Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap & Liquor Store Where else can a Nobel laureate in economics hoist a few with both a University of Chicago student studying Marx and a blue-collar South Sider? Since 1948, this 55th Street institution has served both the likes of Saul Bellow and Margaret Mead as well as Hyde Park lifers who come to soak up the stimulating atmosphere that can mirror a populist Algonquin Round Table. Although shined up a bit when renovated in 2000 after owner Jimmy Wilson’s death a year earlier, “Jimmy’s” is still the smoky sticky hole-in-the-wall of legend.
