Our Bodies Get Bigger but Our Hearts Get Torn Up

As has been hinted all week, this is Kyle's younger brother Grant guest reporting here at EBONY. With Ricky returning from Mexico & subsequently recovering, I only had the opportunity to enjoy one official evening of EBONY bar crawling. Saturday the 30th found Kyle and I attending Maifest in Lincoln Square and then the Do Division Festival later in the afternoon. A few highlights before the official bar visits:

- The 7 year old guitar player / gimmick of the Maifest Polka band. He needs to work on his stage presence.

- Kyle, Selfy and I played some Ping Pong at the Happy Village bar. I dominated until the local ringer showed up with his own paddles.

- The Seitan sliders from the Mana food tent at Division were excellent. Kyle and I devoured several each day. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, I think I could safely recommend the Mana Food Bar.

- Handsome Furs delighting the Division Fest crowd with their energetic live show. They played a shortened set with pretty much only songs from their new album, Face Control. It was still great. White Rabbits were enjoyable, but often sounded a little to much like a Spoon cover band. Flosstradamus started quite a party for their hometown crowd with their dance-happy mashups.

- Got to meet up with several of my Chicago friends briefly at Do Division and also at Boundary on Division. Good to see all of you guys. Sarah claimed I displayed some confused puppy dog eyes as I had to choose between following Kyle to meet Ricky or hanging with my friends around Division. I followed Kyle, only because I dream of being a great EBONY internet celebrity.

Kyle and I took a taxi from Division back to his apartment where we dropped off our bags and then took off on foot for Smartbar. Kyle made the mistake of crossing Clark in hopes of saving time, but my patience allowed me to destroy him in our foot race to Smartbar. Flashing our "get-in-free" text messages, we quickly made our way down to the basement club. Ricky and Kyle have been there before this year, so I won't give a full report. I must confess, however, that I was served the worst gin and tonic of my life in this establishment. In retrospect, I think the bartender added soda instead of tonic and fully neglected the gin part. After chatting with Craig and company for a bit, the EBONY-ites and I set out to tick some bars of the great list.

Before getting underway we savored a quick 4th meal at Taco Bell. This experience would set a theme for the evening, as we were entertained by the wildly intoxicated girl sitting next to us. As she ate her two sober-er friends looked at her with total disdain. As her friends dragged her out, this girl decided to throw her trash all over the ground. Clearly trash cans were too complicated for her at this point of the evening.

No more than a block down the street we found Uberstein (#92), a German-themed bar within a block of Wrigley Field. Uberstein could be a decent place to enjoy some German beer were it not placed right smack in the middle of Wrigleyville, a neighborhood I have learned is synonymous with being neither fun, interesting, nor cool. Saturday night's crowd saw some leftover Cubs fans and many fratty, Wrigleyville types. Ricky, Kyle and I sat at a high table across from the bar and ordered a round of Hofbrau steins. Little did we know we would soon be treated to a tragic "love-square" worthy of Shakespeare's pen.




The pictures above explain the situation far better than I ever could, and this post is rapidly becoming obese, so I'll keep it succinct. The sport-coated individual, who was dressed not unlike Andy from The Office, had a overwhelming fondness for his friend's girl. He was so smitten that he totally ignored the girl with him, who seemed not to mind as she spent the whole time texting. "Andy" was rather aggressive at times, especially when his friend went to the bathroom, leaving the desirable girl all alone to fend off Andy. At one point of the evening, his friend had his hands around Andy's neck in a half-joking/half-serious choking manner. It was all very dramatic, awkward, and extremely childish. Isn't that what happens when morons drink too much alcohol? (and i'm sure we've all been the morons at one point in our life).

Finishing our beers at Uberstein, we set out to knock another bar off the mighty list. A few doors down Clark we stepped into The Central (#93), which I think typifies the Wrigleyville scene. 3 Miller Lite's were ordered and we spent about 7 minutes watching some rather grotesque dirty dancing that somehow passes for courtship these days. We may have finished our beers, but I'm pretty sure we didn't, so I hope that counts as an official EBONY bar visit. A quick walk down Clark back to headquarters concluded our evening, although Ricky claims to have been up till 7am with some Mexico-related illness.

