It's Mothers Day. My sweet Willow is sadly away from her beautiful and brilliant girl for the first time in 23 years. I know she is still 22... but I wish I could have been there when Willow was 8 months pregnant. I know that she celebrated Mothers Day for the first time 23 years ago. Her stupid husband at the time, who thankfully had no idea that he was with Goddess and she was pregnant with an angel, certainly didn't celebrate with her. She did though. She did it quietly. She fretted a little about the kind of mom she would be. She thought about her babies little toes and how she couldn't wait to nibble on them. She thought about holding her close when she cried. She thought about the beam that would overcome her face when her little girl would smile. She wondered how sweet the sound would be when her baby first uttered that beautiful word 'momma'. She wondered if the man she chose would step up and be the kind of father that her baby deserved. She's just that kind of mom. She spent the next 22 years being a role model and friend. She was a consummate mom. She was there when she needed to be picked up, but she never stood in the way of a fall. She knew that falling was the best way to learn not to fall. She was a comfortable lap. She nourished and nurtured. She was momma. She was beauty. She gave to her kids everything and took nothing. She loved that little girl 23 years ago and fell in love with her more each day. She was mother to my boy when he needed it. She was love to him too. This day, another Hallmark day, is so much more important to me than any of the other days. Celebrating my Willow, which I try to do all the time, is so much more important today than any other day.
As we walk we seek the best place for Mother's Day brunch that we can find. In typical Joseph fashion, our walk is only about 5 minutes and the location is perfect. Angelina's Ristorante is an exceptional find for Mother's Day brunch. We walk in and are immediately seated. Our mimosas arrive and are bottomless. Our food is delicious. The wait staff... wait fuck this!! I have to take a moment to protest. Look! Everybody knows that women are beautiful and men are just the guys who get to be with those beautiful women. Men aren't deemed 'the fairer sex'. Men haven't had important pieces of art made to celebrate their beauty. Men don't have songs written in worship of their shape and their softness. Women think women are beautiful. Men think women are beautiful. There are some men that are very beautiful, but they are the exception. For the most part they are gross. Hair growing out of everywhere. Farts introduce their every movement. I love being a man, but let's face it we are tolerable at best. We are not beautiful creatures, neither physically nor emotionally. But Chicago, at least Lakeview and downtown and the park turns things completely upside down. I have never been to a city with so many meh looking women. Not all of them are especially ugly... their just meh. But the men, holy shit! There are good looking men EVERYWHERE! It was all I could do to not be in a constant stream of urination on Willow making sure that every man in the city knew that this was my lady. Anyway back to our brunch, I tried harder than ever to make intelligent conversation with Willow so as to distract her at least a little from the ridiculous buffet of eye-candy that was the wait staff, the hosts, the cooks, the bus boys, every creature that worked there was another potential reason why Willow might leave me for Chicago. Her eyes darted around like she was in the middle of a giant pinball game. "So what do you think of Obama's support of gay marriage?" "A little risky right now I think, but I am really proud of him!" "Willow?! Can you hear me... I was just saying that's quite the statement Obama made... I just think it's about time... Willow? Sweetie??... "
We finish our breakfast and I rush her out of there. We walk around a little in Lakeview - decide it is better to spend evenings rather than days there and we hail a cab to head downtown.
Our first stop is Millennium Park. This relatively new park sits right on the lake and contains many attractions including the Jay Pritzger Pavilion, The Bean, some cool water features, amazing people watching, oh yeah and the Art Institute of Chicago. It's a great park.
We walk into downtown. Downtown Chicago is breathtaking. The architecture is outstanding. The history is rich. There are bridges EVERYWHERE! The Chicago river runs through the middle of downtown. The buildings reflect off the river creating natural art in a city created with and filled with art. The downtown area, known as The Loop area, is enormous. I have to try to explain this to Portlanders who haven't been here... Skyscrapers go on for about 20 miles north to south along Lake Michigan. I would estimate that those skyscrapers are about 10 miles deep east to west. They don't consider all of this downtown though. I know... I know... they are fucking weird. They consider The Loop to be 'downtown' as if once you reach the Chicago river, you have left downtown and are now in the burbs. Anyway it would be impossible to even explore The Loop in less than several days. We have just a couple of days in Chicago and only a few hours to scratch the surface of this beautiful area.
