Replay Lincoln Park is a Chicago bar that is filled with vintage arcade games, has a decent list of craft brews, and frequently hosts pop-ups dedicated to everything from Star Wars to Rick & Morty. Until this week, the most controversial aspect might be that all of the Legendaries weren’t included among the decorations in its Pokemon-themed back room.
And then its owner made a sort-of tongue-in-cheek post on Facebook announcing that the bar would be banning face tattoos and MAGA hats. Now, people who won’t ever get closer to Chicago than singing “You’re the Inspiration” are pissed, inundating the joint with one-star reviews, posting pictures of mice they “saw” during their imaginary visits and complaining about the food—which Replay doesn’t even serve.
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This all started on Saturday, when Replay’s owner Mark Kwiatkowski posted that it was implementing a new dress code, in order to maintain a “classy environment” in the bar. “No face tattoos, no specific hats, please see below,” it wrote, just above a picture of a Make America Great Again hat. “Let’s keep it classy, Chicago.”
“I was just frustrated and I just kind of wanted to make somewhat of a statement,” he told NBC 5. “I felt like we did have an opportunity to say something that might draw some attention to this ugliness.”
Initially, the comments surrounding the post were friendly—the bar quickly changed its face tattoo to restrict only “gang face tats”—and one customer was concerned that he might not be permitted in with a Chicago White Sox hat. Kwiatkowski joked that MAGA hats would be allowed “with extreme vetting,” before getting serious and explaining that he took issue with the administration’s current policy of separating families at the border. Although there were some complaints, it was banter that was mostly interpreted as banter—at least until some conservative websites learned about it.
“You should be promoting these hats you idiots,” one man who lives in Canada wrote. “Who cleans the bathrooms in this place? Illegals?” a New York resident added. The discourse has gotten bleak, with threats, personal attacks and completely fabricated reviews. And one critical thinker mistakenly interpreted the fact that the bar was “Closed Now”—at 11:30 AM—to mean that it had “closed” its Facebook reviews.
Regardless, Kwiatkowski says he doesn’t have any regrets about his post. “I should have probably thought it through a little bit more,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “I didn’t think it would get the kind of reaction that it has gotten, but we’re going to make something good out of it.” He clarified that no, he wasn’t seriously banning MAGA hats, but if someone wearing one came into the bar, he’d “engage them into conversation.” (Good luck with that, dude.)
He’s also reached out to the other person who might understand what he’s dealing with: the owner of the Red Hen, the Virginia restaurant that asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave. “We’ve been getting a lot more interactions here on Facebook since we decided to disallow MAGA hats and we’re not sure how to deal with it,” Kwiatkowski wrote yesterday. “Hey Red Hen, how are y’all handling it?”
He ended that sentence with four ROFL emoji. There are at least a half-dozen others that would’ve worked too.
