Smart Bar
#8 of 50 on the PEAKTIME Club Index · Chicago, US · est. 1982 · index score 88.7/100.
House music's hometown club: four decades of Chicago's deepest, most serious programming.
The room
Beneath the Metro in Chicago since 1982, Smart Bar is the hometown room of house music itself. While the genre was being born blocks away at the Warehouse and Music Box, Smart Bar gave it a permanent basement home, and it never sold out. Decades on, it still treats house and techno with hometown reverence.
Reputation
Sacred ground for anyone who reveres house's origins. Unpretentious, deep, and proudly local.
What makes it singular
It's house music's literal hometown club, an unbroken line back to the genre's Chicago birth.
Signature nights
Queen! · Resident DJ program
Iconic sets
Frankie Knuckles, the Godfather of House, held a residency here; the city later named a street after him.,Derrick Carter and the Chicago house royalty as regular fixtures.,Queen!, the long-running queer house party keeping the dancefloor's roots alive.
Capacity: ≈ 400 · Origin: Joe Shanahan