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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Chicago, Etc.



A non-illness related post (for once)!

So, this past weekend (read Friday and Saturday), I went to Chicago by train and had an absolute blast! Ate at Grand Lux CafĂ© and Giordano’s, which are musts if you’ve gone to the city and never been to those restaurants.

I went to this really fun place called Howl at the Moon. It’s a dueling piano bar. The thing that’s great about Chicago is that the city is so clean. And now that they’ve outlawed smoking in public places, it makes going to bars and clubs actually bearable.

I feel oddly at home in the Windy City, which made it really hard to leave. The trip wasn’t long enough, but, then again, it never really is. The trip made me realize how important the little things are and that sometimes we have to do things for ourselves, even if they seem totally insignificant to others.

For instance, it was comforting to be surrounded by Starbuck’s, not to sound like a snob, but it really was. There is something oddly comforting about seeing the familiar green and white sign. It’s like even though the scenery has changed, a big part of the landscape hasn’t.

Obviously, I’m not the only one who thinks like this. There’s a guy who went to all of the Starbuck’s in Manhattan.
You can view the video here. It’s pretty hilarious:

http://www.171starbucks.com/

As of this morning, according to Starbucks.com, there are 43 Starbuck’s locations in the Downtown Chicago area. The next time I’m in the Windy City, this seems like it would be a fun challenge to take on – as a bonafide social critique, of course. Granted, it’s nothing close to the 171 locations that Mark Malkoff went to in Manhattan, but it would be a challenge, nonetheless. That’s almost two Starbucks’ an hour over twenty-four hours, and the window of time would be more like twelve hours. That’s a lot of coffee!

And this also assumes that I come upon a windfall of expendable income and one of those cool camcorders that connects directly to the USB port of your computer…

It also proves that there is a Starbuck’s on every corner, or just about!

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