We (me and our AFS student) came down last night to see Robyn Hitchcock at City Winery.
Kind of a fun place – definitely it’s set up to keep the customers well-fed and wined. It’s shared tables of 6 – 8, full dinner before the show, and they’ll keep bringing you drinks and snacks throughout. When we got there, we were seated with another couple, who were sharing a hummus/beet hummus/baba ghanouj plate that they shared with us. We got a margharita flat bread, really just a little pizza. I got a glass of house-made red wine, and they also have glass bottles with those hasp-type of lids, like on Grolsch beer, on every table. In the ladies room line everyone agreed that if they were going to push the water so much, they should have more toilets.
Good show, although Robyn seemed a little subdued – aren’t we all. And, his new U.S. home base, Nashville, is a tiny blue speck in really red Tennessee. He used to spend more time in Seattle, and Washington’s got a lot more blue – Seattle’s in a blue column of counties from Olympia all the way up to Bellingham.
Friday I got up and walked up to the Blackstone for coffee at their Starbucks – I though it’d be nicer than the Roosevelt Rd. & Wabash one – the MacDonalds of Starbuckses – but the milk in my latte had that watery taste when the steam’s not hot enough. I came back and worked quietly while the kid slept and actually finished grading in one of my classes.
The we L’d up to Floriole for breakfast. It started raining when we were on the L, and we got kind of wet walking.
Roasted broccoli & goat cheese tartine at Floriole. The red stuff is a French-dressing-like vinaigrette that’s a bit spicey. They shaved the broccoli stems & added them to the salad.
After breakfast we bought a cookie and a pumpkin tea cake, and took off to walk along Armitage. The plan was to stop in at Kiehl’s and Lush and anything else that looked good, and I also mapped a Walgreens where I thought we might get an umbrella. I found the exfoliating scrub I’d been looking for at Kiehl’s, but Lush was a bit much for me. Its demographic skews a bit younger I’m sure; the sales girl ran after Belana to give her a catalog. We wandered into a designer consignment shop and patted the furs, but didn’t try on or buy anything. It started raining again, so we went to Walgreens and got an umbrella. The non-folding kind, so I think it’s my first purchase for the new car – I’ll toss it in the back.
We walked to North and Clybourn and got the red line to the Art Institute. We timed it just right to get our backs totally soaked while waiting to cross Michigan Ave. We checked the umbrella, and thought we’d take our cookie & teacake in and eat them in the member lounge, but we got stopped for contraband. We un-checked the umbrella and went back out in the rain to find a place for our snack, which turned out to be the Palmer House lobby. I liked the cookie – it was a good regular oatmeal cookie but with pecans and dried cherries. I could recreate that. Freed of contraband we went to the ‘tute, where we started with the Impressionists and of course several paintings were from Bertha and Potter’s collection.
And the rain stopped enough so that we could walk home.