From the main floor, you can also move straight ahead into the cheeseball retro “cabaret” on the main floor for your fix of 70s-90s music and hyperactive DJ-emcees that encourage the weak to engage in “offbeat contests.” You can chill out by heading into the plush lounge behind the first floor’s main bar. Fog Hogs and lasers are the effects of choice up here. From here, you have an important choice to make: where to explore? You can head up the grand staircase on your right to the techno/alternative dance floor upstairs (Latin on Thursdays) with third and fourth floor balconies, all of which is called “Club X” and will cost you an additional $5-15 cover charge. Once you’re passed through the revolving door, you’ll find a coatcheck on your right-hand a large room with a smattering of cocktail tables and a bar that runs along the south wall. After you make your way through the once-over/carding process and fork over your $10-20 cover charge to the doormen, look up and note the stately arched doorway, framed by winged gargoyles and with “Chicago Historical Society” chiseled into it, which was the organization’s original name prior to its re-branding into the Chicago History Museum to avoid being perceived as old and stodgy with selective membership (which happens to be the opposite of Excalibur Nightclub).
#Xcalibur chicago il code#
Dress code alert: even if you’ve heard Excalibur is cheesy, they still adhere to a “no tennis shoes, no jerseys, and no baseball hats” policy and, if your shirt doesn’t have a collar or you’re wearing baggy hip-hop pants, expect to receive extra scrutiny. The entrance to Excalibur is along Dearborn and, if you get there before 11:00pm (ish) you’ll avoid the inevitable queue that stretches down the block later as the night wears on. Not bad for an establishment that many decry as a cheesy club version of Medieval Times.Įxcalibur is hard to miss: it’s the enormous, Gothic graystone located at the northwest corner of Dearborn & Ontario, adjacent to Vision Nightclub (once Aura and The Dome Room, where yours truly used to get in underage with a fake ID), and just steps from one of our favorites, the Redhead Piano Bar.
#Xcalibur chicago il license#
With its three levels and 60,000 square feet of adult entertainment, its late-night license and its intriguing history, Excalibur Nightclub is one of the largest nightclubs in the city and is going as strong now as it did when it opened in 1989. The building housing the nightclub dates back to the late 1800s and was the original location of the Chicago History Museum. Just the words “Excalibur Nightclub” send shivers up and down the spine of many who know it… and it’s haunted.