Nightlife in Franklin

Welcome to Groupon, Cincinnati! For our inaugural deal, $12 gets you $30 worth of grub and guzzle at Slatts Pub, located at 4858 Cooper Road in downtown Blue Ash.

Vino 100’s experts selectively pluck wines from wine trees around the world and offer their bounty to discerning oenophiles for $25 a bottle or less. This Groupon is only good at the Loft Bar, which offers all of the bottles at Vino 100 (plus a $5 opening fee), as well as a rotating menu of wine flights and glasses. Scour the thoroughly vetted selection of 100 bottles for that palate-bending pinot with subtle notes of square watermelon using Vino 100’s innovative Wine Barometer. Affixed to each bottle, the Wine Barometer shows two scales, rating body from light to full and flavor from fruity to dry. Labels also include essential information about vineyard and vintage. If you take your wine with Cheetos, the Wine Barometer will advise whether your cabernet will better accompany the Original or Flamin’ Hot variety.

Bars are great spots for declaring preemptive thumb war on unsuspecting foes, so you’ll need to stockpile rations for a lengthy campaign. Sidebar’s menu offers plenty of options, including appetizers such as onion straws ($5.95), quesadilla rolls ($5.95), Juan Parnello’s queso dip ($5.95), and Sidebar wings (6 for $4.95, 12 for $8.95). Dig your mouth-shovels into a tasty burger that’s hand-pattied daily with 80/20 Black Angus beef. Burger options include the Soprano (pizza sauce, onion, and two cheese sticks, $7.50), the Devil’s Advocate (spicy ranch sauce, sliced jalapeno, and provolone, $7.25), and the Double Jeopardy (two patties with your choice of cheese, $8.50). Sandwiches such as the Roebling Reuben ($7.95) are also available, as well as 12” pizzas such as buffalo chicken ($9.95) and The Big Bill with onions, peppers, mushrooms, pepperoni, Italian sausage, and double cheese ($12.95).

See You Thursday is a winsome Chicago-style troupe of quick-witted improv artists highly experienced at taking the squishy gray clay of the everyday and whittling it into hilarious pieces of glazed and kilned laughter-vases. Over the course of an hour, SYT will perform a wide array of characters subject to audience-suggested themes without a single page of script paper, as everything said and done is an invention of the moment thanks to off-the-cuff comedic wizardry from fast minds and a shared telepathic improvisational energy shared between all of the company members.

After the doors swing open, The Big Bang regales guests with an evening of food, drink, and rambunctious sing-alongs with their crooning cronies. Slap on your party wristband, and you'll receive access to an exclusive party section or patio (weather permitting), a catered buffet, and first-round drinks for only one penny each. Once you've consumed the regulation amount of food and drinks, sing your song onstage in a lilting falsetto or river-dredging baritone. Onstage, a rotating handful of multi-talented melody makers and a team of beer-fueled patrons take turns bleating their favorite bar tunes. Dramatic ivory-fueled combat comes further supplemented by vibrating bass, explosive drums, laser-guided keytars, and other musical weaponry. They'll take any request you like, and their repertoire spans from rollicking rock classics to modern noisemakers such as hip-hop wonder and minor character-actor Xcalade. t the spacious wooden bar for the duration of the party. An energetic, round-the-clock live show encourages hip shaking and feet shuffling under the dim lighting, where the concrete floor lays beaten and defeated from years of foot poundings.

From behind a pair of baby grand pianos, two pianists take audience requests each Friday and Saturday night at The Penguin Dueling Piano Bar, urging the crowd to sing along in a display of musical showmanship. The ivory ticklers hail from all over the country and belt out popular tunes from the past 50 years that they’ve memorized by heart or tattooed on the inside of their eyelids. Onlookers seated at tables around the stage or nestled into plush couches in the lounge sip cocktails, quaff brews, and dive into salty snacks. Although the show runs on Fridays and Saturdays, drinks specials pop up each night and salsa-night Wednesdays promise copious amounts of hip shaking.