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.

And if you say run, I'll run with you

The day began strangely -- we witnessed what almost escalated into a parking lot fight at the drive thru of the Chase across the street. An older man (maybe mid-60s?) was screaming at the top of his lungs at a similarly aged couple who had their dog with them. I quote, "I said I'm sorry!! WHY ARE YOU TREATING ME LIKE I'M A %&*$ING CRIMINAL!!!" This continued for 30-40 seconds. We couldn't really figure out what happened but eventually they must've figured out it was a beautiful snowy winter day in Chicago and they should enjoy it instead of spending time shouting at each other in a parking lot.

So we continued to The Union, a Big Ten sports bar. Walking in we were greeted by an empty room and a dog loudly barking at us. Of the 7 people in the bar we were the only paying customers and the only 2 who were not friends of the owner. I ordered a Blue Moon (without the orange, I don't need fruit in my beer), and was quickly reminded that I don't actually like Blue Moon. Jimmy Buffet's greatest hits album was playing on a loop. That I was able to detect this should signal that we spent too much time at The Union.

Heading south to the Irish Corner, (Halsted & Diversey, a title I've only bestowed upon that intersection just now as I type this) we stopped into Harrigans to meet some friends. This is your standard Irish bar, nothing spectacular about it. The bartender struggled with a coffee machine for several seconds (and actually called someone on the phone for assistance) before serving us a few glasses of strangely priced Three Floyd's Alpha King. There was no music playing, just the broadcast feed of the first NFL playoff game today. We were soon joined by Internet Celebrity Baumer, a sick-yet-still-visionary Holland, and the surprise arrival of Costello and Isler.

Needing food we hit another member bar of the Irish Corner, Trinity. Trinity has $3 Guinness...ALL THE TIME. We picked the right day and the right bar to hit up for food -- cheeseburgers were also on special for $3. These aren't the thin patty mini burger almost sliders they have on special at The Northpark Tap (extra $1 for cheese), these are real standard sized cheeseburgers that come with a large serving of waffle fries. I ate two of them.

Friend of the Blog Selfy eventually showed up, making his first of what will be many mentions in these pages. Laura, our bartender who looks a little like Alison Lohman (pictured), pretended to be interested in our conversations...conversations that included Isler's claim that he could walk across the United States in 2 weeks.

Heading south again we walked into a sparsely populated Victory Liquors. This is a Notre Dame bar that replaced former pool hall The Corner Pocket. Our reserved VIP area (it wasn't a reserved VIP area) featured one of those Boxer machines. Basically these things are an easy way to rid a group of competitive males of the singles in their wallets without employing poles, women or a bad dj. For the low low price of a dollar bill you get one punch on the speed bag, the power of your punch is displayed. Top to bottom, our rankings: Selfy, Costello, Kyle, Ricky, Isler, Internet Celebrity Baumer

A group of meatheads showed up and quickly put about $10 into the machine...one of them claiming he held the record on the machine at another bar. He never came close to the record on this one. Also, there's a video of Costello head-butting the boxing bag that'll be uploaded eventually (check the facebook page linked below). His score after the forehead impact was significantly lower than any of our punching results, leading to a discussion of the usefulness of the headbutt in combat (pro - suprise, useful in close quarters; con - headache).

The Grand Central is across the street from where we used to live. We used to hit up the All-You-Can-Eat brunch buffet here on the weekends after winter long runs, then they raised the price (presumably because 8 skinny runners would show up every weekend and each fill 5 plates worth of food...but probably not).

Rick and our waitress had the following exchange:
What's your name?
Yana
With a K or a J?
With a Y.

The GC is also the place that caused the end of a previous brief relationship for Selfy. The message she left him, in reference to a night spent at the GC, "It's your dancing. It's all over the place and it's not good."

So speaking of dancing, we're greeted with David Bowie upon our entrance to Chi-Town Tap. Based on the acquaintance that Internet Celebrity Baumer was trying to make it was apparent that the spoils of this bar crawl were affecting him far more than the rest of us. Whoever pumped some money into the jukebox gave us a surprisingly good run of tunes (Interpol, Radiohead, Kings of Leon, Ramones, Strokes). The tall glasses of Bass were on special here for $3. For reasons unknown, Isler remarks, "On a scale of 1 to 10, you guys are sweet!"

Rose Bar is possibly the best dive bar in Chicago (The Queen of Dive bars, maybe?). Really, there's little to no effort put forth here...it's a haphazard collection of mismatched furniture, glasses and patrons. If you order 3 of the same beer there's a good chance you'll get 3 different glasses. An older man drinking by himself broke into The Music Man's "Ya Got Trouble" when we walked in the door. Internet Celebrity Baumer showed up late, announced that "it smells like body odor in here" and we left.

Strangely enough, this was on the wall at Rose Bar, not Delilah's

For our last stop, Selfy, Rick, Internet Celebrity Baumer and I hit up one of our favorite places in Chicago (bar or otherwise), Delilah's. There's always an interesting crowd, a superb selection of drinks, great music (be it a themed night or just the jukebox), strange things playing on the televisions (old Batman episodes in this case), and the art on the walls is for sale and frequently changes (a selection of Elvis paintings tonight). I wish I had remembered to take a picture of their sign out front...oh well, I'll be back here again. The Batman episode must've been a good one -- top tier criminals The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin and Catwoman were all featured. I don't know how often this happened in the series, but it must've been significant. Somehow I put $5 into the jukebox at 9:30 and my songs immediately began. This will probably never happen again.

Delilah's

Thanks to the idea of sick visionary Holland, we've put together a Facebook group that'll house more pictures, comments, etc. You can find it HERE

what's your malfunction besides alcohol?

i'll leave the full recap to Kyle, but here are my brief notes from last night:

The Union:

- the owner smoking inside the bar, the owners dog named Caesar hangs out in the bar, watching the Illini Alumni basketball game and not seeing Damir Krupalija

Harrigans:

- "blogs by nature are full of nothing, and yours actually acknowledges it." - Holland

Trinity:

- Laura, our bartender being very impressed w/ our resolution - you better be reading this!, and Kyle telling her he can get her running shoes if she wanted any

Victory Liquors:

- taking on the punching bag machine and seeing Baumer not doing much better than Costello head butting it

Grand Central:

- Kyle, Selfy and myself going to our old apartment to see our neighbors dog Hercules, only to learn they moved and Kyle telling the new tenant "You ruined our fun"

-throwing tater tots

Chi-Town Tap:

- nothing too out of the ordinary here, just Baumer putting more effort than necessary on to his new friend

Rose Bar:

- noticing in a single glance that there are at least 11 different types of chairs in this bar

Delilah's:

- drinking some Changs, and me burping it up 14 hours later on my run.

so far we have accomplished our January quota, so we're off to a good pace - which helps since i'll be out of town next weekend, although the following weekend is my birthday, so i'm sure a handful will be crossed off then.