The Unforgettable Lounge

Pretty dope 4am spot.
It’s more so the vibe and touch tunes jukebox that keeps me coming back cause it’s definitely not the beer list. Drafts and bottles need some serious help. This is more of a domestic bar but if you’re looking for an IPA your only option is Anti Hero. Maybe I’m mistaken though. But I doubt it.
In such a short amount of time I’ve created many memories here but during my first visit, with beer in hand, the jukebox played Method Man’s Bring the Pain. Anyone who knows me knows that’s a positive omen and enough to make a return drunk of me. I find that the prices are reasonable, the staff and patrons excellent, and the location perfect whether you have a ride or not.
I came across this place in a newspaper best after hours spot and since that was published I’ve made my way back every time. Best of indeed.

I live in the burbs, but usually try to stop by here on my way out of the city. The bartenders are cute and have a great deal of sarcastic fun with the customers. I TRULY appreciate witty, biting humor and that’s what you get when I’ve been there. Erika is the queen of sarcasm, just don’t take her seriously. This is a great place to stop after a Cubs game to wait for traffic to die down or if you just want to chill with friends. I will definitely be back.

Absolutely love this bar! Have met a lot of really nice people here, from customers to bar tenders to the owners. All around a great place to hang out and have a good time.
Read a review about the bar tender Erika which is just ubsurd. She is always a pleasure to be around. One of the biggest reasons why I love this place.

Drunken late night pool escapades become a reality at this place. Come thru to get wasted and stare creepily at bartenders. I have been wanting to come here ever since I had a website built by a guy named Joe Edahamanku or something. The other time i was here I do not remember. Getting black out wasted is crazy. Its like your brain at a certain point just stops recording, as if to say, «We got it, this guy has been trying to order a pizza from a closed bank for the last hour.» (Sean Flannery)
Nice bright place with friendly bartenders and cheap drinks for Chicago, what else do you want? Joe E to come out of the shadows and make sure your night is unforgettable? Alright, once hes done building my website.

If you love jäger and football games playing at deafening volumes to precisely two patrons, look no farther. I’ve discovered your new favorite bar.

Music so loud you can’t hear yourself when you yell. Bartenders ignore you. Empty bar on a Saturday night should tell ya something.

Joe E’s is a pretty cool place and I would say my visit was unforgettable.
I came here on a Friday night around midnight for a few drinks. There were only a few people there so we sat at the bar. The bartender was friendly and knew that we were new in the area. Everyone else here seemed to be regulars that were out for a couple drinks after a long work week.
Joe E’s has a juke box that controls the music atmosphere, they have several televisions that had local sports and news on. They also had a pool table in the back. They probably had a few other bar games like darts in the back but I don’t specifically recall these things.
Overall, Joe E’s was really laid back and was not too busy as it is located on Irving Park road right off of the Blue Line stop. The bartender told us that it gets busy around 2 am but we didn’t stay to see it happen. The best part of that night and this bar was the $ 1 basketball shot attempt. They have a couple Corona beer buckets hung behind the bar with a small inflatable ball. You get a chance to shoot the ball into the bucket for $ 1. If you are successful you get a shot of your choice for only $ 1. I played and I made the basket on the second try. It was fun considering you get a free shot of Jameson to go with it.
I look forward to coming back to Joe E’s to see what it has to offer.

The bad reviews here miss the point. This bar isn’t an adventure for yuppies, or a slice of life, or a place to connect with the «real» Chicago, it’s just a neighborhood bar filled with regulars. I could almost imagine some of the whinin reviews in here were written by Mrs. Thurston Howell III, looking through her lorgnette and sneering, «Rrrrrreeaally! I never!»

