In the past couple of weeks I’ve had several self-congratulatory conversations with other Chicagoans about how we really appreciate summer, unlike the wimps who live in mild climes and take the sun for granted. It’s true that summer here is generally more fun than summer anywhere else I’ve been, but to be honest, sometimes it can be more boring than winter.
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The winner for the week gets to wear a satin sash with geometric designs on it. Sometimes the cuisine gets nutty, like Rat Beef (grocery store meat loaf with Slim Jims sticking out of it, strung up with dental floss decorated with dyed flowers), or cute, such as America vs. Middle East Pizza (a cheese pie topped with White Castle sliders and random scraps of meat on one side and vegetables on the other, and decorated with photos of flags and soldiers clipped from magazines and mounted on toothpicks), or latchkey-esque, such as Ants on a Log (celery sticks slathered with peanut butter and dotted with raisins). And there’s always something with curry in it–last weekend it was mashed potatoes.
A handful of us hung out on the rooftop patio getting tipsy off a buffet of malt beverages: Tequiza, Zima, and a party pack of Smirnoff coolers (Green Apple, Black Cherry, the totally delicious Wild Grape, and the inexplicably named Triple Black, which is lime). I didn’t feel like waiting around to see who won the cook-off, so I went to the Empty Bottle just in time to see Juiceboxxx, the Milwaukee teenage rap sensation, drinking nonalcoholic beer and pumping his fists to an audience of perhaps 20.
We found the mansion near Clark and Wilson, guarded by a wrought iron fence. We tried unlatching one side of the fence, which wouldn’t budge. But the front gate swung right open. We snuck to the side of the house, and through a giant trellis we could see the glorious sparkling water in a half inground, half aboveground pool, complete with a beach ball and other floaty things. A stone path led us right there.
