My New Year’s Eve plans came to me in a moment of Nitro
Mojo-fueled inspiration while hanging out with some friends from boxing at
Lucky’s Taproom in the Oregon District a few weeks ago.
My friend Nick said, “What are y’all doing for New Year’s
Eve? I’m thinking about going to Chicago.”
“You’re going to Chicago?!” I shouted, unaware of my
excessive volume or excitement. “That’s such a good idea! I want to go to
Chicago!”
I turned to my friend Lauren. “We should go to Chicago for
New Year’s!!”
“Well uh, do you want to maybe go together?” Nick asked.
So I asked off work, we booked a hotel, and looked for a
place to park our party. We found a microbrewery in Wicker Park that was
holding a Roaring ‘20s themed NYE party with open bar and buffet for $75. Brews,
barbecue and boas – what more could a girl want?
Nick’s friend Marc came along, and Lauren’s friend Paul
drove with us to save gas on his way to visit a friend.
I carefully packed all my warmest clothes, looking for ways to
cleverly layer my snow clothes under my most fashionable street clothes, in
order to keep up with my fashionista traveling companions. This is a joke. There’s
basically no way to look sexy hot and actually be temperature hot in Chicago in
winter. I froze my butt off, even while going to such lengths as wearing leggings
over my tights.
Paul, our driver, has been trying to learn German. This
became readily apparent when the GPS said things like “Dan nach auf die
liechtennachsterbachstenfarger” or “auf links unter die ausgebeleiden strasse”
or “fahrt.”
“Paul! Did your car just say fart?” I squealed. “Make it do
it again!” So Paul pulled up his German-English dictionary app, one of about
4,326 apps he has installed on his iPhone, and asked it to translate the word ‘drive.’
The soft-spoken German translator lady inside the phone obliged us, pronouncing
it slowly and clearly, and Paul’s stereo proceeded to say “Fahrt fahrt fahrt
fahrt fahrt fahrt” at intervals throughout the trip.
We made it to Chicago in time to watch most of the Bears
game in a bar. Lauren, a.k.a. Chicago's ambassador of Bears' fandom to the common people of
Dayton, was thrilled. Decked out in a Bears t-shirt, Bears earrings, and a
Bears scarf, she was constantly shocked to find herself surrounded by football
fans all unified under the same banner, er, jersey.
Although the bar food and the cupcakes from a shop we
visited later were both delicious on the way down, Lauren and I both were
unfortunately visited by the ghosts of carbohydrates past. When we returned to
our room to get ready for our first night on the town, we found ourselves
crawling into bed trying to ward off some serious reflux and stomach cramping.
But our traveling companions decided to become knights in
shining armor, and took a cab to the nearest Walgreens to bring home the best Get
Well Instantly care package you can imagine. Saltines, sprite, water, Tums, Pepto, and
a suspicious looking white powder called “Goody’s” that professed to be made of
acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine … but I think we all know what it really
was. That, combined with Ellie Goulding’s song “Anything Could Happen” cranking
out of the hotel room’s iHome, perked us up enough to get dressed and amped up
to go out.
Somebody recommended we hit up a place called Moe’s Cantina
near the river downtown, so we caught a cab and went. Thanks to a successful
hotel pregame, we spilled, rather than stepped, out of the cab onto the street
in front of the bar. The bar had two identical front doors on either side, so
we tried the first one we came to. Marc reached out, but the door seemed stuck, so he put some
Army-toned muscle into it.
BOOM! The door flung open, and we were staring a three of
the most shocked and startled waitresses I’ve ever seen. Apparently the door
was locked, or was supposed to be, and we were supposed to have entered through
the other door.
We ordered some nachos and a pitcher of Sangria, but I
really have no idea of the reasoning behind either decision. Marc and I
brilliantly decided to have a jalapeno-off, which resulted in him crying in the
bathroom trying to wash his mouth out, and me downing everyone’s waters at the
table, and grasping for those of the table next to us. I’ve had jalapenos before, but
these particular triple-heated peppers raised my definition of pain to a-whole-nother
level.
As suddenly as we’d arrived at Moe’s, we got the urge to
sing some karaoke. Nick’s friend Riku, a native Chicagoan, had joined us at
this point, so he led us around the town in search of a karaoke joint.
Well, we did not find one. But we found a lady in green who
struck Riku’s fancy, so we continued to run around town, but this time in
search of the emerald temptress.
