Bottomless Brunch, Drag & Karaoke in the Rain

Five picks for a rainy July 3 and the Independence Day weekend ahead — from a Lakeview tiki bar to a closing-soon David Byrne experience to a Thursday art lecture worth the trip.

By Raj Singh · Published July 3, 2026.

Chicago wakes up on July 3 under heavy skies — 86°F with a 58% chance of rain through the afternoon and showers forecast through the weekend. It's the eve of Independence Day, CPL branches are closed for the holiday, and several of our browser-based scrapers went down this run, leaving the pool thinner than usual. What made it through: a Lakeview tiki bar doing the holiday weekend right, an immersive experience with nine days left in its run, two solid Fourth of July options, and an art lecture at the Art Institute worth putting on the calendar.

FRIDAY, JULY 3

Happy Hour + Karaoke @ Trader Todd's

Trader Todd's runs happy hour from 5–7pm CDT tonight — half-off tiki drinks, $1 pizza slices with any beverage. The karaoke machine doesn't get switched off at 7; it runs until close, which is how a single-drink plan becomes a full Friday night without anyone agreeing to it in advance. On a pre-July 4th Friday in Lakeview East, the bar fills in early and the crowd arrives in holiday mode.

The bar is unapologetically tropical — strong drinks in novelty cups, a room full of people who know all the words to their songs, and a cheerful commitment to the tiki bit that makes it exactly the right energy for a holiday weekend Friday. It's a Lakeview East institution that doesn't try too hard and delivers every time.

Happy hour 5–7pm CDT, no cover. $1 pizza slices with any drink purchase. Karaoke continues after. With heavy rain in the forecast today (86°F, 58% precip), the indoor plan is the right one. Check the Lakeview East Chamber link above for the current address.

Theater of the Mind @ Reid Murdoch Building

Theater of the Mind closes July 12 — nine days from today. If it's been on your radar, today's rain is the right push. Co-created by David Byrne and artist Mala Gaonkar and directed by Andrew Scoville, the immersive experience at the Reid Murdoch Building runs multiple shows daily and centers on a single question the creators put in all caps: IT'S ALL INSIDE YOUR HEAD. BUT IS ANY OF IT REAL? It's the kind of thing you want to experience without reading too much about first.

The Reid Murdoch Center at 333 N LaSalle is a 1913 building on the Chicago River — good bones for an experience designed to mess with your perception of what's real. The building itself is worth the trip. What happens inside runs about 75 minutes and leaves most people with different questions than the ones they arrived with.

Multiple showtimes daily through July 12. Tickets at TheateroftheMindChicago.com. 333 N LaSalle, Chicago. Fully indoors — a strong fit for a rainy afternoon.

SATURDAY, JULY 4

Bottomless Brunch @ The River Kitchen and Bar

The River Kitchen and Bar does bottomless brunch every Saturday — $39.95 flat for four hours of mimosas, Bloody Marys, and domestic beers with one brunch item included. On the Fourth of July, that's a format you can build an entire afternoon around. Runs 11am to 3pm CDT, which leaves real time to get to the lakefront before the fireworks.

Lakeview East is a good home base for a July 4th Saturday — close to the lakefront, holiday-spirited without being gridlocked the way Navy Pier and the Loop get. By 3pm you're in position to drift wherever the evening takes you. July 4 brings showers (78°F, 51% precip), so an extended indoor brunch is the sensible anchor for the holiday.

July 4, 11am–3pm CDT, $39.95 per person. The River Kitchen and Bar, Lakeview East — click through the chamber link above for the current address.

Draglicious

After the fireworks, Draglicious takes the stage in Lakeview East — 9 to 11pm CDT on the Fourth. Queens, glitz, and glam in the Boystown-adjacent neighborhood. On a July 4th Saturday, the bar streets in this part of Lakeview are already running at full speed; the drag show is the logical continuation of that energy rather than a detour from it.

Lakeview on the Fourth runs late. The lakefront fireworks draw the crowd out and the neighborhood bars absorb the return. A drag show at 9pm is timed well for anyone who's spent the afternoon at brunch and the early evening watching the sky over the lake.

9–11pm CDT, July 4. Venue is a Lakeview East bar — click through the chamber link for the address.

ON THE HORIZON

Lecture: Figuring Gender in de Kooning @ AIC Fullerton Hall

On July 9, scholar Christa Noel Robbins presents at AIC's Fullerton Hall on how gender is destabilized in de Kooning's paintings and drawings — what she describes as 'a deeply ambivalent expression that can be likened to one's own conflicted experience of inhabiting gender.' The lecture draws from the context of the Lucas Samaras exhibition and extends into de Kooning's figurative work, which has made people uncomfortable in productive ways since the 1950s.

The Women series in particular has been debated for decades — expressionist force versus something more unsettling. Robbins doesn't resolve the question but holds it open in a way that gives you new language for standing in front of a canvas you've looked at before. If the AIC's permanent collection is a room you return to, this talk is calibrated for you.

Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S Michigan Ave, Loop. July 9 — check the AIC events page for the exact time and to reserve a seat. Nearest CTA: Green, Orange, or Brown Line to Adams/Wabash, then walk east on Adams to Michigan Ave.