This past weekend saw the opening of two awesomely gimmicky additions to the drinking scene — ones which, fortuitously perhaps, are designed to appeal to totally different populations. The South Loop plays host to Jerry Kleiner’s latest venture, the lounge-inside-a-movie-theater at 150 W. Roosevelt that we first spotted over the summer. The Lobby Lounge is done in true Kleiner forever-1990s style, a black-white-and-shocking-red palette hung with movie stills. Moviegoers who pay for the lounge’s VIP setting get special seating for their cinema experience, as well.
Farther north, nightclub Touch (1622 W Belmont, 773 883 8888) said hello this weekend. The deal here is that the VIP tables at this evening joint include crazy hovering-screen touchscreen ordering, plus the admittedly brilliant option to bid, auction-style, on what song you want the club to play. This glimpse of the future was described perhaps most aptly by Thrillist, who brilliantly called it called “the kind of place Don Draper might hang out, if he was actually George Jetson.”
