February adventures in Chicago

[chanaleh]

President's Day weekend I had the opportunity to go into Chicago twice in three days, which is practically unheard-of.

Saturday night, one of my college friends (Dr. Dara) was in town and wanted to get some people together to go see a production of Wit. I was familiar with it but hadn't seen it; I knew Judith Light did it on Broadway in the late 1990s, and was reminded that there's a movie version with Emma Thompson; but I'd forgotten that it also won a Pulitzer. It's about a terminal cancer patient who is also a professor of John Donne -- heavy stuff, but it was well done. Oh, and it was a production by The Hypocrites, whom I know from their traveling Gilbert & Sullivan productions (Pirates and then Mikado), and before that, because my little cousin (now aged 16) played the littlest Nazi in their Cabaret back in 2009.

So anyway. I drove in by myself to meet Dara and her other friend, and made arrangements to meet cycon beforehand for what should have been dinner but ended up just being coffee. The Den Theatre is in Wicker Park, on the north side, and once I got there I discovered that it was the MOST HIPSTER neighborhood I have ever seen in my life, counting Davis Square and all of Brooklyn. Glossy secondhand shops, tattoo parlors, ramen bars, and artisanal coffeehouses as far as the eye could see. Not altogether my scene, but it still had a pleasantly familiar feel, and was a treat just to walk around by myself for a little while. cycon had picked out this '80s-themed coffee shop called The Wormhole, which, see above about MOST HIPSTER. Their website claimed they would have sandwiches but it was not so. But that was OK, the play was probably too heavy for a full stomach anyway. :-}

Then Monday afternoon, I drove in again, this time with Aria, to meet some of my Boston friends who were visiting for the weekend with their kids, ages 11 and 8. We all had lunch at a fantastic little shawarma place right on North Michigan Ave, and then walked over to the Art Institute where it turns out they have a "Family Room" play/craft area for kids that's completely free to walk in. It was an unbelievably gorgeous day, like 62 degrees in mid-February even right next to the lake. So that, too, was a treat for me to walk around... including that I finally got to do the classic urban mom thing of using the stroller cupholder for my Starbucks Frappuccino. ;-) (And etrace got to have a day off at home and stay far away from the city, so everyone was happy!)