Merry Mis-Adventures: My Last Week in Chicago (6/18/07)

Much of my last week was spent organizing my stuff for the movers and packing for my trips, but I definitely also managed to get in a fair amount of fun.

Monday ::: I got in a solid few hours of pool time in the morning and then set off for the Boom Boom Room party at Green Dolphin, a great indoor/outdoor venue on North Ashland in Lincoln Park. I had been hearing about this Monday night party for the better part of two years, but somehow managed to avoid it until this week. I'm so glad I made it out - what a great venue and awesome crowd. Finally a super mixed crowd in Chicago - music heads, trannies, b-boys, freaks - a little bit of everything! And the a$$ on that one - dayum, Gina! It was a total blast and the music from Jeff Craven and Julius Papp of the Large Music crew was solid. Our fun posse rocked it out until the bitter end and then made the trek back to Evanston (I'm so not going to miss the commute!)

Tuesday ::: Dan, Evan and I cruised downtown in the early afternoon to spend a few precious hours enjoying the Chicago summer the way it was meant to be enjoyed - on the

North Avenue beach! Michal joined us just in time to head to Castaways, an open air bar/restaurant in a beached blue and white steamboat. The four of us sat at the table with huge grins on our faces, ordering every frozen cocktail on the menu. KJ and co. as well as Sunil and Lisa joined us around 7pm, just in time to eat some dinner and take in the gorgeous Chicago night. Ahh, life is good! After 7+ hours at the beach, we once again made the commute home... KJ's last night, so sad!

Wednesday ::: Boring packing and errands day.

Thursday ::: My movers came first thing in the morning and packed my stuff and hauled it away. I checked out of McManus and moved over to Nicole and Ganesh's place in Optima Whatever. That night, I met up with a bunch of people for one final group dinner at Cozy Noodles, which happens to be a BYOB joint. Normally that is trouble enough, but this time everyone was cleaning out their liquor supply which meant we had enough beer, wine and champagne on the table to drown a small country. At the strong urging of Cara and Emily, I got drunk and made my way with the crew over to Bar Louie. On the way I got spanked and spanked, flashed my butt... you know, the usual. Once we arrived at Bar Louie, three of us ladies got into a very interesting conversation about well... ummm... some stuff (-: And then the group got into a heated game of Catchphrase. I'm not sure how or why, but the three lone soldiers - me, Cara and Joe somehow landed at The Keg. It was only my third time there all year, but I put in a strong performance giving equal dancing time to the 20 and 50 year olds in the house.

Friday ::: I started the night off at a Pride Weekend Kickoff Party at the Center on Halsted, where I randomly bumped into a Princeton Softball blast from the past. After catching up and hanging

out at the party for a bit, we made our way across the street to the Kit Kat Club to meet up with yet another of our teammates and to enjoy exotic martinis. After that, I split off from the Pride contingent and made one final pilgrimage to Smartbar to catch Josh Wink on his tour in support of Profound Sounds, Vol 3. I met Sunil there just before 1am and got to hear the last half of the opening set by theDEVIOUSone... which was interesting. Homeboy was banging the shit out of the Funktion One to a half empty room. I'm not quite sure what the hell he was thinking, but it was totally inappropriate. You could tell Josh agreed because when he stepped up to take things over, he quickly changed the pace and pretty much started from scratch. Being the consummate professional that he is, he was quickly able to erase the opener's lack of discretion and got things back on track. He played a wider range of sounds than I've heard from him in the past and never really cranked it up, but overall gave the crowd a really nice set. I spotted Hay Consuelo by Pier Bucci and the track that seems to get played everywhere these days, RU OK by Ambivalent (although it was a version I have not yet heard!). I caught a tiny snip it of one of the lyrics before it was even really recognizable and walked right up to Josh and said, "RU OK?" to which he responded, "what?". When I repeated myself he said, "Oh! Damn you're good!" I knew Kevin would be proud. Sunil and I stuck around until last call and then made the obligatory stop at Wrigleyville hot dogs before making our way (one last time) back to Evanston.

Josh Wink @ Smartbar: