To the Window...to the Wall

This is been a pretty productive weekend. On Friday, disc0 and I tried out a new restaurant that we found in a pullout from this week's Reader which named tons of cool places to eat on patios or otherwise outdoors. Outdoor eating is huge in Chicago in the summer. The place was called Coopers, A Neighborhood Eatery* and it is, of course, walking distance from our condo, in a bit of a theater district. Across the street is the theater where I first saw Gayco.

The food was AWESOME as expected. I got an amazing vegetable panini that didn't contain anything I don't like! That never happens with veggie sandwiches. It was arugala, caramelized onions, goat cheese, and roasted red peppers. And disc0 got a half rack of baby back ribs which were amazing. This place makes all of their food fresh, except for the bread--which means the ice cream we had for dessert was made there, as were the marshmallows mixed into it. Just another amazing neighborhood restaurant with a giant beer list and pathologically friendly servers. Hooray.

Last night we had dinner with our friends J and A. I can't say the restaurant was the greatest (I think our server was having a rough night) but that's OK because it was in the neighborhood where we almost did but then decided NOT to buy a condo. And the company was fab. They can't ALL be the best restaurant ever.

Then J & A got tired, but disc0 and I wanted to view the insanity that is Saturday night in Wrigleyville after a Cubs game. We called another friend, AM, and headed to the heart of it. We got a window seat at a fairly authentic Irish pub (our server was even Irish) and did some great people watching for a couple of hours. Then we wanted to really see the disasters happening, and suggested a trip to Hi Tops**, the skeeziest hook up den in Wrigleyville. AM refused, and suggested Redmans, which in her opinion was more of a neighborhood pub. Ha!

Hi Tops could not have beat the Redmans people watching scene. On a cool note, it was an awesomely diverse crowd and there were folks having a great time dancing with their friends. But the piece de resistance was the Make Out Couple. They were going AT IT on the dance floor for a long time; then they moved to a booth that was already inhabited to get a little more comfortable. Chicago bar-goers were too polite to elbow them or say anything harsh, and so they began to get a wide berth and a dedicated audience. The DJ tried to talk them down over the sound system, to no avail. The waitress dutifully bussed the table where they were violating the booths (although their "neighbor" gave up and left after a few moments). Finally, a group of stranger women seemed to decide that the woman in the Make Out Couple was sorely lacking, and therefore needed, some girlfriends (this is Chicago after all), especially to tell her that her pants were hitting half-mast much of the time thereby exposing faded white granny panties. At first I was also concerned, and took this to mean that she wore said grannies b/c she was planning not to hook up, and then got drunker than expected and was embarrassing herself with some skeezy bar guy. As we continued to observe, it became evident that she was WITH the guy. So maybe they were just "we've been together a long time and he doesn't care about my underpants" underpants. Lord knows I have some of those. In any case, the stranger women had to give up and leave as well, because these two were not in the mood to quit. It also turned out that Make Out Couple WAS with a rather large group of friends, one of whom somehow found an industrial strength flashlight and shined it in their faces in an attempt to stop the carnage. It worked for only half a second. Part of me thinks these people just do this whenever they go out, and though I tired of it eventually, I hope we cross paths again. It was enormously entertaining while it lasted.

*I also love this place because the name and cat eye sign remind me of my Boodles' kitty

**For example, MTV recently did their Chicago casting of something called "Dismissed Again" at Hi Tops