Chicago has been celebrating PRIDE all month but it’s this weekend that is the big one. The street festival was Friday and Saturday, the PRIDE parade is Sunday. We couldn’t attend both the festival and the parade, we have too much to do and too little time. So, we decided we’d just do the street festival this year.

I think we made the wrong choice.

The festival wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t worth as long drive or the $14 parking. The community vendors were good, friendly and giving away lots of freebies. The merch was slim and not nearly as interesting as other PRIDE festivals we’ve been to. There was a heck of a lot of food and had we been in the mood to eat, we’d have appreciated it. There was even more alcohol and that’s not our thing.

The biggest difference between the festival in big city Chicago and small town Gainesville… Chicago has lots of pretty woman and pretty men all who had better haircuts than those in Gainesville.

Next year we’ll do the parade and wander around Halsted and Belmont for the window shopping and people watching.

I have a good dozen Chicagoland places to blog about, but no time to blog about them.

So, here’s a quick video, taken on the iPhone 3gs, when I was in Chicago with Jenn & Teddy last week.

This is the Centennial Fountain

It shoots a water arc out into the river, though it didn’t when we were there and I have no idea how or when it does so. I just know that it does and we saw it in action a couple of days earlier when we were in a Water Taxi.

The L & L Snack Shop has been on my short list of breakfast spots to try. All of the restaurants on this particular list have to be near the assisted living facility we go to every weekend in Des Plaines. The L & L is the last on this little list I’ve been accumulating and I found it by shaking the Urban Spoon iPhone app.

Greasy spoon food. Our favorite. A restaurant people seem to LOVE - or hate. This spot was right up our alley. Boy was it.

When we got there, closer to lunch than breakfast, all of the booths were full and about half of the counter stools. TW’s mom was with us so a counter stool was out, though if it had just been me and TW we’d have grabbed those stools and been happyyyyy.

So, we stood outside and waited for a free booth. One emptied but it was a tiny booth for two, jammed right up against the counter stools with no way to get a wheel chair in, so we waited some more. Finally a party of three left the booth right inside the door - a two seater with extra room for a chair.

We knew what we wanted since TW and her mom had read the menu while we waited. I knew what I wanted from watching everyone order and eat.

While we waited for our food (and discussed the waitress in detail - fascinating woman, errr. Heh) I pursed the reviews and was reminded of the chef’s love of ham. “You’re going to get ham whether you ordered it or NOT.” Damn, none of us ordered ham and I was thinking we totally should have.

It didn’t matter, the reviews were right. We all got ham - even TW’s mom who ordered eggs, wheatcakes and sausage got a chunk of ham. Even TW who ordered an amazing looking egg n cheese sandwich with hashbrowns and a side of corned beef hash got a chunk of ham. And yes, I who ordered no meat at all with my french toast got a hunk of ham.

The ham… fabulous.

In fact all of the food was fabulous. The corned beef hash… freaking amazingly good.

Way back in November when Lorena came to visit, she did a yarn crawl through Chicago. We really wanted to join her at Loopy Yarns but we had to work and couldn’t make it. After that, I sort of forgot about Loopy.

And there it was, near Dearborn Station, while we were at Printers Row Litfest. TW headed in while I took a photo and Loopt that we were there. A spinning wheel was sitting out front. A crowd of people were inside. A couple of chairs were conveniently placed where I could plop myself down in one and enjoy the people watching and look at the yarn from afar. I was tired by that point.

The people watching was excellent. The nice young guy who works there talking to the woman about sock yarn was fabulous. The old women in sweater sets. The young hipster couples. Fantastic. I love that store and I didn’t even make my way downstairs where there was a huge pile of colorful fiber just laying there.

We must go back when I’m not so darn tired so I can fondle the fiber.

After spending a whole bunch of hours at the Printers Row Lit Fest, we decided we should grab something to eat before heading home. We started out for Chutney Joe’s but it looked empty and maybe like it wasn’t open. I noticed Epic Burger was right next door and since we’d heard a lot about it and hadn’t been, we headed there.

