Wicker Park, Bucktown and Logan Square

Your first stop for bars, bands, bizarre boutiques and beards

Talk of the town: Has Wicker Park gentrified in recent years? Yes. Is it still a load of fun? Undoubtedly.
Word to the wise: Be on the lookout for the Tamale Guy, who roams local drinking dens selling mouthwatering Mexican snacks.

Centered on the six-corner intersection of Milwaukee, Damen and North Avenue, and bordered roughly by Fullerton, Western, Division and the Kennedy Expressway (I-90/94), Wicker Park has been firmly claimed by Chicago’s youth. It’s where the city’s hipsters come to live, work and play.
The area (including the nearby Bucktown neighborhood) is packed with cocktail joints, dive bars, restaurants, boutiques and vintage stores, art happenings and theaters. The merciless march of gentrification and rent increases may have blunted its cutting edge a little, but the nightlife won’t quit.

In Logan Square, a few stops north up the blue line, the crowd is is slightly older than the plaid-shirt-and-beard denizens, but the good times continue to roll at wine-and-food-matching gastropub The Telegraph, Michelin-recommended whiskey mecca and gastropub Longman & Eagle, and beer barn The Owl, with its renowned USD 2-3 Tuesdays.