Entries Tagged as 'festival'

Tour de Fat and Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival

July 23rd, 2012 · No Comments

This year, unlike the past few years that we’ve lived in Logan Square, I did not go to Tour de Fat or the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival. I went to Burger Fest in Roscoe Village instead. On Saturday mornings I sometimes exercise in Palmer Square, but since it was taken over, I ended up just going for a long walk around the neighborhood. I saw a lot of the fest things, but didn’t actually go inside. Actually, it was early, so I don’t even know if the fests were open yet. Next year I plan to get back to Tour de Fat. We were getting a little sick of it… it has been always the same every year, so we needed a break.

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Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival

August 1st, 2011 · 1 Comment

The first year we lived in Logan Square we missed the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival because we had conflicting plans. Last year I took my niece Jess through and it was alright, but not great. This year it has finally all come together. The fest seemed really improved and we were able to invite some friends over and make an evening of it. Here is what I liked:

Revolution Brewing sponsored the festival and all of the beer there was brewed by them. I drank only the Bottom Up Wit (Refreshing Belgian-style wheat beer spiced with coriander and orange peel. Made with organic malt and wheat.), but there was also the Rosa (Tart summer ale infused with 20 lbs of Hibiscus flowers and touch of orange peel. Elegantly refreshing and defiantly delicious.), Anti-Hero IPA (An American hop assault for all the ambivalent warriors who get the girl in the end. “Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I’m not in it for you, Princess.”) and Coup d’ Etat (Dry, spicy French-style saison dry hopped with German Select hops.).

In addition, sangria was provided by Lula, the popular Logan Square restaurant and wine was provided by Telegraph, Logan Square’s brand new wine bar. I loved how all the drinks were sponsored by bars and restaurants that were only a block or two away. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this at a Chicago festival before. I mean, the beer was made right there. Now, maybe next year we can get the food to be more local.

Another thing I liked was that we were on the square, which means grass and shade. Many times you go to a Chicago festival and there’s nowhere to stand or sit except in the hot sun on the burning hot asphalt. At this festival we got our drinks and walked across the street to the shaded, grassy park. So much more comfortable.

Thirdly: Art. It was an art fest, afterall. Along Milwaukee Avenue there were curated art exhibits and pop-up galleries in empty storefronts and sponsoring establishments. There were also all kinds of different art activities that featured more than 200 artists in over 30 exhibits. The only exhibit I went to was located in the Logan Square Comfort Station, which was conveniently located directly behind the beer tent. The exhibit was Folding Time: Explorations of Surface Reality, a showing of mixed media paintings by Chicago artist Jason Brammer. Pretty interesting.

We spent all of our time at time nearby the main stage at Milwaukee and Kedzie and the music there was pretty good. We enjoyed a mostly all-girl band (only the drummer was a guy) called Hollows. There was also a stage at Milwaukee and Kimball and one closer to our condo, the Cole’s stage at Milwaukee & Belden.


I bought this hat for Dallas. Do you like it?
Jessica

Killian
Alden

Ed (and me!)
My friend, Bottom Up Wit

Finally, and probably the best part, our awesome friends who came to the fest with us. In addition to the people above, we also saw Andy and Katie, who just got engaged about a week ago. And Dallas and I also talked to Jack for a while. Jack cuts our hair and his salon, Mops, was a fest sponsor.

Alden and I were standing in line to get a taco when we saw Dallas purchase and drink a pina colada served in a pineapple. What the heck!? I have no idea what he was thinking since he is never one to order a fruity drink. Must have been the new hat I bought him!

We left shortly after and everyone came back to our house. We had been slow cooking pork all day while we were away. Dallas also made blue cheese coleslaw and I made a caprese couscous salad ahead of time, so we all feasted and sat out on our roof deck, where it was a perfect summer night.

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Stephanie’s First Manicure

July 3rd, 2011 · 1 Comment

Once upon a time I took my mom for her first pedicure. Then I took Amanda for her first pedicure. And then Steph came to visit and she got her first manicure. Somehow on our trapeze day, I stubbed my toe and my toenail was all messed up, so I needed to get a pedicure. But I knew I’d be super busy this week before the holiday so I was in a jam. Well, somehow I was talking to Steph about her fingernails and we decided that we both needed to go to the nail salon the next morning!

We ended up going to Pinky Nail Studio in Wicker park. I got my same, boring, red/wine color for my toes. Steph was drawn to the more bold, primary colors. And then she spotted the Shatter nail polish by OPI. Apparently this stuff is all the rage these days. You apply two coats of nail polish and then apply a coat of a contrasting shatter polish and it dries with this special effect. Check out the video below to see how it works:

Steph chose green for the base and purple for the top, shatter coat. It turned out looking like dark green on the top, but I think it still looked cool.

