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Review Mon Aug 13 2007
To Plan B or Not to Plan B
Let me preface this by saying, I'm not a club person. I'm a bar person. A cheese fries and PBR on tap person. A low-enough volume to hear my friends talking person. So it was probably inevitable that I would not be swept off my feet by Plan B, a new snack-drink-and-shake-it shack just north of the Milwaukee six points. But let me just say for the record: swept, I was not.
Plan B Kitchen and Bar puns on being your second-choice destination if the other Wicker Park clubs are too packed, though the name also has a sort of icky morning-after birth control resonance to it. The place's promises fancy drinks (alcoholic snow cones? shut up!) and an interesting but accessible menu ("lollipop" chicken wings, chocolate fondue), but the website, with its pumping club soundtrack and shimmying Flash-based bartendress, is kind of indicative of the entire experience of the place: clever and attractive enough on the surface, but disappointingly shallow and just a touch sad when you dig a little deeper. More thoughts below the fold.
Maybe it was because we went after the kitchen had closed. Maybe it was because the bartenders had given up on creativity and were just waging a war of attrition with their thirsty patrons (I asked for a "girly shot" and got something called a Scooby Snack, which seemed to just be Watermelon Pucker with a splash of vodka -- not too girly, not too good). Maybe it was because a tank top felt under-dressed (read, under-exposed). Maybe it's just me. But any place that decorates with a combination of embossed wallpaper and stripper poles just seems tacky at best, and downright demeaning at worst. Alcoholic snow cones or no.
So I don't know. Go for the dancing (but not the DJ, who didn't seem to have the patience to see a sample through its chorus). Go for the drinks (but not that damn Scooby Snack). Go to see and be seen (but make sure you're showing off whatever it is you want people to see). Go if there's no where else to go, maybe. But I don't think I'll be coming with you.
Nilay from Transmission is not impressed by the talent on the dance floor.
