cybrpunk.com

Chicago Recap

Chicago. I love that city. Well at least the downtown areas. I’ve not been in most of Chicago and it’s surrounding areas to know if I’d like it all but it seems great. Of course there are the extremes of posh condos and parks and scary as hell slums but what city doesn’t?

Yoshi and I left St. Louis on Saturday morning around 10am after dropping off Guinness at my Dad’s. We stopped off in Springfield, IL to pick up some friends of ours who were going with us. They had the tickets too so we couldn’t leave them behind. As I may have mentioned before, it’s just not a road trip unless we eat at Cracker Barrel. At least for me and Yoshi. It’s just tradition. So since there was a Cracker Barrel in Springfield, I was really hoping to go there for lunch. However one of the people we picked up was set on BBQ at Smokey Bones. Not my first choice of places to eat but I didn’t want to ride with grumpy people. As I had feared, the food sucked. Well at least mine did. The turkey there is dry and tastes like cardboard. Supposedly the ribs are good, but I’d rather just not go there ever again. And then we were off again.

Driving up highway 55 is pretty uneventful. Not as boring as some of the highways in Illinois but no marvel to behold either. The amount of tollways in the Chicago area is freaking ridiculous though. Every couple of miles you have to pay 40 to 50 cents as we neared the airport where our hotel was. I guess I’m lucky living in a big city that doesn’t have toll roads. I’m sure many cities have them but St. Louis doesn’t. So I complain about them. Keep lot’s of change handy. Having exact change makes thing go much smoother.

Here’s another tip. Unless you are made of money or have connections, don’t stay in the hotels downtown. Most are way too expensive and the few that aren’t are sometimes hard to get into. Also, most hotels make you pay to park in their garages and we are talking anywhere from $11-36 per visit (depending on time spent in the garage). Even if you don’t leave the garage each day, you still have to pay for each night your car resides in the garage. The best thing to do is stay in a hotel outside of the major downtown area. We stayed at a Residence Inn near O’Hare Airport. We got a three room suite for $150 on a Saturday night. And it’s only a ten minute drive back downtown. We had five people in the room and six could have fit easily. Split that $150 between five and $30 per person is prety damn cheap for Chicago.

So we made it downtown Saturday night after checking in and met up with our friends daughter who took my extra ticket. Saved me. Although I’m not sure if the show was entirely appropriate for a 14 year old, she had a good time. Which brings me to the show.

The Shubert Theater is a beautiful old style theater with multiple balcony levels. However many of the buildings downtown are getting work done on them so scaffolding is the current architecture of the downtown area. Inside the seating is tight and the air got a little still and warm while the show was going but it was still a nice place. The stage was very plain with a simple flat backdrop which would later show an animated intro to the show as well as fluctuating lighting effects and graphics. Around the edges and above were what looked like old military camoflage of the size that would cover airplanes or tanks. And a bunch of lights.

Eddie Izzard took the stage wearing a black top with fake breasts, a long black sequined skirt with a slit all the way up, knee high black boots with heels and a grey jacket. Nothing at all like he had been doing on the Tonight Show and other appearances. Which is a good thing. He is definitely in his element on stage and in womens clothing. He went on about everything under the sun before he took a short break. Then he came back out and after a slightly slow start came to s spectacular end. The show was amazing and I am so glad I went. I can’t wait till he films the DVD version of the show so I can watch it all over again.

On Sunday we went to Navy Pier downtown and Yohsi and me took pictures while the others sloughed about. I guess it’s not fun to be around picture people if you don’t have a camera either. Dunno. We got a few interesting shots here and there and I should have them posted on the photo album by about the time hell freezes over if my current posting rate is any indication. We still had to drop off our friend’s daughter and that ended up being much later than expected. The father was supposed to meet us at 2pm but due to heavy traffic from the Bears game we didn’t get to drop her off till 4pm. So needless to say Sunday night was spent driving. I wanted to stop for Cracker Barrel on the way back but I needed to get back to town and pick up Guinness from my Dad’s house. I told him that I would pick him up in the afternoon and I already felt bad for not getting there until 10:30pm after dropping everyone else off.

So anyway, it was a great trip.