Photo : Netflix

Pop-up bars usually try to recreate fun stuff from pop culture that, I don’t know, people actually enjoy. The A.V. Club’s Danette Chavez and I recently visited a Sex And The City pop-up bar, which featured lots of character-based cocktails (Carrie’s Cosmos, natch), as well as TV screens running episodes, and large cutouts to take selfies with. I suppose that the recent Saved By The Bell and 90210 Peach Pit After Dark pop-ups (How did I miss that one?) were similar, just fun ways for fans to re-visit nostalgic favorites and drink cocktails.


So this latest announcement seems like a schadenfreude stumper: RedEye reports that from May 3 to May 19, the Lincoln Park arcade bar Replay “will fashion itself after what Fyre Festival was supposed to be.” The bar’s “island paradise” will feature “palm trees, rental cabanas, relief tents, beach chairs and even a fire pit,” which, for those of us who have seen the Netflix and/or Hulu documentaries based on the fraudulent debacle, sounds a lot fancier than the real event. Although this part sounds familiar: “VIP tents and villas will be available for group rentals at $50.”

The bar’s themed cocktail menu includes tropical drinks like Pineapple Upside Down Martini, Hibiscus Margarita, Frozen Rum Runner, and Andy’s Bahamian Blow Job Shot, a harsh nod to the doc’s most sympathetic character, Andy King, who almost performed a sexual favor to get water for the doomed festival. Also on the menu is the event’s much-mocked “gourmet cheese sandwiches.”


I dunno. While non-VIP admission to the bar is free (tickets for a DJ’ed opening-night party are $20, which includes “one fish-bowl cocktail”), I can’t imagine the point of hunting down the chance to re-live, or even make fun of, one of the most botched festivals of all time. Should you have to bring in your own bar stool or stay in a first-aid tent to make the experience all the more authentic? And the Blow Job Shot makes this an even easier event to pass up.