Monday, July 19, 2010

Summer in the City: Part 4

Ask me where I’m from, I say Chicago. But little known secret: I’ve never spent an entire summer here. So begins my series of chronicling my first summertime.

I’m not going to exaggerate and say my Pitchfork weekend was oMfG-u-had-to-be-there-FTW!!1111!!!, because it wasn’t really. I didn’t recognize half the bands, spent a great deal of time worried about staying hydrated, and got slammed with the most gawd awful volunteer job ever on Sunday. But still, I’ll give the weekend a Pretty Good. Especially because I cut myself a pair of kick-ass jorts for the occasion.

I’m not going to waste my time writing about the music. Because you would pee your pants laughing at how uneducated I would sound. So I’ve included some of my favorites below.







Basically it was a good weekend to get turned onto some new bands, get turned off by others, and check out a few that are working their way up my list. I enjoyed the ballerinas and onstage energy at Major Lazer, although I did not appreciate the daggering. I liked Big Boi bringing back some of those all-time favorite Outkast hits. As always, I enjoyed the artwork at Flatstock, and I tried some new food (vegan mint ice cream!). Also, I made $125 off the weekend since I won extra tickets through Twitter, then sold them on Craigslist. Amidst the heat, I was able to drink enough water, didn't get sunburned, and lived to tell about it.

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Summer in the City: Part 3, A Very American Weekend

Ask me where I’m from, I say Chicago. But little known secret: I’ve never spent an entire summer here. So begins my series of chronicling my first summertime.

I like holidays so much to the point that in college, I took notes with ink tailored to the season (orange & black: Halloween, red & green: you get the point). So I couldn’t wait for July 4th, especially when my plans turned out to be so spectacular.

In a nutshell, the three-day weekend went like so, starting 6 p.m. Friday night: carefully planned Red, White, and Blue outfits; crazy dance raver lightshow concert; many many grilled meats and beers with friends from here and friends from there; sitting on the beach in Lake Michigan (sunburn, reading, reading, sunburn and reading); more grilled meats with wine this time; fireworks; White Sox game; mustache madness; another grilled meat plus a Lemon Chill this time; more fireworks. And around 11 p.m. Monday night, collapse into bed surrounded by three fans because in true July 4th fashion, it was 90+ degrees, or at least felt like it.

I thought I might go as far as to detail the whole weekend, but all that would entail would be gushing about how wonderful it all was. And that could be boring. So I will just leave it here. Happy 234th Birthday America! Hope 235 is just as fun.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Summer in the City: Part 2

Ask me where I’m from, I say Chicago. But little known secret: I’ve never spent an entire summer here. So begins my series of chronicling my first summertime.

In two consecutive days of attending the Taste of Chicago, I ate the following:
- vegetarian gourmet deep dish pizza
- chicken tostada salad
- chicken wings and hush puppies
- tequila lime chicken taco
- cherry Italian ice
- Italian breaded steak sandwich
- pot stickers
- crab rangoon
- rainbow ice cream

This is why Americans are fat.