We did not find her either. I give Riku two stars as a tour
guide. Or maybe one thumb unenthusiastically hanging off to the side.
So we took a cab home and crashed.
On New Year’s Eve morning, we woke up to delicious pancakes
in bed from the hotel café, courtesy of Nick. Our first stop was the Navy Pier,
which Nick and I were both disappointed to find out had no naval war ships. But
instead, we rode the Ferris wheel for some fantastic views of the city. We then
checked out Winter Wonderland, a huge temporary indoor amusement park for kids,
complete with a Tilt-a-Hurl, mini Ferris Wheel, inflatables, and ice rink, and
popular dance songs blaring from the PA system.
In one corner we found a
display called Winter Wondertown. It was lined with fake old-fashioned storefronts,
and a handful of actors looking like they were dressed by Dr. Seuss stood in the middle of the ‘street’
greeting visitors, wearing a whole spectrum of neon from head to toe. The most
enthusiastic of them called out to us.
“Would you like to Gangam with us?!” she yelled, and I
realized the viral Korean dance song was then playing above us. We joined the
group and got a quick tutorial from the green-wigged-lady, and then stomped,
lassoed, and giddy’upped with more gusto than we ever thought ourselves capable
for the next 45 seconds.
Properly gangamed out, we danced our way out of the building
and moved on to The Bean. While I secretly hoped this would turn out to be a
museum dedicated to Mr. Bean, Roan Atkinson’s hilarious British idiot
character, I was still quite impressed by the giant chrome kidney bean
strategically situated to reflect the best of Chicago’s skyline.
And I was even more thrilled when Lauren pointed out the
amazing photo-bombing opportunities afforded by the scads of tourists
performing self-photography into the mirrored surface. This entertained me for
a full twenty minutes.
Across the street from the Bean I noticed the Chicago Public
Library and begged to go there. Libraries have turned out to be some of my
favorite experiences in big cities, and this one was no different. And it was
deliciously warm, which was a huge relief from frosty gusting outdoors.
We entered a huge foyer with a grand double staircase
leading up to a room with the most beautiful stained glass dome I’ve ever seen.
We slowly ascended the stairs, taking in the grandeur, when a chord was played
on a grand piano somewhere above us. I perked up, and we followed our ears to
the elegant marbled room with the dome. In the front of the room, a man only
four feet tall sat plunking out the most intricate and technically challenging
piano concerto I’ve ever heard on a massive grand piano.
I slid into a seat, mesmerized. Including the four of us,
there were a total of six in the audience. I marveled at how the man’s fingers,
at least an inch shorter than mine, nimbly tickled the keys with speed and
grace I could never hope to attain. I held my breath, waiting
for a break in the music. One finally came, and my hands automatically attacked each other in
applause. The musician turned as if he'd just become aware of our
presence. He looked my way and smiled in amusement, and continued seamlessly
with the song.
The song ended and the dwarf quietly replaced the cover to
the piano, and we floated out on a cloud of serendipity.
We stopped in at a Starbucks to get some hot drinks to
prepare ourselves for a long walk to the Sears :cough: I mean watchu-talking-‘bout
Willis Tower. We timed our visit to catch the last rays of daylight, and the
lights coming up in the city. We were crammed into the elevator
livestock-style, with 20 excited tourists told to walk to the back and face
front. More than a minute later, the elevator opened to the 103rd
floor.
Standing in front of us, their faces blank with solemn
anticipation, stood 25 Buddhist monks in full screaming orange garb, waiting
for their elevator ride down. Our whole elevator registered a double take. We
walked a safe distance away and burst out laughing from the surprise.
“That was literally the last thing I expected to see when
those doors opened up,” I said. “I thought they were going to start singing,
like some kind of multicultural welcoming committee.”
We made rounds of all the windows, taking in all 360
degrees of amazing vistas of one of the prettiest cities I’ve ever seen. We got
in line to step onto the protruding glass alcoves. When it was my turn, I
walked fearlessly out onto the glass floor, but then faltered as my stomach
lept into my throat.
“Whoa, vertigo!” I said. Weak kneed, the four of us posed
for a picture with the Chicago skyline below us.
We stayed there on top of the world until the last drop of
sunshine fell below the horizon, and darkness fell on the city.
We caught an early dinner at Giordano’s, famous for its
classic Chicago-style pizza. We then took a cab back to the hotel and got ready
for our 20s party.
