{"id":5774,"date":"2007-10-21T17:06:43","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T00:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/21\/5774\/"},"modified":"2007-10-21T17:06:43","modified_gmt":"2007-10-22T00:06:43","slug":"chicago-day-1-darien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/?p=5774","title":{"rendered":"Chicago, Day 1: Darien"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dy and I are in the Chicago area for a week.  She&#8217;s here for work&#8211; she&#8217;s taking a class with <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.colettescakes.com\/\">Collette Peters<\/a>, honing her cake decorating skills for use at her deluxe cake business, <a href=\"http:\/\/bewitchingelegance.com\">Bewitching Elegance<\/a>.  In the meantime I will be on vacay, exploring the Windy City by myself.<\/p>\n<p>We got in yesterday and the idea was to chill out Saturday and then hit downtown today.  But!  Lil&#8217; Dy has been coming down with something, so we went to bed at like 5pm.  I hung out with her, hoping she&#8217;d get better in time to get a nice dinner, but it didn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>I made a beeline to Wicker Park and <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.quimbys.com\/\">Quimby&#8217;s<\/a>, the comic book shop.  Since Chicago is Chris Ware&#8217;s stomping grounds, it&#8217;s not a surprise the sign logo has his character Quimbies on it&#8230; 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.<\/p>\n<p>I walked down the street to the other comic book store, <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.brainstormmcg.com\/\">Brainstorm<\/a>.  That was more superhero-based.<\/p>\n<p>I took a quick look at the local used record store, Wreckless, and cut through the alley in back of <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.earwaxcafe.com\/\">Earwax<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>Quick grabbed a Napoleon at <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.sweetthangcakes.com\/\">Sweet Thang<\/a> which had a 5-layer topsy-turvy dummy cake in the window.  Then I drove home to the fashionable Super 8.  I <b>could<\/b> have picked up a macrobiotic sandwich at uhmmm&#8230; damn what was the name of that place?  But noooo&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Upon my return Dy scoffed at my marvelling at the dummy cake.  ha!  Then we went to <a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.patioribs.com\/\">The Patio<\/a> for some ribs.  So much for eating healthy.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow I&#8217;m commuting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dy and I are in the Chicago area for a week. She&#8217;s here for work&#8211; she&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-5774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stardate","tag-chicago-cake-cakes-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}