For comparison, here’s what her nails looked like before:

The color was cool, but the application was not good and it was all chipping off. Also, it was the same exact color as the mints we got at dinner the night before!

After visiting the nail salon, we checked out the Wicker Park farmers market. And then after that, we wandered around Wicker Park Fest for a few hours, where I was tempted to buy this tshirt, but didn’t:

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Parks and Fests

July 28th, 2010 · 2 Comments

On Jessica’s last day visiting us we hung around the neighborhood all day. We probably walked a few miles plus played in two different parks. I was so tired that night. .. and so was Jess. She slept the whole way when I drove her home!

In the morning we visited Palmer Square. It has a nice play area that is really new and we’ve visited it before, but it is geared towards younger kids. Still, Jess had fun on this spin apparatus. Especially when I spun her and she really got going. She couldn’t help but scream “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TOO FAST, TOO FAST!!!!!!!,” which was amazing compared to the quiet girl who had arrived at our house a few days before.

Later on we walked up Milwaukee Avenue to the Logan Square Farmers Market. Jess got a nasty case of hiccups so I got her a strawberry lemonade from the Vietnamese stand.

We walked around the market a bit, but all I really needed to buy were tomatoes. Jess had fun looking at all the dogs that everyone brought.

The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival was going on that weekend so up by Logan Square they had a bunch of booths set up. There was also a stage and when we went by the Chicago ballet was doing a performance.

I thought Jess would be really into the performance, but she didn’t really care. She did sit down and watch one dance though.

We walked around some of the booths that were set up on the square and Jess wanted to get our picture drawn by one of the artists there. It was pretty cheap, so I said we could.

What do you think? Does it look like us?

I was asking Jess what she wanted for lunch, since it was getting to be about that time. I was suggesting pizza, thinking we could go to one of the new pizza places in the neighborhood. I also suggested spaghetti, burgers, chicken fingers, tator tots, tacos, etc. I asked what her favorite food was and tried to figure out what she’d like. In the middle of all this she interrupted me and said she would like to go to Subway. Wow. Eat fresh! I hadn’t even suggested or thought of that. Later on my brother said they never go there, which is maybe why it intrigued her so much. There’s a Subway nearby our house so maybe she saw it while we were walking around and decided she’d like to try it. I wasn’t pumped about Subway, but it was Jess’s choice. We ended up getting sandwiches and taking them to Haas Park, so that actually worked out good.

Haas Park is a park on Fullerton that I’ve gone by a million times but have never been to. The play area is relatively new and is in really great condition and the landscaping is pretty nice. The only downside is that the trees are too young to provide any shade really, so the play lot is in full sun, making some of the equipment too hot to use. There was a sprinkler and we did run through that, even though we hadn’t brought our bathing suits. It was refreshing.

We ate our lunch and played at the park until we literally could not any more. See, Jess loves the monkey bars and the rings and went on them so much that her entire palms were red and blistered. If you look close at the photo above you can see the red marks forming. Crazy. Jess said she’s done this before. A lot. Gone on the monkey bars so much her hands blister. She told me sometimes she still keeps going even though her hands hurt so bad she’s almost crying.

When we got home I put some Bactine on her hands and some Neosporine ointment on the blister parts and then tried to bandage it up. It’s really hard to bandage the palms of your hands though. We were done playing, though, and Jess really just had to sit in the car while I drove her home, so hopefully it helped her hands a bit.

So, that was our whole weekend. I’m glad Jess came down to visit and that she opened up a bit, at least to me, if not to Dallas. Makes me think we should have done it sooner, but I’m sure she’ll be back next year!

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First Annual Logan Square Boulevard Bash

July 11th, 2010 · 4 Comments

On Saturday I met up with Ed for the first annual Boulevard Bash on Logan Boulevard. It was pretty dead when I got there around 4:00 p.m., but by the time we left at 6:30 it was starting to pick up. For $5 you could get Dos Equis, Heineken, or Amstel Light. Other than that, it was a pretty standard street festival. Oh, except at the Boulevard Bash (hate that name), you can sit our on the grassy boulevard, instead of standing around in the streets. That’s major selling point to me!

There was little or no promotion for the festival. Most people found out about it when they walked to the Boulevard and it was closed down. Ed and I talked to some of the organizers and they said they got a late start on planning this year, but next year they’ll have more time to get the word out. We put our names in to be contacted as volunteers for next year’s fest, which would be fun. Especially if we could get beer serving duties. Hopefully a bunch of our friends can come out to the fest next year.

Later on Ed came back to our house and we invited others over for a barbecue. It rained twice and the grill didn’t work for a long time, but it eventually all came together.

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