We stop for lunch in the first hoity toity food place we find. To us, it feels like an institution. It sits on the Chicago river. It is 75 degrees and sunny on the deck. The waiters are old and in proper waiter attire. It is Smith and Wollensky... and it also happens to be shite. Drinks are $12 each. We aren't really that hungry but order a little nosh to go with our drinks. Neither of us are wearing good walking shoes, so the longer we sit in front of our drinks the better. Our waiter was a hack. Our drinks were fine. Our nosh was disgusting. We had something simple. a half dozen oysters on the half shell and a half dozen clams on the half shell. They were brought to us with amateur presentation with some Heinz cocktail sauce and some horseradish. This was $16 and $19 respectively. The oysters and clams weren't rinsed. Any edible mollusk has to be thrown in to fresh water while they are still alive. After about 30-60 minutes in cool fresh water those mollusks will spit out the sand they have taken in while they themselves try to eat food from their sandy surroundings. If you don't do this then the consumer of these mollusks gets a mouth full off crunchy sand in each otherwise delicious bite. You also have to use your sharp kitchen knives to remove the meat from the shell. Especially with raw clams. These things are super glued to their shells and nearly impossible to remove with a mere fork. Anyway our nosh stop sucked ass... I probably spent more time than it was worth complaining about it... but I just want to make sure that you 3 readers of my travel blog don't go to this place... that'll show em!! screw up my meal will ya!!??!!
After another couple of hours of walking around drinking up the sights, we end up at the Downtown Bar & Lounge. It is a beautiful bar. The bartender is super cool. He loves Portland. The 2 others that were there were also friendly and told us not only about the things that we needed to do while we are in Chicago, but even what restaurants we needed to check out in Milwaukee. After a few drinks we share a cab with them back to the North Side. We head back to our hotel to freshen up and then it's off to delicious Yoshi's for dinner.
Side Note for our Amy Jermain (of the Brussels Jermains).. we really wanted to take your advice. We don't know anybody more qualified to make restaurant suggestions. Not only do you know your shit.. but you know us. You know what we like and you know which chefs can deliver. We trust you completely. It was more a matter of neighborhood and familiarity. We just kind of ended up at places.. we didn't make reservations and make dinner the focal point of our night. We walked upon a place, looked at each other - "Are you hungry?" "Yeah I could definitely eat"... and we went in. We are DEFINITELY coming back to Chicago for a longer stay. When we do, we will either bring you with us to take us on a culinary trip this town or we will follow your advice.
Yoshi's was fucking delicious. Our service was impeccable. The food was prepared perfectly.
After our great meal at Yoshi's and the beautiful sunset we head down Halsted street. The first place we pop into is the Town Hall. You can tell just by looking at the exterior of this unassumming little place that it's the straightest bar in the neighborhood. There's no uncha-uncha-uncha music bellowing out of it's tiny windows. We walk in. It's comedy night. A little intimidated, we walk in and crowd around the back, until we are beckoned to the front by the performers. This free show turned out to be incredible. We laughed so hard we were crying. Not all of the performers were great... but definitely enough of them were to make it more than worth it to be there.
You know how Portland is a really diverse city. Well it's really not. Portland has 16 black people and we keep chasing them all over the damn city. Don't get me wrong, we love black culture in Portland.. so much so that we smother it. Every time we get word that the black people have set up camp in a new neighborhood we rush to that neighborhood to see what kinda fun the blacks are up to, make their housing prices go through the roof until they are forced to sneak away in the middle of the night to yet another new neighborhood. They are currently pretty pissed off at us white folks for moving them out to 181st. Who the hell wants to live near 181st?! We also like to think of ourselves as pretty gay friendly yet we have zero lesbian bars and only a few gay bars. I know... I know.. I know... many of you will say 'well every bar is a lesbian bar' uhhh well yeah NO. For a city the size of Portland, we should have more black people and we shouldn't get our knickers in a bunch every time we see one of them. What the hell is wrong with us!? Portland should have a gay district. I would like to take this opportunity to propose 181st as this new fabulous neighborhood.
The point of the above paragraph isn't to bitch about Portland but simply to state that Chicago actually is diverse. There are so many people here and truthfully in our short trip here, we didn't see any signs of homophobia or any outward signs of racism. It was nice.
After comedy at the Town Hall, we bar-hopped at a few other bars. We went to to Sidekicks where we watched classic videos on the big screen, drank our normal drinks, chatted with each other and occasionally others, and did shots with the bartenders until closing.
Outside, in a daze from being so rudely and quickly ushered out... just as things were starting to get fun, we stand among the pretty boys smoking their final cigarettes of the night, discussing with one another tomorrow nights debauchery. We overhear some making plans for the next bar. The next bar? The bars are closed now. You silly queers there is no 'next bar'!! Remember when we were inside a few minutes ago and the guy behind the bar yelled "last call!!" and then the lights went on and the music went off and we were practically shoved out the door? That means that we either drunkenly walk to somebody's house or we go home... that's what that has always meant!
NOPE!
Not in Chicago. You see there was a law that passed that made bars close at 2:30. But they allowed bars that were already open at the time the law was made to stay open until they wanted to. Apparently there are many bars that, despite how unhealthy this is for the Joseph's, want to stay open until 5am. We follow one of the nicer gentleman and his cute hag to The Berlin where we eventually finish our night.
Tomorrow is another day in Chicago....
Until then!
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