Love the orange decor.

The Epic Burgers with bleu cheese were ok - pretty greasy but ok. If we hadn’t just had fabulous Booby burgers we’d have probably thought they were better than ok. But, there you have it. They just don’t hold a candle to the Big Boob.

The fries on the other hand were excellent. Just how I like them. The right size, the right texture - needed salt but that’s ok, all fries need salt and there were plenty of salt shakers handy to fix that right up.

I should mention the price, it’s a little on the expensive side - more than $20 for just burgers, fries and drinks. That’s too much considering we only paid $25 for all of the stuff we ordered at Booby’s.

I have been trying to get TW to agree to dinner at Booby’s for WEEKS. For some reason she had it in her head that it was a hot dog place and that’s why she kept turning up her nose at the suggestion. It doesn’t matter that I rambled off all sorts of things I’d seen on their menu, none of which were hot dogs. It didn’t matter that it had a great name or that everything I read indicated this would be a place TW would love. She just kept making that face… the one that means we should find some place else for dinner.

Finally, she grudgingly said yes to Booby’s. On a Wednesday night, which is not a convenient time for me to go out for dinner due to a standing date. But whatever, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity - who knows when she’d be game to try it again.

So we headed out. For some reason I thought it was much further from our house than it actually is. I also thought there was less parking than there actually is. Win. Win!

It wasn’t crowded at 6pm on a Wednesday. But, the folks eating there were interesting. Older folks. Men in suits grabbing their Boobys’ to go. A couple of families.

TW and I ordered Big Boobs and we ordered a Cheeseburger (that doesn’t seem to have a special Booby’s name) for TW’s mom. We ordered a side of onion rings, a side of cole slaw, a side of fried mushrooms and a couple of rice puddings.

It wasn’t fast but it wasn’t slow either. I ate my onion rings on the drive home and they weren’t great but they weren’t bad either.

The Big Boobs on the other hand - amazing. Best. Burgers. If not ever, than definitely the best burgers we have had in ages. They have slaw and onions on them. BBQ sauce that is not exactly BBQ sauce but something else. And, the dill pickle… I need to order a side of dill pickles next time. Awesome pickle. Oh yea, did I mention the slaw was fabulous and I was so glad I ordered an extra side.

As for the rice pudding - I thought I heard TW’s mom say she didn’t like it. Turns out I mis-heard. She loved it. She was comparing it to some fabulous rice pudding from some place else. I know squat about rice pudding (except that it’s disgusting) but TW and her mom liked it and that’s saying something since they are picky about their rice pudding.

I love Booby’s.

We’ve had one hell of a great book weekend. First Little City Used Book Sale and then Printers Row Lit Fest. I’m just about as “booked” out as I can be!

We spent a wee bit of time wandering around the Harold Washington Library, and enjoyed the visit but we’ll need to go back so that we can see more than just the escalators, the multi purpose room and the children’s room.

We were in the library because I snagged tickets to the Robert Rodi event (who was joined by Amy Sutherland and Jen Lancaster moderating.) When I grabbed the tickets, I grabbed them because we really like Rodi. I didn’t even bother to see who Amy Sutherland was - turns out she’s the woman who wrote Kicked, Bitten & Scratched - a book we really liked. We didn’t love this panel but we didn’t hate it either. All of that focus on the new non-fiction book by Rodi, which makes sense I guess since Sutherland’s most recent books are animal-ish books. It was interesting and I got Rodi’s book, When You Were Me, signed so that was fun.

Now about the Printers Row Litfest spectacular. OMG the books. That’s just all I can say. The books. The books. The freaking BOOKS. Must save money in preparation for next year’s event. Must also bring more canvas bags and someone to carry full bags because, people, books are heavy!

We had so much damn fun wandering around the tents, chatting with authors, fondling books, buying books, drooling over books. Did I mention THE BOOKS?????

