(making) No Little Plans: Chicago 2015 pt 2

I wanna try the UNO chain bcz even though I know it won't be "real" Chicago "pizza", I am sure that it will still taste great (kind of like how Olive Garden breadsticks taste great even though they're not real food)

WILL TRADE GROTTO 4 GIORDANO'S

― Y Kant Max Read (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, August 14, 2015 7:45 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

DEAL

1. Chicken Vesuvio - never had it but it sounds amazzzzingg
2. Malort
3. Italian Beef
4. Chicago-style Hotdogs
5. Deep Dish Pizza

6. Chicago Mix Popcorn

Saganaki - Is this a Chicago specialty?

Jibarito - Fuck a plaintain

The Parthenon claims to have invented it, yeah.

*Homeslice and Piece here in Chicago do pretty well, though, so my frantic homesick pizza cravings have subsided somewhat.

LaRosa in Skokie has great thin-crust...or they used to, years ago, when it a restaurant and not just a tiny carry-out place (I'm astonished it's still around).

when it *was a restaurant

Oh wait - chicken vesuvio doesn't sound THAT amazing now that I know those are peas and not capers.

xxp re saganaki huh I had no idea. I thought I had it in NC, but who knows.

Oh, it is widely available elsewhere. Nevermind.

The most unavailable important regional food to me is the sno-ball, which inexplicably hasn't left NOLA, especially the ones made w/ evaporated milk. It is like delicious actual snow.

hahaha i'm p sure gr80 kept trying to give me Malort but it never seemed to pan out

I did too but the bartender didn't even know what it was! I think that was at the Manhandler?

Chicken Vesuvio was kind of underwhelming when I tried it, tbh. And the place I got it was supposed to do it pretty well.

Also Jeff makes a pretty compelling case.

I used to work in Italian restaurants when I lived there and omg, I miss vesuvio.

Hey Chicago folk, you should listen to my friend's new music podcast where he plays records for Chicago musicians and chats with them:

http://cast.now-is.org/

Ep 1 features Fred Lonberg-Holm. It's interesting, heady, and will expand your out music knowledge while giving you enough time to clean your entire apartment.

Cool, thanks. Looks interesting. Me and La Lechera just saw Lonberg-Holm play this past weekend.

i've seen him a zillion times. i think he has played with literally everyone.
i don't really understand the concept of the podcast though -- he records musicians reacting to recorded music?

Yeah, as a jumping off point. It's not unprecedented -- Downbeat magazine has had a feature for decades where they play records for an artist and ask them to talk about their reactions to them. Although IDK if I've heard it done as a podcast before (which is actually better, since you can hear the music). I think other music mags do similar things as well.

Didn't Wire do that?

Yeah I was going to say that's where I've seen it, Wire's Invisible Jukebox.

Sorry THE Wire

I get my wires crossed.

yeah I was trying to remember who had Invisible Jukebox, it is indeed the Wire

maybe i've seen that before? idk. i'm glad more people know fred l-h now thanks to it!

I was told the second ep is Olivia Block

ooh she's cool
i wonder if i would recognize this person?! i've probably shared air with him at least once.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2pra1oy.png

Ha!

Stupid Oak Park schools don't start until Aug. 31st, so it has been two solid weeks of Camp Dad. I think we've run out of things to do. The other day we hit the Surgical Museum. Today, because every waterpark and lazy river is closed for the season, we're hanging at 31st street beach.

xpost both The Wire and Downbeat have similar features.

CPS doesn't start until Sep. 8!

My high school in NC started the 1st week of August, which is awfully early.

That's really early.

I always went to school in a resort area so classes never started until after labor day since just about everybody old enough for working papers had some kind of a tourism industry job.

will inspire lots of "Cubs sleepover" fanfic

http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/08/30/jake-arrieta-no-hitter-mustache-pajamas

i wondered why it smelled smoky when i stepped outside this morning)...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-extra-alarm-fire-in-lincoln-square-20150830-story.html

r.i.p. lincoln lanes!!! ;_;

Everything is burning! I didn't see any mention upthread (and haven't read much in the way of news about it), but Second City caught fire last week, as well.

"OK, we need an event! Anyone, just shout it out."

"Fire!"

"Good, good! Now, we need an occupation."

"Fireman!"

"Hmm, OK, a little on the nose, but we'll go with it. Now quick, a place!"

"Second City!"

"Second City? Not a terribly creative bunch tonight, are you? Fortunately, we're pros. So, the stage is set. The curtain rises. A fire, and firemen ... at Second City."

I used to live about a block or so north of Lincoln Lanes -- the ground floor was an Ace Hardware, and there never seemed to be anyone in the bowling alley.

Holy crap, has that neighborhood changed. So many massive new condo developments!

slippery slope's new upstairs bar looks so awesome:

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/bars/the-heavy-feather

hasn't it been about a year since our last outing there?

Yeah, I've been wanting to go to Heavy Feather for a while. My brother went a few weeks ago and said the drinks were so-so but the vibe was dope.

NB: He did not actually say "the vibe is dope."

That would not seem out of character.

Up for going back to SS/THF anytime.

The North Korea Perspectives exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Photography is great!

jaymc: do you know if there is a DJ booth inside heavy feather?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern_bar

The first fern bar was the original T.G.I. Friday's on the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue in a neighborhood on the Upper East Side where many single young women lived. The founder. Alan Stillman, with a few thousand dollars borrowed from his mother, leased a saloon and remodeled it, converting the ambience to one attractive to young women. It opened March 15, 1965 and was soon copied by other restaurants in the neighborhood.

Not sure about a DJ booth.

Related: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-t-g-i-fridays-helped-invent-the-singles-bar

^^Related, hot singles bar R.J. Grunts has just re-opened after a remodeling.

And going into this weekend, hope this is sensational and not a problem:
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150603/north-lawndale/riot-fests-move-douglas-park-puts-concert-near-drug-markets-gun-crimes

I've got no opinions on the location of the fest, but the stuff that Konkol churns out is mostly garbage. He once put up a piece that decried red light cameras because he likes speeding.

Good to know - I'd never read anything by him before.

my wife would welcome the opportunity to argue about Star Trek :)

Jeff thrives off of being a constant disappointment

So did we determine if this is the most recent Chicago thread? Anyway, I would like to talk a little bit about gun violence (not that we sadly don't have enough threads on that subject). Last year my wife had a co-worker whose husband was shot and killed at a bus stop in Roger's Park, around 5pm, by some asshole gang member who drove by, thought he recognized an enemy and decided to open fire. More recently a 6-year old was accidentally shot in a friend's Palmer Square neighborhood, and last night/yesterday there was a chase and shooting on the lakefront, up north, around Waveland :

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-lakeview-lakefront-park-shooting-20160612-story.html

While not occurring at the same rate it does within a couple of specific neighborhoods, the gun violence here is clearly not self-contained. What should the city be doing?

FWIW, I live in Oak Park, and it looks like a couple of weeks ago some dude walking back to Berwyn from the train in the middle of the night got in a fight with some guys in a parked car and was shot in the gut, just a few blocks from my house. Police called it an "isolated incident," but it does not make me any more comfortable.

I don't know what the latest Chicago thread is, I should start a new one.

Chicago 2016: Our credit rating is lower than your credit rating

I'm in yr airport, it's ok. Drinking a beer, I know it's what Jeff would want.

I used to greatly prefer midway, but southwest using it as a hub meant it was so packed the last time I was there that there was nowhere to sit!

I'm at o'hare, it still sucks but my plane is supposedly on time, so it's ok