Liar’s Club is a rock and punk bar and live music venue at 1665 West Fullerton Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. Established in 1995 by Herb Rosen, a musician associated with Chicago punk bands Rights of the Accused and the Beer Nuts, the bar occupies a narrow two-storey building in the Lincoln Park neighbourhood. The premises had previously operated as River East before becoming Liar’s Club and developing into a regular gathering place for Chicago’s punk, rock and alternative music scenes.

The programme includes live bands and DJ nights, with punk rock, garage rock and hard rock forming the core of the music. Metal also appears occasionally among the underground bookings. The small performance area places bands only a short distance from the audience, giving concerts a particularly close club atmosphere.

From the street, the building has a relatively plain yellow-brick exterior with barred windows and a small circular Liar’s Club sign. Inside, it is considerably more distinctive, with red lighting, black ceilings, red upholstered walls and a dense mixture of posters, rock memorabilia and miscellaneous decorations.

Kiss memorabilia is particularly prominent, including figurines, posters and a Kiss pinball machine. Other unusual details include lamps made from traditional fez hats. The ground floor contains the main bar and performance area, while a staircase leads to an upstairs room with additional seating, another bar and a pool table.

The Kiss connection also extends to one of the bar’s longest-running traditions, the annual Kiss Karaoke Kontest. Participants dress as members of the band and perform Kiss songs, with makeup artists sometimes helping contestants recreate the familiar stage characters.

The building has a considerably darker history dating from before Liar’s Club. In April 1986, Frank Hansen, who operated the previous bar with his wife Julia, murdered her with an axe in their third-floor apartment. He was convicted of the killing in 1988. The murder later became part of the building’s local folklore, with employees and regulars reporting unexplained incidents and alleged sightings of Julia’s ghost. Herb Rosen has spoken about some of these stories in interviews, and the building has subsequently appeared on Chicago ghost tours.

ADDRESS:
1665 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60614, USA

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