September 8, 2008
As promised, I will give some more deets about the Chicago weekend.
Those of you who have hung out with us in the past 6 months have discovered our love of a TV show called "
Three Sheets", shown on an obscure HD cable channel called
MOJOHD. Well, the host of the show,
Zane Lamprey, has been hosting pub crawl weekends all over the country called
Zanecrawl (he's done LA, NYC, Boston, and will head to SF in October after Chicago).
On a whim, Will and I signed up for Chicago. Why Chicago and not SF, you ask? Here's why:
1) When you sign up, you can only sign up for the whole package: hotel, shuttle bus, food, drink, schwag. So, if you're going to do an entire weekend, why not go somewhere else?
2) I loved Chicago when I was there in early June, and Will has never spent much time in the city, so why not Chicago?
So, we took off on Thursday night (9/4) and got in late. We had a nice sleep-in, I checked out the hotel gym, and we signed-in for the Zanecrawl around 2pm. At 3pm, along with 30+ other people, we got on the shuttle bus for the first evening festivities. The itinerarary was 5 stops from 3pm to 12am. Oh goodness...
FRIDAYIt was great meeting some new folks on the bus, and finally Zane and his college drinking buddy,
Steve McKenna, got on the bus. Along with them were Karen (the organizer), Kristin (the photographer) and Wes (security). Zane explained that all the stops on the Zanecrawl were "international" in theme. Our first stop was a German beer bar and restaurant called
Mirabell.
Despite consistent guidance in the bus about "pacing yourself", the first activity at Mirabell was a chugging contest...
I definitely didn't win the chugging contest, I did it in under 10 seconds, but Zane's baseline was around 4.5 seconds. Will might have won, if he didn't
Jim The Cop.
The next stop was an English pub called
The Globe Pub. The activity at The Globe was a darts contest. I made it to Round Two, but had a sad score.
After The Globe, we headed to Polish Village for dinner at a Polish buffet called the
Red Apple (Czerwone Jabluszko) Buffet. This place was ridiculous, with a phenomenal spread of polish food. It was the first time in a long time that I had cabbage rolls, oh delicious!
Zane also had a treat for us, a chance to try
Absinthe the classic way.
After the Polish buffet, we headed to a whiskey bar called
Moonshine. Shenanigans ensued.
The last stop of the night was an 80's theme bar called
The Regal Beagle (yes, think of Three's Company).
This place definitely had the girly drinks, I quite enjoyed the Tony Danza Extravaganza.
The night ended with a nice short walk home, we decided to get some air before bed, and thankfully, missed out on some more shenanigans to rest up for the next big day...
SATURDAYThe next day started out with another nice sleep-in, and breakfast buffet courtesy of Zanecrawl at the in-house steakhouse,
Shula's in the Sheraton hotel (which reminded me of the "work" trip that Katharine and I took to Florida in 2002 and we stayed at Don Shula's Resort in Miami Lakes...oy!).
A few hours later, we boarded the bus at 1 PM and then drove to our first stop in Lincoln Park, a Korean BBQ joint called
San Soo Gab San.
The food was delicious (I heart Kalbi ribs!), we consumed some Soju and Korean beer, and then left the place smelling of Korean bbq for the rest of the day.
Our next stop was a Belgian beer bar called the
Hopleaf, noted to be the second best Belgian beer bar in the country (the first is some place in Manhattan and third is SF's own Toronado).
Following some great Belgian beers and a dice game called 4-2-1 (which Zane learned in the Belgium episode), we headed out to the next stop,
The Goose Island Brewery. At Goose Island, brewmaster Greg Hall treated us to a small tour, a discussion about brewing, and then lots of good beer to taste.
Greg and his girlfriend joined us for the rest of the night. From Goose Island (where Zane ran into some older folks who happened to be outside and huge fans of Three Sheets!), we headed to
Adobo Grill for some Mexican-flavored eats and drinks.
At Adobo, Zane tested our Three Sheets knowledge with a test, our group fared pretty well, though surprising considering how all the Three Sheets info started melting into one pot in my brain and I had a hard time remembering what happened in which episode.
We were stuffed with great food, so off we went to a Jamaican bar called
Ja' Grill, where they had a private basement bar for our entire group.
Zane thought that it would be a great idea for us to do a boat race after dinner...
My team was made up of three girls + one guy, with one of the girls as the anchor. After the first round, we were first (sweet!). In the second round, we came in a close second (boo!), but we were psyched to do so well against all the other teams, as we had the most ladies (some teams had all dudes!). Go girls!
The last stop o' the evening was an English/Irish bar called
Gingers Ale House.
Gingers Ale House:
After we got back to the hotel, some of the gang hung out some more at the hotel bar,
Chi Bar, and then got late-night eats at another Irish bar,
Timothy O'Tooles, just a few blocks from the hotel. I think that the late-night grease-fest saved me from a nasty morning...
SUNDAYOn Sunday morning, we had to pack up our stuff, schwag, and get checked out of the hotel by noon, just in time to join up with Zane and the rest of the crawlers for Champagne brunch at
PJ Clarke's. We enjoyed a slide-show of some of the pics from the weekend, and Zane handed out prizes to some lucky (or unlucky) folks.
Examples of awards including a couple "Steve McKenna'd" awards, best drinking buddy (friendliest person), and the cutest couple (awarded to two dudes from Bakersfield who were NOT a couple...hilarious!) Will got the distinction of the "Jim the Cop" award, for spilling his beer during the first chugging contest.
After saying goodbye to everyone and getting some memory-lasting pics, Will and I wandered around downtown Chicago (Magnificent Mile!) and enjoyed the nice weather. We checked out the
Riverwalk and
Navy Pier before we had to catch a cab to O'Hare and get on home.
Well, Zanecrawl was worth it, an indulgence before we settle down into mortgage-dom. I heart Chicago and am so excited that we've met some really great folks that I hope to hang out with in the future. Hey-la-di-la-di-lay, hey-la-di-la-di-lo!
Here's a slideshow from Picasa, where I posted these blogged pics and more:
We also did a "tasting" of four entrees, which we all shared (can't remember everything that they came with):
Pan-seared yellowtail jack fish with baby carrots,
Sea scallops
Seared duck breast with grilled peaches, baby yukon golds, green olives and hazelnuts
Grilled pork loin 
We had some desserts too (the butterscotch banana cream pie was delish!) and then headed home to nurse our food coma. 
