The self-proclaimed fifth oldest bar in the city, Burwood Tap is a dive crossed with a college bar that has more of a neighborhood feel than it does anything truly divey. As a number of online reviews of Burwood Tap state, it’s hard to classify a corner bar with a well-kept red & white striped awning as a true dive bar, but the Lincoln Park institution is worth seeking out all the same.

Beyond the physical heritage of the Burwood Tap space, the Lincoln Park dive bar lives on in musical history thanks to one of its most famous customers, Leroy Brown. Songwriter Jim Croce served with Brown in the Navy and used him as the subject of, you guessed it, “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown.” Though the song mentions the South Side of Chicago, presumably for melodic purposes, Brown frequented North Side bars, most notably Burwood Tap.

A middle space within Burwood Tap is dedicated to the bar’s lone pool table, positioned in true dive bar fashion directly in the flow of all traffic inside and oriented in such a way as to make actually playing on the table occasionally challenging given the crowds attracted by the Lincoln Park dive. Further back, a second bar can be found in the rear of the space, this area sometimes reserved for charity events and party packages that have on occasion offered flat rate pricing for all-you-can-drink shenanigans.