Heavy-Metal Poisoning
The menu features such “hardcore” items as the “Death Sentence,” a bacon double-cheeseburger with caramelized onions, and the “Prison Shank,” a series of “succulent marinated steak skewers” with a cucumber salad on the side. Alas: No finger bowls.
The “virtual” and the “actual” are mortal enemies. If I strap on special glasses, I may feel like I’m flying, but I’ll never enjoy any such superpower in my everyday life. Gargantuan, brawny, axe-handy avatars in the World of Warcraft are actually maneuvered by skinny fourteen-year-olds: although masters of the universe in their virtual realm, these adolescents are otherwise masters of their basement, maybe, and that’s all. An emphatic disconnect, no matter how supposedly “real” a virtual experience feels, will always divide these two types of experience.
What does this have to do with The Lockdown, a new bar and grill that recently opened on the southwest corner of Western and Cortez? In relation to their “bar-and-grill” classification, very little. The establishment serves food, and it features an extensive beer list.
But then there is the matter of the fourteen plasma televisions encircling the place, the same music DVD playing on each, blasting sound from every direction, always something heavy, almost always something metal. And there is also the fog machine, every hour on the hour showering piping-hot steam into the bar area.
This is exactly what the owners of The Lockdown wanted us to feel: [...] as though [we] are in the sweating, stinking crowd at an Iron Maiden concert.
Outside, flashes of color on the foggy windows showed the presence of TVs but not the overwhelming number of them, and so The Lockdown appeared a good place to catch a basketball game while eating a plate of chicken wings. The only problem with this assumption, as we discovered upon entering, was that each TV showed the Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath sans Ozzy, with Ronnie James Dio) live-concert DVD, from 2006, as the bar’s P.A. blared the audio.
At times during our first round, we almost felt as though we were attending the concert, watching Dio spin around on the stage, red lights engulfing our periphery, thumping bass and scorching guitar shattering our eardrums. This is exactly what the owners of The Lockdown wanted us to feel: their new establishment is set up to be, and is advertised on their website as, a “Virtual Venue”—the basic premise being that customers will feel as though they are in the sweating, stinking crowd at an Iron Maiden concert, moments away from being thrown into the pit and then hoisted aloft to surf the crowd.
Yet there is no possibility of being thrown into a frothing mosh pit at The Lockdown, because – in every aspect other than the movies playing on the TVs, the sound emanating from the speakers, and that godforsaken fog machine – it is actually a rather genteel place. Every beer is at least four dollars (except the Miller Lite and the Pabst). They serve Delirium, Duvel, and the latest Goose Island seasonal, as well as a wide array of top-shelf liquors. Meanwhile, the menu features such “hardcore” items as the “Death Sentence,” a bacon double-cheeseburger with caramelized onions, and the “Prison Shank,” a series of “succulent marinated steak skewers” – as the menu describes them – with a cucumber salad on the side. My favorite name-dish combo was the “Smash and Grab,” a chicken club with arugula, plum tomatoes, and a creamy caper aioli sauce (A close second was “Identity Theft,” a tempura fried Japanese Eggplant sandwich with marinara sauce). Alas: No finger bowls.
