Cole’s Bar

Chicago, Illinois

Field Note

With so many drinking options in Chicago, it is imperative that dive bars across the city carve out a niche for fear of getting swallowed up into a sea of options that includes bar on seemingly every street corner. Opened in 2009, Cole’s Bar in the city’s Logan Square neighborhood has done an impressive job of creating a distinct identity thanks to the focus and vision of owner Coleman Brice. Himself a musician who struggled to get the stage time that can help develop a young band, Brice opened Cole’s Bar with an eye on providing exactly those opportunities to the city’s fledgling acts.

In a space that was once a pool hall, Cole’s Bar is now a sprawling live music and comedy staple among Chicago’s deep set of venues. The bar’s open mic comedy night is perhaps the most notable in the city thanks to its long run and egalitarian structure that allows comedians both nascent and seasoned to take the stage. Chicago comedians have been known to take the stage to hone their material in surprise sets, including local resident Hannibal Buress. The night’s comedy festivities were even captured in an episode of Netflix show “Easy,” owner Brice playing a bartender in his own bar.

Equally revered is the Cole’s Bar commitment to live music, offering multiple cover-free evenings dedicated to emerging bands each week. Known as one of the more inclusive dive bar atmospheres in Chicago, that same principle extends to the acts drawn to the stage, a mix of genres ranging from fresh faces to seasoned vets. Perhaps because of this spirit of inclusivity, the crowd at Cole’s Bar tends to skew younger, especially during evening music & comedy sets in contrast to some of the “old man” dive bars found throughout the city with slightly more senior patrons.

Until 2019, Cole’s Bar was also the site of one of the more robust collections of Abraham Lincoln-themed artwork in the city, if any other such collection existed at all. Shortly after opening, Brice was gifted a funky portrait of Lincoln from a regular who worked at the nearby Abraham Lincoln Book Shop. One fateful night shortly after the public display of the piece, a guest cut the portrait out of its frame somehow out of the view of security cameras, stealing the piece never to be seen again.

Inspired by the story to right a wrong, Cole’s Bar patrons began bringing in Lincoln-themed artwork to replace what was lost. As artwork trickled in, the collection swelled, eventually numbering so many pieces that room couldn’t be found within the Cole’s Bar space to display them all, relegating a few items to storage. In 2019, Brice saw an opportunity to support local charity Logan Square Neighborhood Association in support of area immigrants, selling the collection and making a sizable donation.

Though the space itself has been renovated over the years (and now hosts a severe lack of presidential artwork), the age of the structure still shines through in spots. Weathered wood surfaces stretch from the bar itself to a string of booths and church pews that provide seating in the bar’s main room. Wood paneling runs about halfway up the wall in this front area covered in graffiti, stickers and carved messages. Fresh paint and a selection of local artwork add some class to the proceedings, but make no mistake that dive bar bones exists underneath a bit of polish. A pool room in the rear of the space looks cut from a very dive bar-themed cloth.

For those more interested in drinking than comedy & live music, the bar’s main room is somewhat separated from the stage in back, creating the option of fully engaging in the entertainment or focusing specifically on drinking. And in great Chicago dive bar tradition, late night drinking at Cole’s Bar usually includes a visit from the local “tamale guy” providing necessary sustenance.