3:14 p.m. - 2005-10-24
Not Fullerton. Western. WESTERN!
Milo Jones came to town over the weekend, and it was a good time. Friday I picked him up at Midway Airport and we killed time looking for food before the soundcheck at the hipster dungeon where he was playing that evening. Although I've enjoyed lots of fine Chicago dining, I can never for the life of me remember the locations of restaurants in that sprawling, "windy" city. Except one: the place next to the Empty Bottle, down Western Avenue, which turned out not to be too far from Milo's music venue. So we headed toward where I thought I remembered "the Bottle" (as the natives call it) being. South on Western we drove, southward, ever southward. And never found the Empty Bottle or the restaurant next to it whose name escapes me but they have the most kick-ass falafel I've ever had. There's just some extra thing in it that other falafal lacks, something unexpected. Is it ginger? Anise? I don't know, it could be anything. Plus the coffee there is good. I was telling Milo all this while we drove around not finding the place. But we did pass lots of burrito places, one of which we decided to dine in after giving up on the place next to the Empty Bottle. After dining, we headed toward the venue, north up Western Ave. Only it turned out not to be Western Ave. I happened to glance at a street sign and it said Fullerton. I had been looking for the Empty Bottle on THE WRONG STREET.
This was mortifying for a number of reasons, the main one being that it proves hands down that I'm not cool. Any cool person in Chicago would immediately be able to locate the Empty Bottle, probably without even knowing the street address. I imagine cool people having some sort of cool-seeking apparatus, like on heat-seeking missiles, and being automatically, even involuntarily, drawn into a cool vortex like the Bottle. Also, I'd let Milo Jones down, promising him a falafel I was unable to deliver.
But Milo didn't seem angry or disappointed. Being the show-biz trouper he is, he rose above these sad circumstances and put on a good show. Which maybe I'll blog about tomorrow, being for the time being too drained from recounting the whole Falafel Disappointment Episode.
TOMORROW: See above.
