Chicago, Part II

I was exhausted by the time we arrived back at the hotel just past midnight on Friday, considering I had been awake since 5 am. However, the next day, I somehow still managed to wake up at 6am without an alarm. So I went for a jog in Grant Park and watched the sun rise over Buckingham Fountain¹.

We had breakfast at a typical breakfast chain near our hotel, Yolk. It was literally bursting with people. It was as if the entire population of Chicago was at there for breakfast that morning. We were seated at the bar and could not stop staring in awe at the absolute chaos of the place. It was complete sensory overload, the sight of the people and the plates of food whizzing by, the sound of the clattering of dishes and the barking of instructions from the kitchen, the smell of eggs and pancakes and coffee and toast, and eventually when the food came, the taste of a big hearty breakfast.
American portion sizes are absolutely enormous, I have never seen anything like it. A $12 breakfast had enough food to feed a small army. Despite my disproportionately large appetite, most of the food went to waste. To be honest, I would have much rather preferred a reasonable-sized breakfast for $5 or $6, but apparently things don’t work like that in America.

It rained in the morning, so we drove aimlessly around the city until we found a shoe warehouse, and then went shoe-shopping for a couple hours. When the sun came back, we headed to Millennium Park to see the infamous Bean.

Millennium Park is one of the nicest urban parks I have ever seen. The juxtaposition of metal and greenery creates an interesting effect. The weather was particularly good for photography, the blue sky and white fluffy clouds made everything look beautiful.

On Saturday night, BI wanted to go to a non-touristy live jazz/blues club, so after looking up a few recommendations in our guide book and online, we settled on Lee’s Unleaded Blues Club. Little did we know that this place was on the wrong side of town. No wonder there weren’t an abundance of reviews on the place.
On our way there, we saw two guys get arrested by a group of cops on the street. Most of the windows and doors of the houses were boarded up.
We were the first two to arrive at the bar, and the bartender (and owner?) reluctantly let us in (the door was kept locked). She was a stout African-American woman in her late thirties, and she definitely had attitude, but behind her rough exterior, she was actually quite sweet. She promptly served us two very stiff drinks (apparently, drinks are served with 2 oz of liquor instead of 1 in this part of town). After we were settled into our seats at the bar and confessed that we were from Canada, we exchanged the following dialogue:
“I’m surprised you found this place. How did you hear about it?”
“The LonelyPlanet guide book suggested it. She,” I said gesturing to BI, “didn’t want to go to a ‘tourist-y’ place.”
“Well, I’m glad you girls made it. People say this is a bad part of town but I don’t know, I don’t feel that scared to come open the bar by myself.” I arched an eyebrow. If this African-American Chicagoan with attitude wrestled with fear to come open her own bar in the neighbourhood, what hope did we tourists have? A white girl and an Asian girl from Canada, we stood out like light bulbs in this part of town. “How did you get here? Even the cab drivers won’t come to this part of town.”
“Oh, we drove ourselves.” I shot a frantic look at BI. Even the cab drivers won’t come here? God, what had BI roped me into?

After two hours of sitting at the bar, trying to blend with the locals (not), the band finally started up. And boy, was the music good. Everyone was so into it, not just the performers but the audience too. Many of them spontaneously started dancing or singing aloud (their own additions to the music). It was hard not to get swept up in the energy.
The bar filled up quickly, and I saw a local sit down next to us at the bar. As soon as I saw him, I knew he wanted to talk to us. He kept staring at me, so I turned away to avoid eye contact. BI is much friendlier to strangers than I am and he started chatting her up. He made an effort to talk to me too, but I had the “I don’t want to talk to you” stamp on my forehead². Neither of us could really understand him with his thick Chicago accent and the loud music. Although we were friendly at first, we became more and more frustrated with his persistent chatter and not-so-subtly hinted that we did not want to talk to him. The bartender even came over and offered to forcibly remove him from our presence. In the end, we did not have to resort to that, he left on his own accord when we stopped speaking to him altogether.

Later as we were driving back to our hotel, I told BI that my parents would have a heart attack if they knew us two girls had come to a place like this on Saturday night. “This is exactly the kind of place my parents wouldn’t want me to go when I travel alone. This is like their worst nightmare.”
BI chuckled. “If I told my father, he would congratulate me on finding ‘real music.’”
“Well, if my parents find out and get on my case, I’ll tell them to call your parents and they can have a good row about their parenting techniques,” I said, and to that, we both laughed.

On Sunday morning, we drove to Cuatro, a Latin dance club by night that (for some reason) served a mean brunch on Sundays.

The food was good and the servers were friendly (one of them, who looked kind of Jamaican, was unexpectedly but unmistakably flirting with me. He wasn’t even our server and he kept coming over to interrupt our meal), all that was missing was a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. And that was how we ended our weekend in Chicago.

1. Yes, BI thinks my lack of sleep requirements and abundance of energy makes me inhuman. I slept no more than 6 hours on any of the nights during this trip, and this was me trying to have a relaxing vacation. I was up for 19 hours on Friday, including swimming and being on my feet all day, and I was up at 6am on Saturday, went for a jog, and kept on my feet until 2am. Maybe I am a robot. [↩]
2. This is what BI calls my ‘I’m not interested’ look. [↩]