After attending two bars with Ricky and Kyle, I now acknowledge that their quest seems more of a chore than I had once thought. Crapholes like The Central and its surrounding bars offer the promise of peoplewatching and little else. Make no mistake, the completion of this year-long task will rank among the great endurance epics of our modern era. I should think the 907 will be pleasantly exhausted at the end of the year when they can return to endless nights of beer drinking at Matilda and dancing like idiots in the basement at Baby Atlas.

You Dress Up For Armageddon

The doubleshot of Pi day & St Pats deserves a somewhat live blog from AliveOne (several days late)

1:55 Kyle is the first person at the bar. I fear these troubled economic days we live in will impact Chicago's st pats celebration. Thankfully my worries are not met.
2:30 One Great Lakes Irish Ale down...the bar is slowly filling up with spill from other locales, and the full trolleys from the parade are beginning to return to the neighborhood.
2:43 4 people, too drunk to stand, are denied entry into aliveOne. Everyone in the vicinity of the doorway has a good laugh.
3:04 Tim & Annie arrive!
3:10 Annie, to Tim, "I've never thought that you were NOT a jackass."

3:27 Ricky, fresh off a subdued brunch, arrives ready to wreck house.
3:38 ChaCha confirms the movie Kramer saw with a woman in a coma was "The Other Side Of Darkness"
4:13 Somehow Rick materializes a muffin and begins to eat it.
4:21 In reference to the 'bro' at the bar and his friends, one of us says, "those guys all look like rapists"
4:25 We place $1 bets on who will be next to arrive -- Selfy, Kari, Eickhoff or Joe. Knowing Joe will be arriving with the perpetually late Jamie, only Annie chooses Joe. Of course...
4:37 Annie wins $3

4:47 Costello & Crew show up. I think about ordering 4 waters for them, but decide only one of them really needs it.


5:26 quote Eickhoff, "Everytime my friend Matt took a shot his nipples would get hard." We're all afraid to ask.
5:35 Lewis Black has a bit about brain aneurysms happening when you overhear something that makes no sense, it rattles around in your head until you give up making heads or tails of it and your brain simply explodes. His example, "If it hadn't been for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." Not quite as good as his line, but we overhear the end of a drunk conversation concluding with, "..., Sarah Palin, and then you."

After aliveOne, we get 2 pizzas to go from Eduardo's, play Tetris at the apartment, hit up Baby Atlas for a bit (we'll be back here again, giving this bar the full treatment it deserves). Then it's off to Trader Todd's.

One of the original ideas of EBONY was to participate in whatever a specific bar is known for. In this case, as is also referenced in Rick's post below, Trader Todd's has karaoke. Because I can't seem to convince any of my musically inclined friends to start a Hives cover-band with me, I have to settle for the Karaoke version. Rick and I give that place a stomping they've never seen before.

Later, I perform my interpretation of Spingsteen's "Secret Garden", which no one but me seems to enjoy (as evidenced by the loud boos I receive for the duration of this song). Afterwards the DJ lectures the audience about being a bad crowd. Suckers!

Rick mentions this below, but there really is a video of our Hives show. Whenever our friends from Seattle send it to us we'll have it up here.

Ramshackle Day Parade

As our faithful readers (and anyone who read the previous post) know, we planned on going to Tonic Room at 4pm yesterday. The Tonic Room's website says they're open until 2am M-F, and 3am Sat. They fail to say when they open, and we discovered 4pm saturday is not within their hours of operation. Onto Lincoln Station.

LS sits across the street from the Biograph Theater, notable for being where I saw The Village with my brother during the summertime once and also where John Dillinger was shot. There's a bus tour in Chicago called the "Untouchables Tour" where they drive around to famous gangster locales allowing tourists to take pictures. It stops at the Biograph and everyone shoots photos of a spot in the alley where this shooting took place. The alley runs along the side of Qdoba, so it's always a good chuckle when you can eat your burrito while watching people take pictures of the side of the building.

