Storm!

Today there was a thunderstorm in Chicago--it sounded a bit rough from bar class, wind and thunder and lots of rain, but by rush hour it was done. Although apparently it was worse than I thought, because by the time SM and I went to find dinner (though the sunset was doing pretty things to the clouds, the Cubs were playing, and there was no rain in sight), the first place we tried was "closed due to storm." Weird and a little disappointing, but OK. Then we tried to go to my neighborhood favorite Orange and it was ALSO closed. And THEN, we tried to go to a clearly open Thai place I've never tried. The hostess said "two for dinner?" and when we said yes, she said "sorry, we don't have room!" even though we saw an open table. It might be because SM had just kidney punched me in a brotherly fashion and they thought it was a more sinister form of relationship violence.

We walked like a mile and ended up back in SM's neighborhood (he was really glad he came all the way up to my place just to walk a mile in 86 degree Chicago air-soup). BUT the dinner we finally found was delicious (Japanese food at Y2K).

The moral of the story is, sometimes there are mediocre days in Chicago when the buses don't run right, the el catches on fire and starts to stink during your morning commute, it's in the eighties and muggy all night, and you can't find any place to eat, and you get kidney punched by a good friend. BUT YOU CAN STILL FIND A GOOD MEAL IN CHICAGO when you are weary and hungry and it's 9:00 pm and wandering the street, because there is always a fantastic restaurant open somewhere and you will find it eventually.

ETA: to further re-pump Chicago's image even though it was a mediocre day, I should mention that disc0 enjoyed yet another great New Bar Tuesday, including a new place with a dog for a bouncer, and an establishment called Save More which, as the name suggests, used to be a package store and was converted into a bar by the use of some cups, card tables, and folding chairs. I plan to visit soon.