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| Excalibur is one of Chicago’s best known nightclubs and
has become a landmark downtown. The castle-shaped Excalibur is a good place to go for a
night out, but it is great for after work parties and for out of town sightseers. |
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Half of the time I’ve been at Excalibur, it has been for private parties, so let me describe what you get at a private party. Excalibur is big on these parties, many people win parties and they allow everyone who is invited to get into the club early (from 6-8pm) for a couple of free drinks and free buffet. Mmmmm....buffet. The buffet is pretty good for a $3 buffet, and there’s a good amount of space for everyone to sit around and talk until the place starts coming alive. After you use up your 2 free drinks, the drink prices are pretty reasonable for a downtown club, $3 for domestic beer and $3.50 for imports. There are also video games next to the bar that you can play (tokens - 3 for a buck!) until the party officially ends at eight and the club is open to the public. |
| After the private parties and the buffet is gone, the big room on the main floor, called the Cabaret, is cleaned up and they begin playing some music or they will have MTV wannabee game show contests on the stage in the room. Unfortunately, I was recently subjected to a men’s butt-shaking contest, one of the worst displays I was ever forced to see. After they are done with the game shows, they clear the stage and the Cabaret becomes a dance floor that plays 80’s dance music. Usually I do not stick around for too much of the game shows and will go to one of Excalibur’s other floors. |
| The basement of Excalibur is like a pool hall. On the left and right sides of the floor there are a lot of pool tables and a few video games. The middle of the floor has a lot of tables and is basically a full service restaurant; they also have a large bar down there. It was down here among the pool tables that I had a celebrity encounter with ex-Bull and ex-NBA 3 point champion Craig Hodges. I drunkenly told him how honored I was to meet one of the Bulls from the Championship teams, and he was very nice about meeting an inebriated Bulls fan. I think that he was just happy that someone recognized him. |
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After the place gets crowded enough, Excalibur will open up it’s top floor - Club X -for everyone to enter. Sometimes they charge you to get into Club X ($5 the last time I was there) and sometimes they don’t. I think I’ve been lucky enough to be up there all but one time without paying. The top floor has a room with a lot of tables and chairs and two large bars. They have recently added some dancing girls that dance on a platform right above one of the bars for all the males to enjoy, and it seems that they like to pull other people up there to dance with them. Adjacent to this room is also Excalibur’s biggest dance room with two balconies above it. The balconies give you a pretty good view of the dance floor so you can check everyone out from above, or you can just look at their huge video screen of all the dancing.
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| There is another room that is attached to Excalibur called the Dome Room. This is a three level club that is almost completely separated from Excalibur and you have to enter it from the outside. Read my review of Dome Room in Chicagonights.com’s review section. The crowd at Excalibur is pretty diverse. There are your typical twentysomething club dwellers there, in addition to baby boomers who are out of towners or there for work parties. You will hear a lot of different languages from all the tourists there and a lot of people who have worn suits straight from work. Everyone is fairly dressed up too, Excalibur has a pretty strict dress code, one of my friends had to tuck in his shirt, and another guy was not allowed in because his jeans were too baggy. If you wear some kind of collared shirt and dress shoes though, you should be able to get past the fashion police without a problem. |
My most recent visit to
Excalibur ended as I was escorted out for a disagreement I was having with one of the
bartenders. I guess sometimes you can have too much tequila. However, I am usually not
escorted out of Excalibur, and when I am not, I realize that Excalibur is one of
Chicago’s best bars for bringing out of town guests, dance music, and seeing one of
Chicago’s landmarks. I think almost everyone who goes to clubs in Chicago has gone at
least one time to Excalibur, and if you don’t go, you will be missing out on the
complete Chicago club experience.