The Net Monkey

So, last weekend I was in Chicago!

My friend Jordan from Minneapolis came down to Indianapolis Thursday night. We spent some time out and about here in town before crashing, and then heading up to Chicago in the afternoon on Friday.

Had a bit of a scare before heading up to Chicago because I started feeling like I was going to pass another kidney stone. I had the same pain as before, but significantly less. Anyway, it ended up going away by Friday night. I must have passed the stone without noticing it.

A few hours after arriving in Chicago, Jordan and I met up with some of his friends for dinner. We ate at a Chinese restaurant called Ben Pao, which has very good food. After eating our meal and getting some ice cream, we went to see Transformers at the movie theatre.

Transformers was a lot of fun to see on the big screen, but also disappointing. It is a Michael Bey movie, after all, so I had pretty low expectations, which it met so very well.

Saturday was a lot of fun!

We ate some brunch at the Bongo Room, which had these really cool decorations and really good food. Jordan had these pancakes with a sauce that tasted exactly like cheesecake. Mmm!

We made our way up to the Art Institute in the afternoon.

We checked out the Jeff Wall exhibit, as well as other photographic and contemporary works.

That evening, we spent time at the main attraction of our visit to Chicago, which was the Pitchfork Music Festival held in Union Park west of downtown. We met up with Jordan’s friends Eric and Jeff. Of interest that day were Girl Talk and Yoko Ono.

OK. Yoko Ono is weird. Many of her songs included all these guttural sounds and what seemed like mumbling. Because she’s so strange, shagged one of the Beatles, and because her recent album is cleverly named Yes, I’m a Witch, I have decided that she’s cool.

After having a good laugh at Yoko’s music and saying good to friends, Jordan and I decided to go out on the town. Our first stop was the L & L which is this Irish pub near Boystown. We drank down some Magners and then head out to a gay joint. We ended up at the North End, which is one of my favorite spots. It’s got a casual atmosphere and good music.

At the end of our journey, we ended up at Berlin, which is one of my favorite dance clubs in Chicago. I love the mixed crowd! Lots of boys and girls, some queer, some straight. We danced until we were tired and then went back to the hotel.

Sunday was also a big day. We met Jordan’s friends for brunch at Meli Cafe & Juice Bar in Greek Town. I can’t remember what I had, but it included polish sausage, so you know it was good. After that, we spent a long day at Pitchfork, again with Eric and Jeff. Of interest were Of Montreal, The New Pornographers, and others I can’t remember.

The trip ended on Monday, with Jordan directly back to Minneapolis from Chicago and me driving back home.

I had a ton of fun, and it was great spending some time with Jordan. I really needed to get away for the weekend, without the worries of my job.

Check out the complete photo set.

Photo Set: Chicago - 2007-07