, a simple front door with signs reading “Karaoke Bar” and “Chuck’s & Ed’s Tavern, Inc.” tucked just under an awning with the dive bar’s address inscribed. Notably, no mention of the words ‘Alice’ or ‘lounge’ can be found and some tales of visits have included the need to be buzzed in (though this was not my experience). Uncharacteristically for a dive bar, natural light isn’t altogether shunned here, a set of windows wrapping around much of the building.
