I want to start off by saying that I truly hope that tonight’s show in the arena out in Philly outdraws the first Morris Mayhem show to become the all time highest attendance for IWA Mid-South…525 is the threshold.  I hope that I’m the only person that isn’t there tonight.

Yesterday was a fun day for me.  It was my first ever trip to the Taste of Chicago.  Of course, I never would have gone without Stacy.  I would not have enjoyed it one bit if it weren’t for Stacy’s company either.

Let me say this to start off with.  I had no clue what to expect at the Taste.  I didn’t really know anything about it so I had high expectations.  Traffic was a bitch cause first we had to go to the University of Chicago hospital.  We sat on the exit ramp for the Dan Ryan for 40 minutes and hadn’t even gone 1 1/2 miles.  Stacy finally said the hell with it and told me to head to Lake Shore Drive.  It was smooth sailing even with the Taste going on.  Chicago construction traffic is the drizzling shits.  F that.  We get to the hospital and back up to the Taste in no time and park in the garage and start walking.

image gone

We walked in and it was jammed pack with people.  You could hardly move.  We were starving and then Stacy informs me that you have to buy tickets like you are at a f’n carnival in order to get food and drinks.  $7 for 11 tickets.  You have to buy at least 11 tickets.  You can’t get a refund if you don’t use all 11 tickets.  The first thing I see is that beer is 10 tickets.  $7 for a beer.  I don’t drink but that is ridiculous.  I knew right then and there that I was not going to like this place.  I want to know how much I’m spending on something that I’m buying.  I don’t like this whole ticket scam.  There is nothing for 1 ticket so you are screwed if you buy a beer.  You need to buy more tickets in order to get anything.  Stacy gets a drink (4 tickets), a “taste” of something from a Cajun stand (3 tickets), turtle soup (5 tickets),  and something else for 5 tickets and then I get a drink for 4 tickets and $14 of tickets are gone.  I did end up getting  a double cheeseburger from Billy Goat Tavern stand which was good and a piece of pizza from Connie’s Pizza which wasn’t so good.  Stacy was enjoying herself though so that was good.

I had never been in Grant Park before so I went to Buckingham Fountain featured in the opening to Married With Children.

images gone

They had a sign up for boat rides on Lake Michigan so we went on that.  That was an experience.  We had to walk across Lake Shore Drive and go to the dock and the wind was causing the water to be all kinds of choppy.  Here are some photos from our choppy chilly boat ride but yet it was a lot of fun:

images gone

We then decided that we were hungry for something other than bbq fried chicken, watermelon, catfish or pizza so we walked to Benningans to get some real food.  The Taste of Chicago gets an F from me because out of hundreds of stands there was 1 place for me to get a cheeseburger.  Add in the ticket scam to get people to be buying more tickets (since everything was like 8 or 9 tickets and nothing was 2 or 3 tickets to finish off the sheet).  I could do without ever going back there again looking for anything to eat.  I don’t try new food so it was a waste of space to me.

After leaving Benningan’s, we ran into some interesting street people.  One was doing a puppet show that was hooked up to the back of his bike.  puppetbike dot com or something like that was the website advertised on it:

images gone

Then there was some break dancers where one was painted silver like the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz or something:

image gone

That was our eventful day in Chicago.  We may go back again tomorrow to hear Sara Evans in concert and maybe pass out some IWA flyers since everyone and their brother was handing stuff out and no one was stopping them.

Good Day.