chicago: day one
the ride up to chicago (on friday) was fairly uneventful, with the exception of this sign: “Time Flies When You’re Having PORK”. Yeah. Well, that and MapQuest told us to go south on LakeShore Drive to get to Nick’s house. Yeah, that’s patently false. So, about an hour and fifteen minutes later, thanks in large part to a nice lady at the service station we stopped at, we arrived at Nick’s. We attempted to buy a map at that store, but since they only had one, the dude wouldn’t sell it to me! Uh, okay.
As if finding our way to Nick’s wasn’t hard enough — parking in Chicago (we are North of Chicago, between Loyola and Northwestern Universities) is incredibly insane. At 2 AM, there are NO spots. Hunter and I circled in a four-block pattern for 45 minutes until happening upon a couple of kid’s leaving. And that was 3 blocks away from Nick’s. Whew. All tired, we went to sleep.
Saturday (officially day one), we headed up to Michigan Avenue on the “L” (elevated train). I’d just like to point out that I love public transportation. It’s great. Completely unfeasible in Louisville, but I can dream. Michigan Avenue is huge and grandiose, and it essentially has all the shops we have in Louisville. Well, most of them, I guess. But it’s a lot of expensive shops and large buildings. We ducked into the courtyard of this old church, right across from the Sears Tower. It was cool to have this ivy-covered courtyard in the middle of this bustling downtown. Pictures were taken.
Shortly afterwards, we crossed the street and headed up the other way. We were soon following behind a tall man with a long pony tail, goatee, and camoflague shoes and hat. I sort of felt this… this “power” emanating from this man. I couldn’t really explain it at first. And then — then I realized we were in the presence of a great man. “Who?” you ask.
Ted Frickin’ Nugent. The Nuge. The Great White Hunter. Everyone on that side of the sidewalk was, for whatever reason, keeping the same beat, so it turned out that we were following His Nugeness for a couple of blocks. The Nuge, always vigilent, noted this by turning around and asking “You guys got my back, dontcha?” To which we replied with “…” (Having known that Herr Nuge had just spoken to us smaller, lesser men). Well, The Nuge eventually split away from us, and we headed to the Virgin Megastore, which was also huge and great.
I would like to point out that at this point, neither Hunter nor Nick were as convinced as I was that that was The Nuge. It was fairly safe to say that they were “doubters”. Even having had to shelve “Kill It and Grill It: Ted and Shemane Nugent’s Cookbook” nearly ever day at Barnes & Noble, they doubted this was The Nuge. Well, much debating later, this was all settled, as according to TedNugent.com, The Nuge was performing that night at Tweeter Center. Ah, sweet retribution.
Anywho, The Virgin Megastore is huge and great, and surprisingly cheap. Nick had a gift certificate from the Virgin Megastore, so browse browse, buy leave. Afterwards, we decided to head uptown to the “Boystown” area. I don’t remember the real name of that area, so “Boystown” will suffice. A pretty cool Highlands-like area with cool little shops and diners and such. We ate at Nookies Tree (the third iteration of the original Nookies), and it was a cool little diner-y joint. We checked out a couple of used record and thrift stores, and headed back home (passing Wrigley Field on the L was neat. Can’t wait until Monday!)
Later that night we headed down to the DePaul University area to catch up with Hunter’s cousin Jeremy, a political mercenary. Well, not really, but that is certainly better than “political consultant”. Anyway, he was cool. We started off at an Italian-style wine bar where none of us drank wine! So, then we headed across the street to “Kelly’s”, an Irish bar. Oh yeah. 4 pints of Guinness later and well, I don’t remember so well. Suffice it to say, I love public transportation. Ahh.
Right now, I’m eating pancakes and listening to Joey rehearsing (he’s a vocalist). It’s nice here. I think I’ll stay.
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it sounds like you all are having a fantastic time!
…is time well spent.
I agree, Ben. It’s good stuff. However, you’re not entirely correct about it being unfeasible in Lou. My best friend, Susanne, is one of the engineers working on the project. She specializes in bridges. Just a little FYI. I haven’t gotten any updates from her in a while, and it will be a good amount of time from implementation…
Ben forgot to mention that while we were out shopping we went a nice little comic store called, appropriately enough, Chicago Comics. I picked up Warren Ellis & Colleen Doran’s new graphic novel “Orbiter”, as well as Chip Zdarsky’s “Collected Prison Funnies” and a couple of old zines from the nineties that looked fairly interesting and were also very cheap. Probably the neatest find was the second issue of Found Magazine. They have an online presence and if I wasn’t too lazy I would dig up the links for all these things I’m mentioning. Perhaps later!
Today: the Cubs at Wrigely! And quite possibly more public intoxication on the “L”!
Found Magazine – now with a better design and layout!
i think that it could work in a very small runs at the moment. like park and ride stuff from the south and east ends to downtown, but they certainly wouldn’t run round-the-clock or anything. we don’t have the parking problems, the congestion, or just the people to support it, i don’t think. i could be wrong.
have you had a chance to leaf through “Orbiter” yet? i wanted to pick it up, but i’m planning on waiting until they come out with a paperback, rather than the $25 hardcover.
However, if it’s really hot, i may go ahead an pick it up. Let me know what ya think of it.
I thought it was well worth the price tag. I’m kinda a design junkie, though, so I really dig hardcovers and whatnot. The imprint under the dust cover is super cool. I loved the story- you could tell that Ellis was really connected to the material. And Colleen Doran’s art on this will likely finally give her some well-deserved wider recognition.
Nick, on the other hand, recommends waiting for the trade paperback. The story didn’t catch him quite as much. So, I guess it’s still a crap shoot.
I just want to point out that Ben believes that every tall building in Chicago is the Sears Tower. So any references or pictures labelled as such are highly suspect. He is not to be trusted. That is all.
it was tall and had big pointy things on the top. i was under the nugefluence anyway… (even though we had not seen him as of yet)