Chicago - Day 1

I've been home for a few days now, so I guess it's time to post about my 3-day weekend in Chicago. Why Chicago? The 20th anniversary of the seminal Pixies album Doolittle. The band went on a small tour to celebrate and will play the album in its entirety. The closest town they were coming to for me was Washington, DC. But those dates occur the Monday/Tuesday after Thanksgiving. And as a retail grunt, those dates are virtually impossible to get time off for. So looking at the tour schedule, Chicago fell on my normally-scheduled 3-day weekend off.

HELLO CHICAGO!!!

I was supposed to fly out of Raleigh Thursday night (an hour away but super cheap Southwest fares), but that FAA computer glitch from that morning rolled along and affected later flights. I thought I'd be out of the woods with my 6:30pm flight, but it ended up delayed 4 hours...making me miss my connection. Soooo....EARLY Friday morning it was. In bed by 10pm, up at 3:45am to have enough to time to drive over to make the flight.

By 8:30am Friday I am in Chicago. And by 10:00am I am here:

103 floors up and 4 feet out. "The Ledge" on the Sears, er, the Willis Tower. Took a cab from the airport, dropped off my bags at the hotel, then walked the 2 blocks from hotel to the tallest building in the U.S. Incredible views. Ears popped constantly on the elevator rides up and down. Unbelievable structure.


Chicago is a great beer town. Fellow beer geeks Jonathan and Robin moved from Chapel Hill to Chicago a few years ago. Since I was in town, we planned to meet up and do some pubcrawling together. First stop for lunch? The Lincoln Park neighborhood and Goose Island - Clybourn. A tasty burger with bacon of course was my fare. Delicious Belgian-inspired Matilda, offered a sample taste of their new altbier, then their dark Belgian Noire, Imperial Brown Goose, and finally a Black Cat Espresso Stout. (Wow, we went through a bunch of beverages didn't we?)

From here, it's to a divey bar with plenty of taps called Local Option. Just had a couple here, most notably the hoppy sensation from Three Floyds Brewing Co., Dreadnaught. On tap. Hear that Bones? Dreadnaught on tap. It was quite delicious.

From here, it was to one off the better beer bars in the country let alone Chicago: Hopleaf. Surly Brewing's Bender and a Stone/BrewDog collaboration called Bashah were the hits. Robin got some sort of muddy silty creation from Belgian brewer Wostyntje: Mustard Beer. Looked absolutely disgusting, but was actually pretty tasty. Looks nasty. I mean, look at it:

For dinner, I did have a delicious sammich: a CB&J. Cashew butter, fig jam, and gruyere cheese. Serve it with mac-n-cheese? Sold! YUM!!!

From here, we parted ways as I had a PIXIES concert to go to. They performed at the beautiful Aragon Ballroom. It was so sweet to see them live!!! People were cramming to get centerstage, but I was interested on hanging around towards the right of the stage in front of uber-cool bassist Kim Deal. Got it. Right up front. Leaning against the barrier. NICE!!!! The concert was a dandy. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

1. Dancing The Manta Ray
2. Weird At My School
3. Bailey's Walk
4. Manta Ray
5. Debaser
6. Tame
7. Wave Of Mutilation
8. I Bleed
9. Here Comes Your Man
10. Dead
11. Monkey Gone To Heaven
12. Mr. Grieves
13. Crackity Jones
14. La La Love You
15. No. 13 Baby
16. There Goes My Gun
17. Hey
18. Silver
19. Gouge Away
20. Encore:
20. Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21. Into The White
22. Encore 2:
22. Isla De Encanta
23. Nimrod's Son
24. U-Mass
25. Velouria