Fun in the wind

We spent the weekend in Chicago and it was worth every minute and every cent. Got to town at 5 p.m. Friday, checking into, of all places, The Drake (Kerry scored it for $99 from hotwire.com).

Up front, we decided that staying downtown in Chicago would probably no longer be an option for us. It was an ubelievable opportunity for us to lodge at an address as opulent as The Drake. It was a memorable experience in luxury accommodations. But downtown, the top of Michigan Avenue is mainly ubertourists and rich fucks, saturated with shops belonging to retailers with whom I have no business establishing a consumer-based relationship — not just socioeconomically, but principally. Saks, Tiffany, Nieman Marcus, Bulgari, Zegna, Ferragamo, Cartier, the whole deal, the Romper Room of the rich. Not my bag, not my income, surely not my size (“hey buddy, got this fancy man blouse in a double-X?”) and, most importantly, not my style (“what the fuck you mean I leave the cuffs opened?”). Sorry, I like my soup warm and my cuffs closed. But, we had a choice room at a legendary hotel and felt very much at home there. And Kerry, well-versed in the Chicago terrain, knew precisely how to make a weekend out of it. After hawing about where to eat dinner Friday night, I take the weekend’s only credit by suggesting Bandera, a pleasantly sultry bar/restaurant playing host to some of Michigan’s finest visitors from the Burke posse. Apparently, happy hours were legendary there back in the mid- to late-90s, or as Parker put it, “drinking on Doughtery’s sales nickel when none of the rest of us had nickels of our own.” Dinner was sublime Friday night, nearly perfect to be honest — a couple of quick martinis, followed by ribs for Kerry and whitefish for me. The kitchen made quick and perfect work of the whole deal, ushering a couple of plates of the best goddamn food either one of us have had in a long time.

Especially noteworthy was that the food came piping hot, which is a lost art in restaurating these days. Cooks — oh, sorry, chefs, the kitchen artists, or whatever it is they’re going by these days (I’ve always just internally identified them simply as the guys making my fucking food, and leave it at that) seem to take their time getting your hard-earned meal to you. This was hot, fresh and done perfectly. Another bonus was the style-y little jazz trio kind of kicking it behind us

Talented, but subtle, playing loud enough to hear them, while flexing their skills, without overdoing it.

We bolted from there, heading to the Billy Goat Tavern, an oasis of a bar that is part gimmick, part blue-collar-meets-white collar. It’s about three-fold in this place. First, and probably most noteworthy for the masses, is that this is the little restaurant that John Belushi made famous on Saturday Night Live with the “cheeborger, cheeborger” skit.

It’s been below Michigan Avenue forever and they still do that shtick to this day. Secondly, it is named after and is the source of that Chicago Cubs goat curse theory. The guy who owns this place is, I think, the kid of the guy who had the goat. And what is it anyway, with Chicago and its animal legends? Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Great Chicago Fire, Bill Sianis’ goat Murphy cursing the Cubs? But third, and probably most importantly, Billy Goat’s is the official hangout of Chicago’s newspaper men and women. Mike Royko columns dot the walls ,

while reporters, photographers, managers, design people and even interns drink and unwind. It felt a lot like a version of Detroit’s Anchor Bar, before it moved to the other side of the block. I had a wordless feeling of familiarity and comfort in this place. It smelled like newspaper people. If City Chicken has a “kind,” that is it.

We cut out of there to Bar Louie, but it was packed, so we went to some lame bar down the street. The music there was horrible, so we figured since we were being so cheesey, we went to some meathead/shithead bars on Division, with names like Bootleggers. It actually worked out well. We wanted a place to sit and talk and have some drinks. All of the trendy places were packed with fuckers, so we headed to Dorktown We ended the night at Mrs. Parks for a late burger and a cocktail. I got this shot of the Hancock Tower. Man, that thing is high.

