I really dig the amount of old people that live in the city of Chicago and get out moving around with their baskets and canes and stuff. Old age isn’t going to stop them.

We were walking through a cool Chicago neighborhood park, even grabbed a Chicago dog and petted some puppies. I had to pee so this is where I went. I dug the green wall and the cool “please flush’ type on the wall. See, there’s cool shit to look at no matter where you are.

Ben’s Shoes is a pretty sweet place. I didn’t care too much for their shoes, but the store front rocks. And people walking dogs rocks too. Chicago is full of people walking dogs... but so many people have big dogs. Big labs everywhere. Why? it’s like their cars, they all drive bigass SUV’s too. It’s a big crowded packed in city people, get yourself a small dog and a VW you dipshits!

The weather was pretty strange our whole time in Chicago. On this day it was sunny and hot as hell and we went into a store where Pam was trying some stuff on and the next thing i knew a huge ass storm rolled through. I was thinking tornado. Lightning. Down poured like crazy. By the time Pam got out of the dressing room the storm had passed...that figures. “Why are the streets so wet?” She asked when we left the store. (Cut to me rolling my eyes.)

6 years??? How the hell did that happen? Oh ya, that’s pretty much why we went to Chicago (that and Pam’s friends 40th birthday). For our anniversary we went to a cool jazz club called ‘Blue Dolphin Street’... strange name, maybe a reference to a famous jazz song? We had no idea what the place would be like but figured we’d give it a try. We opened the front door, stepped in and knew right away the place was great. We were greeted by an old dude who obviously owned the place and he sat us at a good table and let us know the jazz would be starting soon. The space was killer, brick walls, velvet curtains, cool New Yorker poster hanging over the bands equipment. Very cool jazz club. We ordered some food that was pretty good. The band played and they were pretty good...the drummer was a woman and she was a killer drummer, just the way i would want to play the jazz drums if i played the jazz drums, and i told her that too. The best part of the night though was the wine. White wine that put us in a good talkative mood so we talked about marriage and stuff. We had a pretty good time i must say. Who knows,we may even be married a few more years.

In the fancy part of downtown Chicago they had a bunch of Ferrari’s on display with the owners camped out next to their rides soaking up all the attention they could get with that “I have a Ferrari and you don’t” smurk on their faces. Mostly cheesebags own Ferrari’s... shocker!!! Here’s a Ferrari groupie that was hanging out. A female cheesebag if i’ve ever seen one.

Wanna see them? If you do, Carmine’s is your place. We needed a spot to stop and grab a bite to eat and dodge the incoming rain and Carmine’s had the highest concentration of over 40 fake boobs i have ever seen, so that’s where we went. We found a great table outside under an overhang and ordered some wine and appetizers. Fake boobs and fake tans as far as the eye could see... it was amazing. The winner though was the 20 something more (of her parents) money than god valley girl sounding chick sitting next to us talking non stop to the poor idiot who i’m sure really wanted in her pants but she kept telling him waht a “great friend” he was to her. Poor schmoo. She even had a little yorkie dog she called ‘Paris’ (complete with diamond studded ‘Paris’ dog necklace) that kept barking like crazy every 10 seconds when a dog would walk by. “Blah, blah, blah, blah...” BARK!BARK!BARK!BARK! “Paris, be quiet...blah, blah, blah...” BARK!BARK!BARK!BARK! Repeat until we left that cheesy-ass place. It was annoying as hell sitting there, but it was a pretty good look inside the high end Chicago money crowd. Like i’ve learned time and time again lately, I really don’t like people with money and sitting at Carmine’s just proved that one once again.

We were out walking around and getting a little hungry and thinking maybe something to eat a little bit better than all the hot dogs we’d been eating might be nice and we came up to this fancy grocery store place with a cafe in it. The grocery store part was easily one of the coolest high end places like that i’ve ever seen. Made we wish we had one of those by us. The food in the cafe was just ok and and overpriced. We sat next to some rich jewish mom, daughter and grandma and the grandma kept staring at Pam’s new flame orange sneakers she bought. I’m sure she wondered what the world was coming to and how could they let such riff raff in the place.

We drove by this place and there was no passing this one up. I don’t really think they had the best hot dog (or even close to the best), but that doesn’t matter when you’re serving them out of a rig like this. Pam missed out on the inside experience. The place was a machine where you’d better know what you’re ordering before they ask or you’re getting blown out of line. Luckily I had my shit together and just said “with everything”. “With everything” at this place means just about anything you could ever fit on a hot dog...their claim to fame and main point of differenciation seemed to be the 15 or so toppings they added to the standard chicago dog. Cucumber? Lettuce? I guess. Whatever works, but like I said, it’s not the hot dogs (or 15 toppings)

you go to Byron’s for, it’s the space.

We had a bunch of practices getting ready for the yearly Neil Young tribute show we play. This year we had Jay Holgate play bass with us and on this night he brought the beer...Molson, Canadian beer. mmm...mmm...mmm

Why can’t they make water towers like this anymore? When did they become the ugliest things of all time? Did they get really ugly and than they decided to throw up the name of the city on the side of those blobs to show everyone where they are? Putting a city name on a water tower is sort of cool because it shows some sort of city pride and that’s cool...but why not have real pride and put up a cool water tower. Like a great building they wouldn’t even have to put their name on the side, people would know the name of a cool water tower and what city it belonged to, like the Sears Tower in Chicago...it doesn’t have the Sears logo at the top of it, does it?