Love this place… Great people and awesome bartenders :) and the events that they have are awesome too:-)

Four stars for a dive bar? What, am I crazy? Yes, but my mom still loves me. Keep in mind the 4 stars is as compared to other dive bars, not nicer places.
Physically this place doesn’t have much character, but in terms of people there it is one of the more unique dive bars in the city. You simply never know what you are going to get when you walk in the door.
First off, this is a bar with two distinct personalities. If you go during the day or early evening, this is an old man’s bar with regulars that are probably here every single day. If you go later in the evening — like after midnight, it is a completely different crowd that can offer the best people watching ever.
This is the biggest eclectic mix of people you will ever see in one place and everybody is friendly to you — even if you might be scared of them sometimes. In no particular order I have met: hustlers at the pool table in the back, second shift workers headed home, off-​duty ladies of the night, grifters, homeless grandmother, residents of the nearby Y, a guy who wandered in after getting kicked off a bus, people freshly out of jail, people probably headed to jail really soon, etc. etc.
The bartenders are friendly too and they have great drink specials every day of the week.
It really is just a hot mess of humanity that randomly wanders in — and 90% of them are friendly and talkative. I can’t say I have ever been bored here.

I’ve been here twice. Once on a Sunday afternoon for $ 3 bloody marys (the plan was to get there about 2pm and stay for an hour – when I left it was 10pm) and once three weeks ago Saturday as a pit stop between destinations for my friend’s birthday.
It’s certainly an old man bar. Free pool, dusty, dark, cheap domestic beer, a surprisingly clean bathroom, popcorn machine, juke box, «professionals» at the end of the bar, you know the drill; and the first time I went here I really couldn’t wait to come back. Now I think if I go back it’ll be for day drinking, not night drinking; and I think it would depend who’s working the bar.
So let me explain, we show up about 10-​ish to have a beer – beers ordered, settling in, everything is fine and then all of the sudden we realize we’re listening to these commercials that are backed by a dance beat. The more we’re listening or rather trying not to listen; they become louder and more annoying.
At first we thought it was the radio; commercials, and then songs, and the commercials, and then songs– but no it was commercial after commercial. So in order to stop it I decided to play the juke box, and this is where the problems took place.
First off the juke box is awesome. You can find almost everything you want to listen to and by judging the quality of the extended dance remix commercials; I figured the sound wouldn’t be that bad. I also have to explain something else and this is the most important thing. I completely understand I’m in a neighborhood bar with many different types of people. Although some of my music tastes are, I’m not planning to piss everyone off by playing music that’s obnoxious, offensive, alienating, etc – actually just the opposite. My goal was to play stuff that’s decent drinking music, maybe something a little timeless. Ray Charles, James brown, some rockabilly – key works here: non-​threatening and fun. So I make my way to the jukebox.
Before I know it there’s a person who I’m guessing is a regular lined up behind me. (sidenote, why did they wait for me to play music before doing so themselves?) I play my songs and walk away – the guy behind me starts to add his list as my first song is playing. The second song comes on (I mentioned Ray Charles previously, it was Ray Charles) the bartender perks up with what sounds like irritation and dare I say disgust, and addresses the dude playing music «YOU didn’t play that did YOU?!»
«No I did.» I reply.
The bartender grabs the remote for what I think is the TV and says «yeah I didn’t think he would play that».
By this time the guy leaves the juke box, she still has the remote in her hand and walks over to play songs. I have two more songs and instead either the song the regular played or the song the bartender played comes on.
She’s still adding songs and my friend walks over and asks «you didn’t just flip over my friend’s songs did you?»
She doesn’t say yes, and doesn’t say no but instead says «sometimes I flip over songs if they look like they’re going to be crazy devil worshipping music». The next two songs I played we’re from a band called the Reverend Horton Heat. Now I can’t prove she bypassed my songs but the whole thing is a little coincidental and if she did then she should have at least gave me my $ 2 back.
I want to like this place. I really do and I would come here often. It’s close, it’s comfy, it’s reasonable, surprisingly they have three good beers on tap, but if I’m given the vibe that I’m not exactly welcome then why would I come back?

Dive bar to the max and not in a good way. I went during a fairly quiet time (I used to walk by very early in the morning on my way to the Blue Line and it seems to attract a rather rowdy crowd until the wee hours of the morning). The drinks were stiff and cheap, so that’s a plus. Bartender was friendly. The only problem was the lecherous old men who seem to hang out, but I can’t really fault the bar for that.