We sauntered down to the hotel lobby a few hours later,
ready to rumble, decked out in feathered headbands, fringes, boas, pearls, and
dashing suits. But our enthusiasm was soon curbed when we found out the wait
for a cab was nearing 30 minutes. We stood in the street for about 30 seconds
before Lauren and I discovered how completely uninsulating our outfits were
against the Windy City. We decided to wait in the hotel bar until we caught a
cab or thought of a better solution.
The bar had a few windows to the street, and after about
three sips into a round of drinks, Lauren spotted a cab with its light on
waiting at a red light across from the hotel. Nick jumped up and ran out to stop
the cabby. We started to chug our drinks, and Nick reappeared, huffing.
“Let’s go! I told him to start the meter!”
We closed out our tabs, transferred our drinks to disposable
cups, and made it to the cab in two seconds flat.
Our party was being held in a neighborhood known for its
microbreweries at a bar called Moonshine. The atmosphere was delightful from
the minute we walked in. A DJ was cranking the best of the last 25 years in
dance tunes, 2013 balloons were attached to everything, a hundred or so 20-somethings
were dressed to the nines in ‘20s-somethings, and bar tenders were serving drinks in
mason jars.
We were fashionably late, which meant all the tables were
claimed. Nick quickly made friends with some Chicagoans on the highly coveted
couch-booths across from the bar, and we squeezed into a space for two, working
out a system that was kind of a cross between musical chairs and a rotisserie
chicken for who got to sit and who had to stand.
Soon the beat caught my hips and the rest of the night was lost in a whirlwind of twirling, booty-shaking, fist pumping and shimmying.
As the party wound down, a pair of Minnesotans who both
fancied Lauren invited us to accompany them to another bar. We gathered all our
belongings and stepped into the frigid street. After beating a few old ladies
with sticks in order to get a cab, we realized we’d lost Marc. We arrived on
the opposite side of town 10 minutes later only to find that all the bars were
closing or at capacity, our tour guides had no idea where we were supposed to
be going, and Marc had gotten into a fistfight back at the previous bar.
For the next half hour we wandered the streets trying in
vain to hail a cab, as literally hundreds of others found themselves in similar
predicaments. With my coat covering all of my costume except my feather
headband, a reveler mistook me for Pocahontas, and performed some kind of
abbreviated Native American greeting as he passed. Lauren and I couldn’t take
it much longer, so we limped on frostbitten toes to the biggest, swankiest
two-story McDonalds we’d ever seen. But hundreds of other partiers had had the
same idea, and we were soon in a massive crush of drunken people desperately
jockeying for their spot in one of 12 different cashier lines. The only plus
was that our extremities were starting to thaw. Nick continued to try to get us
a cab while we tried to get us a Big Mac.
A man reeking of whiskey bumped my elbow in the line. “Did
you have a good New Year’s Eve?” he slurred.
In no mood to make small talk, I responded curtly, yes, and
turned back to the line.
“Well you just hate men, don’t you?” he said, angrily.
Not really feeling up to challenging him on that one, I
answered again, just as emphatically, yes, and he stopped bothering me.
We thought, well if this is 2013, it can only go up from here.
 |
| Lauren and me ready to murder someone for our food. |
We finally got our food, and rejoined Nick to look for an
open table. Somewhere between the counter and the stairs, some miscreant stole
one of my feathers right off my head, but my hands were too full to fight back.
We finally forced ourselves out in the cold again, ready to
bribe the first person with an empty car to take us back to our hotel. We had,
in fact, tried that on our way into the McDonalds, accosting a middle-aged lady
with an empty minivan and offering her $50 for the 3-mile trip. But this only
succeeded in thoroughly weirding out the poor woman.
We lucked out when a limo driver pulled to a stop the
second we reached the street. Not a stretch limo, but just one of those
all-leather interior black sedans. He warned us the trip would be a flat fee of
$45, but we would have probably pledged him our firstborns in order to get out
of the cold.
The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful, but I did get
the opportunity to cross an item off my life bucket list when Nick and I went
ice skating in Millennium Park’s outdoor ice rink.
I felt like the whole trip was like Sex in the City, the
co-ed version, meets Friends, set in Chicago, minus all the sex. Living life
and having a blast. I hope to enjoy many future such adventures, although it
will be hard to top this one.
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