Willis Tower Skydeck.

This weekend Julie and I had family in town so we decided to take the opportunity to check out the Sears Willis Tower Skydeck. The views were very unique, I kind of wonder why the Skyboxes aren’t other side of the building but either way it was pretty cool. I’d highly recommend anyone going to visit to spend the extra $10 and buy the ‘Fast Pass’ as we waited in line for more than 2 hours. When it was all said and done I’m pretty sure we got in line around 1:45pm and didn’t leave the building until about 5pm. There was even a line to go back down.

One of the more interesting things we could see was Lollapalooza in Grant Park. We could see a large mass of people near the north part of the park which would have been the Arctic Monkeys at the Budwiser Stage. After the last two years (2007 day 1, day 2, day 3, and 2008) I’m glad to have missed Lollapalooza this year. Like clockwork this was also the hottest weekend in Chicago.

The Wandering Goat

After attending my first Roller Derby on Saturday I decided to go a different route for Sunday. Julie had bought tickets to this dinner party series that is being run by Top Chef season four winner, Stephanie Izard called the The Wandering Goat. It’s kind of like a dry run of the restaurant she will be opening called The Drunken Goat. The dinner took place in the West Loop at the house and backyard of one of Stephanie’s friends. The theme was Three Floyds Beer & Meat. I didn’t really get the theme as here’s what we ate:

A pork thing with some sort of apple chutney
Grilled octopus salad
Lamb stuffed calamari
Oysters sprinkled with some bacon bits and scallions (I did not eat the Oysters, Julie had about 4 though).
Dessert was Black Dog Gelato in the choice of three flavors: roasted red pepper, banana creme, and lemon ginger. I had the banana creme and Julie had the lemon ginger.

*Side Note:
The rest of my photographs are here.

Windy City Rollers

Yesterday I went to see the Windy City Rollers face the Philly Roller Girls at the UIC Pavilion. The Philly girls were leading from the start, but the Windy City Rollers tied the match with less than a minute to go and forced overtime. There were some scoring discrepancies as they took at least 4 points off the board for the Chicago team. In the end Philly won 60-59.

If you’ve never been to a roller derby I highly recommend it. The only awkward moment came when one of the Philly girls got hurt and all 500 people in the arena went silent. The quiet was so intense that you could hear the girl cry out in pain.