Anyway, back to Lincoln Station. One Alpha King and one Bell's Best Brown and we're out, but not before being entertained by the solo drinker at the end of the bar. He was vocally announcing updates in the hockey game that only he was interested in, trying to strike up conversations about baseball (one claim, "I know for a FACT that the Big Hurt never did steroids." while I agree with this opinion I'm not sure that I am aware of the same acquiting evidence he is) and constantly demonstrating his obliviousness to the world.
He had been quiet for a good 5 minutes when suddenly he exclaims, "A-ROD dead at 33??!!!?!? This articles says A-Rod is dead! When was this printed?!" Our bartender patiently explains to him what The Onion is, "It's comedy, these are jokes." First off we're shocked someone roughly our age, who presumably spends a lot of time in bars, doesn't know what The Onion is. Second, and more importantly, this A-Rod story was ON PAGE EIGHT. He made it that far through the issue without raising an eyebrow or being alarmed by anything else.

Next up...we tried to go to the newish bar that is part of Clarke's...it was closed (another operational hours thing). So we then tried to go to Red Lion...it was closed (this one a result of the health department...disconcerting). Finally, the relocated Hi-Tops granted us admission. This location was formerly the Gin Mill, and they still have the Gin Mill sign up in the back of the bar. I had one Sam Adams Winter Ale. They're running a promotion on 3/14 (the day Chicago collectively gets smashed this year) with a $25 drink deal from 9am to 1pm. Slogan, "You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start In The Morning"

We stopped at Buffalo Wild Wing's for food, more beer, and NTN trivia games. B-dubs featured Mini Corn Dogs, Wings (Sweet BBQ, Hot BBQ, Jerk), Kyle winning the first game we played (and Rick getting 2nd), losing a lot more games, and a declaration that "Into The Mystic" is probably a top 3 Van Morrison song.

Fourth on today's list, Lilly's, a live-music bar that I've walked past probably 400 times without entering. Having spent some time here, I have no regrets about not visiting it until now. It's a cool place, interestingly decorated with some odd color choices and arches randomly placed throughout the seating area. There was a $6cover that we paid half of and a girl signing folky songs accompanied on rhythm guitar by a grizzled old man with an incredible beard. Nothing too memorable, but I'd head back there if I needed a cheap live music fix.


Heading over to Irish Eyes we were surprised not to see many people appearing underage, a rarity for this place. Friend of the blog Craig happened to be in town as the band he chaperones around the globe isn't currently touring. We gave him crap about the recent postcard he sent us from Dubai having nothing written on it -- usually they arive with cryptic messages such as "Luxembourg breeds great genes." I'm clearly feeling the affects of the beer at this point in the evening as the notes I wrote about Irish Eyes are illegible.

Prost! is a german beer hall with an exclamation point in its name. Without EBONY I never would have gone there. It was packed, and mysteriously one of these giant steins pictured below is now sitting on my kitchen counter.



Final stop: The Dugout in Wrigleyville. I recall nothing significant from this place.
(it wasn't actually the final stop...Craig and I went to Baby Atlas afterwards without Rick)

I asked ChaCha if the best Elton John songs were better than the best Billy Joel songs, and they fed me some crap about beauty being in the hear of the beholder. Lame, ChaCha.

What's Goin' On?

Hatched while watching a snowstorm fall on the Chicago intersection of Clark & Belmont from the front windows of The L & L Tavern, Rick and I wondered how many bars are within a mile of our apartment. Before determining the answer we decided it would be our challenge and opportunity to visit all of them during calendar 2009. This site will be the chronicle of our chronicles.
Official rules for what constitutes a "visit" and what establishments qualify are forthcoming. Generally we have to have one drink there and it has to be a place that one would go to just to have a drink. (ex: The Vic does not count, that is a concert venue. We'll probably end up having a drink there anyway and write about it. Cesars/Killer Margaritas does count. People go there to drink margaritas.) If the place is famous or known for something we will attempt to enjoy that (fish & chips at the Duke of Perth; karaoke at Trader Todds).
When I say that there are a LOT of qualifying bars that we would normally not visit it is not an understatement.

We're searching for a better title for this. Feel free to submit any ideas.

These don't count, but last night's venues were Parrots, The L & L Tavern, Matilda and Baby Atlas. There are an astonishing number of unfavorable reviews on L & L at yelp.com. We surveyed the Saturday night drinkers attempting to determine who would go home disgruntled, armed with the power of the internet and their wits. The jukebox at the L & L is adjacent to the men's restroom, however the old man sitting by the jukebox smelled far worse than the toilets. He asked that I play a Marvin Gaye song first. I did.