Another installment of “The Weekend Edition,” on account of how I like talking about my weekends. Here’s what I did on this weekend.
Friday, I went out with Alex, Rich and John for the Critical Mass ride. There are three types of people at the Critical Mass ride, and they’re generally in pretty equal proportion. There are the counter-culturalist protester types, that don’t like cars or cops and like to make a whole political thing out of it. There are a number of people that are there for the scene and like to try biking and drinking beer at the same time. And there are people that like the opportunity to ride a bike and not fear getting hit by a car. I’m somewhere in between the last two, as I like looking cool and I also like bikeriding. I’ve got no time for these jokers that do the traffic-blocking and have fights with the people in cars. But at least somebody is doing it, I guess.
I gotta say, these cops that escort the riders at the start - these guys have got to put up with so much shit, and they remain so patient. I don’t think they get thanked enough. It’s nice that the Chi embraces the Critical Mass unlike other cities.
So we go all around the city for a couple hours, finally ending up by the lake on Division. I had to turn around and speed back to the West side so I could clean up and go to Vince’s welcome home visit party at this bar Simone’s in Pilsen.
So I split a cab with Vince and his new gal Margaux and we stayed there all night whilst Eric Burba DJ’ed and Vince’s friends moved in and out. Apparently Vince has this friend whose girlfriend was in a modern dance group competition that weekend. What’s more, they were apparently the modern dance troupe that no one had pegged to win the competition because there were some heavy hitters in town from the East Coast. But guess what happened? Yeah, you guessed it. They modern danced their way right into the finals! (You have to understand that in my head that whole scene plays out like sketch comedy.)
I got home pretty late that night and Bethie left me to sleep for most of the morning which was so thoughtful of her. I got up and out and we went to finalize tuxedo rentals then to the Home Depot for items needed to fortify our tomato-growing operation. I’ve got these tomatos looking great. They are mulched, weeded, fertilized, caged and staked.
After our errands we loaded up the dog and went to the softball field to hang with Vince and his people for a couple hours. It was a really nice day, but TOTAL was being a jerk to some other dogs and Bethie was stressed about it. I didn’t really care because he’s old and he’s entitled to his perogative.
That night we had to go to Beverly to a party for some of her Irish family. Holy shit, Beverly is really nice. There are mansions everywhere and hills. There are very few hills in Chicago. So we spend some time there eating all manner of snacks and whatnot and socializing.
Sunday we got up and went to brunch at the Breakfast Club. Bethie got the chocolate chip pancakes and it was like a plate full of candy bars.
Then we had to meet some folks in the loop for the Forgotten Chicago walking tour. Bethie was such a little trooper for going along for this. It’s not really her cup of tea. Lots of “look at this building that you would have never noticed because it’s tiny and right next to a skyscraper.” At one point they were pointing out a freshly torn-down building and bemoaning it’s demolition to make way for a park. Bethie goes “Oh, that sounds nice!” and everybody looked at her funny.
Nevertheless, I had a good time. I like all that “did you know” stuff.
Afterwards we went and bought a gallon of rum for Lynnie’s housewarming gift. She bought a really nice condo in Buena Park and we went to visit. The only problem was the complete lack of parking on a nice Sunday close to the lake in the middle of the gay pride parade. We had to drive around forever. But so anyway we had a nice time with Lynnie and picked up some Art of Pizza on the way home. We both felt like we had been drugged after so much rum and pizza.
Also, Michael Jackson died last week.

So Bethie and I were really stepping it up this Friday. After work we need to go to