After our weekly trip to the assisted living facility, we were almost home and TW mentioned the Little City Used Book Sale. I’d planned for us to go but didn’t think TW’s mom would be up to it after a very long morning/afternoon out. But, she heard “used books” and she was ready to roll.

So, I made a quick right onto Glenview Rd and after driving through the parking lot at Old Orchard Mall (a parking lot that I hate almost as much as the Butler Plaza parking lot in Gainesville) we found ourselves at the big tent.

It was late so there was plenty of parking right close to the tent, which is good since we had a wheelchair and the weather was beginning to look very much like rain.

We rolled into the tent, grabbed a shopping cart, and took off.

An hour later, we had a full basket of books and I was dragging TW out by her jacket. As I dragged her, she just kept saying “But I didn’t have time to look at any books!” Err, then how did we come home with five dictionaries, one of those huge one volume encyclopedias, eight cookbooks and a whole lot of paperbacks?

We’re pretty jaded when it comes to used book sales. We come from the land of the famous Gainesville Friends of the Library Book Sale and it’s hard to please us. Little City’s book sale tried hard to win us over and it did… even though there weren’t quite as many books, it’s in a tent, and it’s more expensive. This is a used book sale that’s a really nice replacement for our old favorite. We’ll be looking forward to next year’s sale.

Last Friday, it was our very last breakfast with Lizzy wandering time. Next year she’ll go off to middle school so we won’t have that hour to kill with her after dropping off the other two kids.

In celebration, we asked her where she would like to go for breakfast - out of all of the places we’d visited, what would she prefer…? She chose Kaufman’s.

So, off we went. We ordered a ton of food.

The bagels, excellent as always. The chocolate chip cookie Liz reports was amazing. The bialy’s very good. The pizza bread, fabulous. I impulse purchased a seven layer bar that defies words. Seriously. The onion rye bread was hot out of the oven and smelled amazing. I didn’t have any while it was hot but had a couple of slices with some of Kaufman’s amazing chicken salad - fantastic.

Black bean burgers and salmon patties were also purchased and I’m pretty sure reports will be good, once they come in.

Kaufman’s rocks.

Last month, TW read about Spiro’s Deli and mentioned that it was just down the road from us and supposed to be really good. She mentioned all of this right about dinner time, on a night when she did not feel like cooking. That’s what they call a hint. So, I took the hint and we headed out to run some errands and then tracked down Spiro’s Deli - in a little strip we pass every day, sometimes ten times a day, and have never really noticed. It’s right next to the Dunkin Donuts and that sign draws the eye, so we’d never noticed the tiny little run down looking Spiro’s right next door.

We stopped. It was a dumpy little place, that looks like it has been there for years. And, they do not take cards. We had no cash. So, darn, no Spiro’s for us. (We ended up at fRed Hots that night.)

One day last week, we were in pretty much the same fix. TW did not feel like cooking and I certainly didn’t. So, we made sure we had cash and then headed to Spiro’s.

A woman went in right before us who knows the gentleman who appears to be the owner. She chatted him up, when she noticed us behind her she moved aside and told us to order from the best deli in the world. Huh. That was an awful lot of enthusiasm from a little hole in the wall that didn’t really look like it was going to be anything special.

We perused the menu. We ordered… TW ordered something called an Athena. I ordered a Lady Di. We ordered an Italian for TW’s mom and we grabbed a couple of tubs of pasta salad. All to go.

While we waited, the woman ahead of us continued to chat up the owner as he cooked. A young young young couple came in and ordered Bombers. And we all waited together. It wasn’t quick. It was just this one guy (presumed to be the owner) and a young guy.

Most of the food was finished at the same time. The woman left first, then the young couple with their Bombers, and then our turn.

We drove home with food that looked less than spectacular. Not bad, just nothing to write home about.

We unwrapped our food, headed to our various eating spots (in front of our computers or in our beds) and proceeded to eat some of the best deli food we’ve ever had. I have no idea what made this exceptional food. Really no idea at all. But it was.