It all started with a text message to The Shalvster, asking him if he had a show last night. I realized with a bit of a start that I did not need to mope around my house another night. (Truth be told, I mostly stopped moping around on Tuesday, now I’m working through bitter. Come on dude, at least acknowledge me, okay?) His show wasn’t until midnight and he wasn’t even sure he was going to go.
Then I decided that perhaps what I really needed instead of improv was bowling. A round of emails and an executive decision from me set the stage for a night of hilarity. What was the executive decision? Instead of bowling, we’d take Diane’s sushi suggestion and instead of affordable, we take my suggestion.
The goal? 7PM at Amagi Sushi at Leland and Lawrence. So what if I went there last Saturday night? So what if in the last 8 days, I’ve had sushi three times now? It is a super-hip location in Uptown with fantastic sushi, marvelous service and delicious martinis. And when I sahy martini, I mean a drink served in a martini glass that has nothing in common with a true cringe-inducing gin martini.
Needless to say, making a 7PM decision at 6:30PM doesn’t exactly guarantee an on-time arrival or start to the evening. But by 8PM we were in our fantastic red booth eating edamame and laughing. By 10PM or so, maybe later, we were still laughing, but ready to find a new booth to sit in. After all, while a $10 drink served in a martini glass is delicious, it doesn’t help reduce your consumer debt.
We went around the corner to Nick’s Uptown and remembered that bars still allow smoking. Yuck! We lasted approximately 45 seconds before we left again. Amy reminded me of an old favorite of mine and we decided to head to The Freak Show, aka Oakwood 83. The Freak Show is a bar with a 5AM license in Ravenswood. One of those places with an awesome jukebox, that allows you to bring in food after their kitchen closes, and that doesn’t get customers until 2AM. That means the only person smoking was the bartender and the other two customers.
Huzzah! We took over the juke-box and a corner of the bar and continued to laugh until we peed our pants. Okay, maybe we never peed our pants, but we created quite an uproar and laughed until it was time to eat again. Then we rounded the corner and had breakfast, at the totally responsible hour of 2AM, at Le Sabre. My favorite diner from my old life when I lived in Ravenswood.
Everyone was safe in bed by 3AM or so. I think I kept giggling as I drifted off, thinking of the ABBA, the Dylan and the Marley we’d been singing at The Freak Show.
Comments