Paradise Club

Friendly neighborhood old school Chicago Bar.

The Banana Spider is a wonderful summer drink that tastes just like liquid Hawaii.
An invention of Paradise Club’s current proprietor, you have to go to the city’s premier Polish Tiki lounge to get it. When you get your Banana Spider (or the Scorpion, or whatever other tropical mixed drink you prefer) it will come in a beautiful ceramic tiki mug. You might as well drink it with your eyes closed, not because it’s that good (though it is) but also because it’s too dark to see a thing in this fading 60-​year dive which is thrifty with electricity. There are only three lightbulbs going at all times, two of which illuminate the fishtanks. A gloriously garlanded plastic Buddha basks under a third as if it were the Hawaiian sun. If you ask for help finding the restroom the bartender will briefly turn on one more light, the «Kings» light above the men’s room or the «Queens» light above the women’s room.
Not to say this place is stingy… if you’re a bar snack afficionado, this place ranks tops with complimentary bowls of mixed pretzel sticks, potato chips, and bugles– which must have been cryogenically preserved because I thought they stopped making them in the ‘70s.
Though this lounge features prominently on the specialty niche business review site CriTiki, it has somehow eluded Unilocal all these years, which is a shame. These days it’s pretty quiet, and if you go on a weeknight you’d need to bring your own Tiki party to take the place of the young and the Polish who have fled the neighborhood for lower taxes in the west suburbs. Still worth a visit.