Sunday 7th of September 2008 10:50:36 PM

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I was 'too cool' to swiftly respond to the Yelp invitation to the beer garden at Pegasus on Thursday, 26 June. The event hit capacity.
But darn it, I still wanted to go out on Thursday evening, and since I had mentioned in the commentary thread for the beer garden that Spectrum, just down (or up, depending on your vista) Halsted Street was *_a 4:00 am bar_*; I concocted a parallel non-event event.
Spectrum is *another* bar with which I am familiar with on a professional level. But it was not nearly as satisfying at Arno's Place. However, that was not its fault.
Some of you may have known that in the span of August 1994 to April 1996, I was keenly involved with the faltering Chicago POWER indoor soccer franchise. There are World-Wide Web pages in which *I* take the blame for our catastrophic back-to-back 6-34 seasons. [In actuality, the National Professional Soccer League was running the financial aspects of the franchise. I do not have to tell you that it was squeezing pennies.] After the serious fiasco of 1994-95, in which the Rosemont Horizon gave us the cold shoulder in favor of its *new* minor league ice hockey team (We wound up playing "home" games in Rockford.), the League finally got the memo that we would be better off playing at a facility *in Chicago*. For 1995-96, it moved the bulk of our home games to the U.I.C. Pavilion. We actually had better players and some coherence in the front office that season - but the League made one crucial mistake when it decided to extrude me from doing any work for it in mid-October 1995. I had some feelers out for advertisers and sponsors for the team that season, and was in conversation with Goose Island Brwg. Co. to sponsor the green jerseys for Saint Patrick's Day for our final Chicago home game of the season [on Sunday, 17 March]. The extrusion lasted all of seven weeks. A person the League hired and was paying to be the media relations officer put out media releases with _inaccurate_ information. The feedback from other teams' media officers was swift and brutal. He quit around Thanksgiving Day (even before our Chicago home opener). I more-or-less resumed coordinating our media releases for free. [I was willing to invest in the franchise in June 1995. I didn't need its money.]
The Spectrum Bar & Grill became the venue for our post-game parties. I liked its location. If I drove to the Pavilion, I learned where I could park on the nearby streets to go to post-game. I liked that you could get something good to eat just about everywhere (not necessarily at Spectrum). Lastly, Spectrum's beer prices were cheap.
As it turned out, we only won *one* game in Chicago that season: On Sunday, 17 March! But my extrusion meant that Goose Island had allocated its spring promotional budget by the time I got back in. John Hall offered, "Let us know for next year." {Three of our "home" victories were in New Haven, CT.; and we won road games in Baltimore, MD., & Wichita, KS. [Baltimore _fired_ their head coach three days after they lost the home game to us.]}
Spectrum hasn't changed much since 1996. It's definitely a dive bar. But it's a quality one. I started out here with one glass of Heineken on draft ($3.50). Then I switched to a beer I nearly never have, Miller Genuine Draft on draft (Turn Turn off off that that echo echo.) ($2.50). Spectrum doesn't have Old Style or Pabst Blue Ribbon. It *does* have some interesting eastern European beers in bottles if you want to go that route. There is a digital juke box, but it's usually off in favor of XM Satellite Radio. (I can't get the hang of digital juke boxes. I like to learn what the juke box has, scrawl down some selections, go back to my bar stool, and marshall my playlist.) It has DirecTV dbs, but it does not subscribe to any sports packages.
I had a nice time this Thursday, even though I didn't notice anyone from Pegasus visiting here afterward. [I made my cameo appearance on the rooftop at Pegasus telling all the Yelpers there that I was going over to Spectrum.]
The rating was pushed up to four stars due to when the N.B.A. draft finished, and the women's basketball game finally ended on espn2 [it went triple overtime]; someone erroneously turned off the one television set which then showed the Thursday night Major League Soccer game on espn2. I asked my bartender if it could please turn the soccer game back on. The manager of the venue learned of my query, and he put the soccer game on not just that television set, but two others. Thirty minutes later, somebody made fresh (free) popcorn.
[Turning it back on paid off as well. SportsCenter premiered on espn2 due to the N.B.A. draft, and when that ended, that afternoon's Euro 2008 semi-final was reshown.] I left here at 11:20 pm.

Transit options: Take the Blue Line "L" to UIC / Halsted. Walk three blocks north. The #126 Jackson quits at midnight (11:00 pm weekends). The #8 Halsted quits at 1:15 am northbound.