LOGAN SQUARE — While Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas were battling it out in the polls Tuesday, outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot was watching the results roll in at arcade beer bar Emporium Logan Square.
Lightfoot and a small group of people were spotted Tuesday evening at Emporium, 2363 N. Milwaukee Ave., having what appeared to be “serious” conversations while checking their phones, said Mylo Reyes, a popular local TikTok-er who was at Emporium at the time.
After being denied a sanctioned selfie with Lightfoot, Reyes, a 30-year-old West Town resident, ended up snapping a covert photo that shows the mayor and a few others sitting at one of Emporium’s long tables talking over beer.
Lightfoot’s team confirmed she was at the bar — and said she had a Pony Pils beer from Half Acre.
“They were all glued to their phones and staring down at them,” Reyes said. “The entire time I was there, they were talking pretty seriously, it looked like, not even a lot of gesturing in conversation, just a nod here and there.”
Reyes said Lightfoot and her group mainly hung out at their table and didn’t play any of the arcade games or go up to the bar for more drinks. But he said Lightfoot’s security detail made their presence known.
“If anyone walked around too fast, their backs would straighten up,” he said. “This one [security guard] was carrying an umbrella and walking around and I was like, ‘Is that a secret weapon?'”
Reyes said he overheard other people at the bar whispering that Lightfoot was there, but it seemed like most people carried on like normal.
Before Lightfoot was elected, she said Emporium is her favorite bar in Logan Square, where she lives with her wife and daughter. She previously told Block Club she goes for the long beer list — not the arcade games.
“I’m a beer drinker. [Emporium has] a smorgasbord of beers. That, to me, is delightful,” she said in 2019. She also likes the food truck options.
Lightfoot came in third place in the Feb. 28 election and did not advance to the April 4 runoff.
Johnson, a Cook County Commissioner with heavy backing from the Chicago Teachers Union, will be Chicago’s next mayor after he won the runoff Tuesday. Johnson defeated former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas.
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