Enjoy The Experience, The Tour Sucks

Boystown is not so much a theme park, but more an experience.

When you come to Boystown, you can't truly expect to see all it has to offer in one day. People go to Theme Parks early in the AM and plan on hitting all the rides. It's go-go-go all day long, with merely 30 second-5 minutes of fun in between the 15 minute-2 hour waits. But, like I said, Boystown is not a theme park. Instead, Boystown needs to be taken in as an Experience, something like a Lollapalooza. You're not going to see everything or every band. It's just not possible. You are going to get an overall experience and enjoy it none-the-less, but you just can't expect to see it all in one night.

A good friend came into town this weekend and brought with him a Boystown Noobie. Being a guy from a more rural area, I'm not completely sure he was prepared for all that B-Town has to offer. It was his desire to see "all of it," and I decided to at least give it a try, knowing full well that we'd have to get there early and plan on one drink or less at each bar. We had a solid plan of starting on the South side of Halsted St then working North, hitting Spin first then progressing through the various bars on the strip, and maybe hitting up Jackhammer for the after-hours experience.

Things did not go well. After the second bar, when it felt as if we guzzled our drinks simply to move on to the next bar, we began to not really enjoy the plan. Truth be told, there are many bars on the strip that I'd skip altogether, and only a handful I'd recommend to all visitors. As we made our way into our third bar, we realized that hitting all the bars was just not going to happen. Sidetrack became our home for a few drinks, then we swung next door to Cocktails for a few more drinks and bad "straight" go-go boys, and finally walked across the street to Roscoe's to end our "bar hours" adventure. Even hitting up 5 bars in the course of 4 hours seems like a lot, and trying to see anymore in that time-frame would have simply been insane.

However, it wasn't all bad because we did get to see the Cornerstone of Boystown, the bars on the corner of Halsted and Roscoe. Honestly, if you want to true breadth of Boystown, I think Sidetrack, Roscoe's and Cocktail are it. These are the three general bars, and it seems to me that everything else is a bit niche. There's bars for the circuit party scene, the "club" scene, cowboy bars, leather bars, sports bars, bars for the uber pretentious, etc., which are all bars to plan for if you want to go.

I've learned my lesson, to be sure. Next time I have a B-Town Noobie come to town, we'll start with the Cornerstone bars and then plan on any other niche bars they'd like to see, and cap the evening with either Jackhammer (for the bearish or "wilder" set) or Charlie's (for the partying, dancing set, or for my straight friends). I would also highly recommend the same for anyone that comes to Chicago to party in Boystown. It's not a theme park, so save the rides for when you leave the bar ;)