I was picking up some stuff from the garden store in

my pick-up truck for Pam and one of the things she needed was this little shovel. Those things are kind of cool.

Didn’t eat here today, but we should have. Instead we went to some new “hip” place in downtown St. Paul. Pretty forgettable. Over the top trying to be trendy... maybe woulda worked in say, 1998. The food was just ok. The service was young and dumb. Only pissed me off because just a few blocks away is the Gopher Bar and it’s killer coney dogs, crappy service, 1960’s decor and signs like “NO FUCKIN’ CHECKS!!!” why wouldn’t we want to go there? This place is as close to an institution as we have here in the city.

Our buddy Jay (who played bass with the band on our England trip) is playing bass with us again for this upcoming Neil Young tribute show we’re doing. He drove his sweet “new” pick-up truck to practice. 1971 Ford. We all sat around and drank beers and left the empty cans in the back. Now that’s a rock band.

This is the new Triumph Bonneville motorcycle and i have to say i would love to have one. Actually this looks just like my motorcycle, but this is a real Triumph, not some japanese knockoff like mine...although mine never breaks down or has problems which is more than i can say about Triumphs...but that doesn’t stop me from wanting one. What i really dig about this one is how it looks just like the bike Fonzie rode in Happy Days. How cool is that?

We had no intention of going to Chicago and just eating Chicago style hot dogs...but that’s pretty much what we did. Pam wanted to see the famous Wiener’s Circle...I’. not sure they’re really famous for their hot dogs, but they are really well known for their insults and rudeness. When the band was down a year ago they found out first hand that at the Wiener’s Circle you need a good insult just to get your order filled. And not the “Get my hot dog, Bitch!” types of insults either...the insults need to be really bad, and they’ll come back at you really bad as well. Something like: “What do you want on it?” “Everything, BITCH!!!” “You want pussy juice on it?!?!?” That kind of insult stuff. We didn’t get the full treatment because when we went in there weren’t really any other people in there and we had that “we have no idea what’s going on” look on our faces so they went pretty easy on us until we payed: “I gotta pay my mother fuckin rent...you better give me a god damn tip!!!” as she took a dollar from my change and stuffed it in their tip jar. That was a pretty good move. Some other people came in and they gave them some pretty serious shit. I was a little too out of it and hungry to really get into the whole vibe. The hot dog was actually pretty damn good. We only got one because i wasn’t too hungry for dogs at that point. I think that hot dog cost us about $40 for the cab ride there and back and that’s pretty much all we did. It was worth it though. Wish we could have made it back for another round but we had other dogs to eat.

Imagine that, an Irish pub in Chicago. After the Wiener’s Circle we headed back to the area where our hotel was and looked for a cool place to hang out. We didn’t find one so we went to O’Neil’s. We were hungry so we split a burger...the sign said “Chicago’s Best Burger!” which it wasn’t. Oh well. The beer was cold and tasted pretty good and the  Chicago jocko types didn’t bother me too much. The building the bar was in was super cool though...and the bar was all of about 7 feet wide, I guess that’s one of the things it’s famous for. If I were them I would take down the “Chicago’s Best Hamburger!” sign and replace it with a “Chicago’s Skinniest Bar!” sign. At least they could deliver on that promise.

We kind of got stuck with some crappy weather when we got into town; humid and hot and a bit of rain, so it looked sort of gloomy out our hotel room window. I do love the John Handcock tower. I used to draw pictures of that building all the time when I was a little kid. Actually I remember being on a kick drawing buildings burning down...it’s damn good thing I didn’t turn into a pyromaniac or something.

Navy Pier is best seen from this distance. Avoid at all costs. It’s a tourist trap. One big mall with some rides and a food court...think a REALLY small Mall of America. It sucks big time, but we did a walk through, grabbed some nachos, rode the ferris wheel and got the hell out of there.

Every city should have cool mass transit like this.

I wasn’t kidding...we ate a tone of these things. They don’t even really call them Chicago Dogs...they’re just hot dogs with everything on them, and i mean everything. The two things that really make a good Chicago Dog (besides the environment you’re eating them in) are 1.- Celery salt. That is the secret weapon in the Chicago Dog, the silver bullet, the cats meow. That’s what really makes the dog so good. and 2.- for me it’s the pickle spear. The spear part is important...a lot of the dogs I had used pickle slices...that just doesn’t cut it for me. The spear is the only way to go.

While Pam hunted for shoes I decided to stop in a place for a beer. I picked this place because they had a cool beer sign hanging out front and a couple dogs hanging around the bar. Any bar that lets dogs in is a bar for me. The bar was pretty cool, but the dogs were way cooler than the people. Mostly just a bunch of Chicago style jocky schmoos.

This is super cool old school stuff you just don’t see anymore. A person actually sitting on a street corner selling newspapers. No coin op stand. No magazine stand...just drop a pile of newspapers down and set up shop. The blind dude hung out with her for a while a chatted. He’s probably her best friend and worst customer.

I don’t blame him. It was hot and humid as hell. That’s pretty much how i felt getting dragged from one shoe store to another.

That is a nice lookin’ front end of a dry cleaners if you ask me. You just don’t see shit like this anymore. Back in the 1950’s when they opened that place it had to look really good. That’s all business...and fun. Clean and white (like something clean should be). Name it something cool, almost famous.