Came to this spot the other and all I can is this… Simplicity is bliss at this place! Nothing fancy about this place at all. This is the kinda place where you come as you are to enjoy some cheap drinks. Bonus for us transit riders… very close to the irving park blueline but from what I saw it would be kinda hard to catch a cab around this place though.

I gave this one an extra star just to counter-​balance whatever reviews brought it down to three stars.
This is a perfect working class neighborhood bar. Nothing fancy, just the essentials at a fair price provided by a friendly staff. Sports on tv, good deals on decent beer, free popcorn and other salty snacks, FREE POOL TABLE.
If that isn’t your idea of a four-​star bar I probably don’t want to go drinking with you.

Are you looking for a place that has an instant lotto ticket dispenser BUILT INTO THE BAR by the taps? Are you looking for a place that’s kitty corner from both the blue line AND the Y? If so, this place could be the answer to your prayers. This place is like a Turkish bath house, but without all those pointless amenities. Bus stop shelter out front doubles as a smoking hut and place to watch other people scream into their cell phones. Open ’til 4/​5am in case you didn’t get enough booze elsewhere. Excelsior!

.Cchicago use to be fool of bars like this in the fifties and sixties before yuppie scum and hipster geeks took over many drinking establishments. I was really found of thisd place and wish there was more diversity bars like this-​of age and race-​instead of the usual young twentysomething long haired fucks of the Northside filled with arrogant white college kids.

I need a drink. I need to hang out with some friends and get drunk. I dont need anymore bullshit in my life. Where can I go thats not full of hipsters or yuppies or douchebags?
HEY! Joe E’s! perfect. The so groddy even the hipsters wont risk the «im being ironic but im actually just cheap» place.
Went in 3 days ago and the bartender was sweet. I just wanna chill out. I like this place. not perfect but this is what bars looked like in the 80’s. nice.

Came in here with my girl, CB, all decked out in our Derby hats, ‘cos we missed the 2:43 Metra to Arlington. We were greeted very warmly by the barmaid, and given a free Mint Julep. Bonus!
After that, the stars flew away. Looking around the bar, it was full of barflies. Like Mickey Rourke as Charles Bukowski But Not Nearly as Charming barflies.
Aforementioned barmaid, pleasingly sassy when we walked in, turned into annoyingly loud to one of the patrons. .. I got the feeling that this was their usual Saturday afternoon schtick. .. especially when they started dancing to a blasting country tune.
Oh, the music. The Cubs scored, or something, and the music got cranked up. Then stayed cranked up thru a couple of irritating country-​type songs. Painful.
We only stayed there for two Mint Juleps ‘cos the drinks were. .. drinks. .. and our train didn’t leave until 3:43.
But wow. .. . I don’t recommend this even as an ironic dive bar ‘cos it’s depressing and annoying.

Joe E’s lounge is indeed unforgettable, but so is breaking your leg or seeing a dead person.
This is an old man bar without the character that is prevalent in most
hole-​in-​the-​walls in the city. Though I didn’t see one, I get the impression that fights break out a few times a week.
There are two big upsides to the Unforgettable Lounge though. They are open until four and they have cheap beer. On the Tuesday that I was there, domestic bottles were $ 1.50 and there is a night (Saturday I think) where Old-​Style buckets are $ 5.00. It’s not clear whether a bucket consists of five bottles of beer and some ice or they just fill up a bucket with Old-​Style and give it to you.

My boyfriend and I live in the Old Irving Park neighborhood and have often been to this 4am hole-​in-​the-​wall. And I’m talking HOLE-​IN-​THE-​WALL. Not this trendy «dive bar» frequented by yuppies in Wicker Park or Logan Square. I’ve seen old men falling asleep (passing out?) at the bar. The bartenders sport their favorite Chicago sports team’s jerseys, and you never know what walk of life will pour through the door after 2am. That said, Joe E’s is one of the only options, unfortunately (and hopefully temporarily) for us in Irving Park. It’s a 4am, so that helps, and drinks are cheap! Plus, if you get there pre-​late nite, they’re very accommodating with the free popcorn ;)
Joe E’s is a weird place. I won’t deny it. But until Old Irving is built up and we’re offered more options, it’s a decent choice with affordable drinks.