Dy and I are in the Chicago area for a week. She’s here for work– she’s taking a class with Collette Peters, honing her cake decorating skills for use at her deluxe cake business, Bewitching Elegance. In the meantime I will be on vacay, exploring the Windy City by myself.
We got in yesterday and the idea was to chill out Saturday and then hit downtown today. But! Lil’ Dy has been coming down with something, so we went to bed at like 5pm. I hung out with her, hoping she’d get better in time to get a nice dinner, but it didn’t happen. Our hotel is the utlra-cheap Super 8 in Darien, IL. Darien, for the record, is a bland midwest suburb hell. So I drove into Chicago for a few hours myself.
I made a beeline to Wicker Park and Quimby’s, the comic book shop. Since Chicago is Chris Ware’s stomping grounds, it’s not a surprise the sign logo has his character Quimbies on it… what is kind of weird is the name match is a coincidence that Ware sort of endorsed after the fact. There was a wacky reading there by a Cuban Lesbian Zine author, from what I could put together. It was pretty hip and alternative.
I walked down the street to the other comic book store, Brainstorm. That was more superhero-based.
I took a quick look at the local used record store, Wreckless, and cut through the alley in back of Earwax, which was a very San Francisco kind of place. Example: they had a Jerk Chicken sandwich which you could order with Seitan. SATAN!!! The graffitti in the alley was cool.
Quick grabbed a Napoleon at Sweet Thang which had a 5-layer topsy-turvy dummy cake in the window. Then I drove home to the fashionable Super 8. I could have picked up a macrobiotic sandwich at uhmmm… damn what was the name of that place? But noooo…
Upon my return Dy scoffed at my marvelling at the dummy cake. ha! Then we went to The Patio for some ribs. So much for eating healthy.
Tomorrow I’m commuting.