It was a gut punch for Lakeview. When the news broke in 2020 that Southport Lanes & Billiards was closing its doors after nearly a century, people didn't just lose a bar. They lost a time machine. Most modern bowling alleys feel like a fever dream of neon LED lights, sticky plastic floors, and deafening pop music. But Southport Lanes was different. It smelled like old wood and decades of spilled beer. It was one of the last places in America where you could actually hear the pins rattle because there wasn't a massive machine screaming in the background to reset them.
You’ve probably seen the "hand-set" sign a thousand times if you lived in Chicago. Honestly, it was the soul of the place.
The Weird History of a Schlitz Tied House
Before it was a bowling alley, it was a "tied house." If you aren't a beer nerd or a local historian, that basically means it was a saloon built and owned by a specific brewery—in this case, Schlitz. Built around 1900, the building at 3325 N. Southport Ave. was part of a massive push by breweries to control the market. You drank Schlitz, or you drank nothing. The architecture still screams that history. Look at the front of the building even today; you can see the original Schlitz globes carved into the stone. It’s a beautiful, stubborn reminder of a time when the neighborhood was more German immigrant and less high-end Lululemon.
Then came Prohibition.
A lot of these saloons just died off, but Southport Lanes was crafty. It changed its name from The Southport Schlitz Tied House to Southport Lanes and added the bowling component in 1922. Legend has it—and local historians like those at the Chicago History Museum have backed this up—that the upstairs served as a bit of a local secret. There were rumors of a brothel and a gambling den. It was the 1920s in Chicago; if a bar wasn't doing something illegal, was it even a bar?
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The Last of the Human Pinsetters
This is what people actually came for. While the rest of the world moved to Brunswick mechanical pinsetters in the 1950s, Southport Lanes just... didn't. They kept the four lanes manual.
Being a pinboy there was a rite of passage. You sat on a small wooden perch above the pins, feet tucked up so they didn't get shattered by a 16-pound ball. When a bowler knocked them down, you jumped down, cleared the deadwood, and shoved the pins back into the rack by hand. It was fast. It was dangerous. It was incredibly loud.
You’d tip the pinboys by rolling a dollar bill into the thumb hole of your ball. If you were a jerk or didn't tip, don't be surprised if your pins were set slightly "off" or if the pinboy took their sweet time getting back to their seat. It created this weird, intimate connection between the athlete and the worker that just doesn't exist anywhere else in modern sports. You weren't playing against a machine; you were playing with a human being who was probably sweating and hoping you didn't throw a gutter ball that ricocheted into their shins.
Why the Billiards Side Mattered Just as Much
Everyone talks about the bowling, but the "Billiards" part of the name wasn't just flavor text. The pool room was cavernous and serious. While the front bar was often packed with Wrigleyville overflow and tourists, the back rooms felt like a sanctuary. The tables were high-quality, the felt was well-maintained, and the light was always dim enough to make you feel like you were in a noir film.
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It was one of those rare spots where you could have a bachelor party at one lane and a quiet, intense game of 8-ball happening twenty feet away. The mix of people was what made it Chicago. You’d have old-timers who had been coming since the 60s sitting next to DePaul students who were just there because their dad told them the beer was cold.
The Real Reason It Closed (It Wasn't Just the Pandemic)
Look, 2020 was the final nail in the coffin, but the struggle of Southport Lanes & Billiards was a long time coming. Running a business with hand-set pins is a logistical nightmare. You have to find people willing to do that back-breaking labor for relatively low pay. You have to maintain 100-year-old wood that warps and splinters.
The owner, Steve Soble, was pretty transparent about it. The margins in the restaurant business are razor-thin, and when you add the overhead of a historic building and a niche sport, the math stops making sense. When the city shut down indoor dining and congregating, the business model evaporated. You can't do "curbside bowling."
There was a collective mourning in the city. When the fixtures went up for auction, people scrambled to buy pieces of the bar, the signage, anything to keep a piece of that history. It felt like the "gentrification" of the Southport Corridor had finally swallowed its last bit of grit. Today, that area is filled with Amazon Books (which also closed), high-end boutiques, and expensive condos. The rugged, beer-soaked legacy of a tied house just didn't fit the new aesthetic.
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The Legacy Left Behind
Even though you can’t bowl there tonight, the impact of Southport Lanes remains a benchmark for what a "neighborhood" spot should be. It taught us that:
- Efficiency isn't everything. Mechanical pinsetters are faster, sure, but they have no soul.
- History is tangible. You could touch the history in those walls.
- Community happens in the gaps. The conversations held while waiting for a pinboy to reset the rack were often better than the game itself.
If you’re looking for a similar vibe today, you’re going to have to hunt for it. Timber Lanes on Irving Park Road still has that old-school feel, though the pins are mechanical. Seven Ten Lanes in Hyde Park tries to capture some of that wood-and-iron aesthetic. But honestly? Nothing quite replaces the sound of a human being jumping onto a wooden deck after you hit a strike.
How to Find the "Real" Chicago Now
If you want to experience the spirit of Southport Lanes & Billiards, you have to look for the remaining Schlitz Tied Houses. Some are still standing and serving.
- Schuba’s Tavern: Another former tied house with incredible woodwork and a legendary music room.
- Southport & Irving (SIP): While the business changed, the bones of the neighborhood's history are still there.
- The Native: A Logan Square spot that keeps the dive-bar-meets-community-hub energy alive.
The best thing you can do to honor the memory of places like Southport Lanes is to stop going to the corporate "luxury" bowling alleys with the $15 sliders and the strobe lights. Go find the place with the slightly crooked floor, the bartender who has worked there since the Bush administration, and a draft list that includes a cheap domestic lager.
Support the places that are "inefficient." Those are the ones that actually matter. When the last of the hand-set lanes disappear, we don't just lose a game; we lose a connection to the people who built the city. Next time you're on the North Side, walk past 3325 N. Southport. Look up at those Schlitz globes. They’re still there, watching the neighborhood change, reminding us that for a hundred years, this was the coolest place in town.