I like the city

Little is more precious than waking up on that first Saturday of a vacation or getaway, even if it is for only a couple of days. Simply removing yourself completely and briefly from the constant bullshit that composes our day-to-days. I woke up in the best mood. We had Tempo for breakfast and caught a bus up to the northern part of town, which is probably where we’ll be staying from now on. It’s a little more real in those parts, in terms of the way people look and behave. Visited a couple of stores, including The Alley, and Reckless Records, where we both hooked ourselves up with some new music. We have little in the way of indie record stores near where I live, where we once had two — Repeat the Beat and Off The Record. OTR spawned Wendell’s when it closed, but that shop is now out of business. Reckless Records is a good place. Unpretentious staff, comprehensive selection, the whole deal.

Great stores, especially The Alley, but I saw something there that nearly incited a gag reflex. It was this guy.

He actually looks like a woman I work with, but that’s not the problem. It’s those pants. Look at him! Why? Why would anybody make their pant legs look like that and the go out in public? Here, look again.

I mean, shit, I’m the last person to talk, I’m as misshapen as they come, but damn dude.

Kerry scored some bomb shit for the house at this antique store going out of business.

Down the street, she pointed out a bar, the L & L Tavern, a gin mill of dive proportions. It turned out to the best stop of the weekend. Empty at 2 p.m., we met the bartender Scott. We sat for our first round, where he crafted a hand-mixed Bloody Mary.
(complete with horseradish made and bottled by a regular), and in a few minutes in walks to the bar quite a sight. This older gent creeps in, bent far down over walker, but he swings the door over, stops the door on the back-swing with his apparatus, and then takes about 10 minutes to get in through the door, looking up and smiling every now and then. He sits down at the end of the bar, looking about 87,000 years old and taking nearly that long to make it through the door and to his seat.

In the next hour and a half, we make small talk, but not because he’s some pushy old drunk, but because we’re floored by how cool-looking this old man is — full head of silver hair, about 5 feet tall, fresh and clean slacks, big suspenders and a tucked-in flannel shirt. He looked charming and smart, and we shot this shit with this guy for a while. He moved to Chicago in 1953, from Madison, Wisconsin.

He earned his degree in English from Wisconsin and then off to Montana to get his master’s. “It was the biggest mistake of my life,” he said of going to that school. “I came back to Lacrosse, and vowed I’d never cross the Mississippi again,” he said. “I even got on my knees and kissed the ground.” He moved to Chicago for one reason, he told us, and that was because the city had the only music series devoted entirely to piano music. So he moved here in ’53 and hasn’t lived anywhere else. He lives in an apartment on LaSalle downtown, where the tenants are mainly Ukrainian. He’s a total theater head and made his living as, of all things, an editor. With that line of work, it’s not at all shocking that he’s ended up an old man at the end of the bar! Anyway, he was a very nice man. His name was Earl.

We got something quick to eat after visiting one of Kerry’s old addresses.

We went back to the room, napped for a second, had something quick to eat and then met a bunch of her friends for drinks and dinner. Her friends are a great bunch of people, and they’ve kind of adopted me in a surrogate form. The root of my respect for them is that they’ve all been very nice to me, a benchmark I pretty much apply to everyone. We met at this place called the Blue Line, before heading to Chicago’s Little Italy for dinner at Mia’s.

We got a little loopy and decided to visit the Bucktown Pub for more drinks (I swear, we did a LOT of drinking this weekend).

There was this amazing-looking church down the street, Resurrection Something Or Other.

Later in the night, around 12:30-ish, this guy walks in with a cooler and is selling fresh tamales. Jeff bought a big bag of them, which he proceeded to rub on the back of his wife’s neck. I thought it was hilarious, actually.

We headed back home where I slept hard in a soft bed. We woke up, lunched at the Mity Nice Grill, before I dropped Kerry off at Jason and Laura’s, where she would stay the night before work-related activity Monday and Tuesday. I drove home in four hours flat.