Spaghetti wrestling, anyone?!

Friday night. Some people go to nightclubs, some go bowling and I go to a bar where girls from the Chicago Outfit roller derby team slam each other into a kiddie blow-up pool full of spaghetti (sauce included!).

My Friday night kicked off with watching my boyfriend and his basketball team, the Rockhammer (sponsored by Mystic Celt in Lakeview), play against another team in Southport.

I took a comfy seat on a stack of gymnastic mats, flipped through my TimeOut Chicago to see what concerts were coming up in the spring and watched the game from a safe distance (a fear of mine is getting hit in the nose with a ball Marsha Brady-style).

After the Rockhammers *cough* lost *cough*, Tim and I made our way back to his place to get ready and eventually back out to make our way to North and Clybourn to get to the gnarly punk bar, Exit, to watch the Chicago Outfit do their thing in pasta.

If you have never been to Exit, or if you are tired of the same old bar scene, you have got to break out your leather chaps, slap on some fake tattoos and ride your motorcycle to the bar, asap.

When you step inside, a grizzly man slouching on a gutted motorcycle will check your ID to make sure you are of age and then you will be consumed by a place where every stripper would feel at home. Red lights blaze from scrap-metal chandaliers and ornamental gas masks line the back of the bar, lit from the inside like apocalyptic jack-o-lanterns.

The whole place has a hellfire aesthetic, complete with painted flames, jagged aluminium cut-outs of skulls and gnarled motorcycles that look as though they have survived some pretty intense wrecks. Classic portraits of pretty women on hyper-masculine motorcycles stud the walls, and in a rather not-so-surprising find, a stripper pole is toward the back of the first floor, just begging to be used (or was that the creepy group of middle-aged men who were begging for some girl to use it?).

The draught beer comprises your standard selection: Blue Moon, Harp, Bass, Stella, Guinness, Old Style, PBR, Miller Lite and Hardcore cider rounding out the bunch. But let’s be honest: You are not here because of the classy and rare beer. You are here to get drunk and have a good time.

For the most part, it was a sausagefest. The clientele was mostly male and was surprisingly clean-shaven and put-together for such a gritty, bad-ass looking place. It was not until the Chicago Outfit and Co. started pouring in that the bar got a well-needed injection of hardcore estrogen.

Yes, I did say hardcore.

Women clad in short shorts and thick, black eyeliner carried overstuffed bags of cooked pasta into the club and dumped it into the kiddie pool you see to the right. When Tim and I walked upstairs to the second bar in the club, the pungent smell of warm, aging spaghetti nearly knocked us off our feet. Just when I thought the acrid scent could not get any worse, a few girls dumped some bottles of sauce into the mix, filling the room with a sweet and stale scent.

Two by two, the Chicago Outfit girls were pitted against each other and wrestled on their knees in the pasta. The whole scene was rather amusing, though it was kinda gross how some men hawkishly perched themselves by the pool and wait to take pictures until the women were in the most vulnerable positions. Come on, guys!

The women of the Chicago Outfit proved that hotties can also be tough and saucy (no pun intended!)

I am not sure how much money the team raked in, but the turn out was huge and everyone seemed to be having a great time. If you are sore you missed it, then be sure to watch the girls in action. More information about their schedule can be found on their MySpace website!

It is with this that I leave you with a video of the shenanigans…so you can feel like you were there!

Dev xx