As much as I love my regular crowd, sometimes going to the same old places and seeing the same old people can tire a girl out.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The new 5,000-square-foot addition smelled like fresh polyurethane–they’d literally just put away the ladders–and there were plaster-dust footprints all over the floor, but it was still the perfect kind of place for a weeknight, cozy like Danny’s and polished like Rodan, with warm Asian-inspired decor, plenty of low seating, and a come-as-you-are door policy, trashed sneakers welcome.
The DJ plays whatever he wants–that night I heard AC/DC, Duran Duran, Massive Attack, and Jay-Z. Nothing off the beaten path, but who cares? My friends and I danced around and then piled into a car and sang at the top of our lungs like total dorks, which was a hell of a lot more fun than mingling around some supercool art project that you can’t touch. I felt like I was meeting my best friend’s new boyfriend for the first time, and even though he was a little awkward and dressed a little too slick, I was instantly lobbying for marriage.
I blame True/False, the documentary film festival I attended two weekends ago in Columbia, Missouri. Like most documentary fests, this one was full of all sorts of anticapitalist, anticonsumerist, pro-freaky-people films like Jem Cohen’s antimall piece, Chain; Three of Hearts, a movie about a relationship between two bi men and a straight woman; and This Revolution, Stephen Marshall’s mostly fictional movie filmed during the Republican National Convention, where Rosario Dawson, playing a protester, actually got arrested. (Though I didn’t see her ass in jail when I was there, which makes me wonder if she got special treatment.)
