Fashion Dress in The Present: oktoberfest
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Showing posts with label oktoberfest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oktoberfest. Show all posts

Tour Chicago by Boat with Shoreline Sightseeing

When waiting in the line to board the Bright Star, I see people buzzing at the front. The two Shoreline Sightseeing employees are there taking tickets, but they're also giving stuff out. Specifically, they're giving out mugs. For drinking. Drinking beer. Good beer. The pumpkin variety. The kind of beer that everyone loses their mind for during the fall. And it's free – or at least the first one is. Sweet deal nonetheless. It's all part of their Oktoberfest cruise.



The idea of free beer perks me up. I'm a little beaten down from running. Turns out the bus from the Grand Red Line stop to Navy Pier, where Shoreline docks, isn't always the most reliable. But I made it on time. And I get free Revolution seasonal beer as my running reward.

After I head onboard, I look to get situated below deck, where the bar is. I am not the only person with this idea. One nice woman behind me mentions to her companions, “I can't remember the last time I drank beer.” I make a note to check in on her as the night progresses. She seems like fun, and the sociologist in me is intrigued by the introduction of beer to a relatively staid crowd.



I feel a little self conscious, because the nice people behind me keep looking at me as I tinker on my phone. I forgot to bring a pen for my field notebook, so I look like I'm texting the whole time. In reality, I'm taking notes for this here piece. I may look like a sullen teenager with an above-it-all attitude, texting my way-cooler-than-you friends, but I swear I'm not, everyone. I want to be here and hang out with you. I just have a terrible memory. Please don't hate me.

But then something catches my eye. People walk from behind the bar with plates topped high with sausages, sauerkraut, soft pretzels, and other goodies. I think, wait a second. There's food, too? Like, good food? I must investigate.

So I grab my tall beer and scurry to the front of the boat-slash-back of the bar area to find my smorgasbord. I was dumb and didn't eat all day, so this is like manna from heaven. There are no limits on how much I can stuff my face. Forget about the beer, just give me smoked meats and don't stop until I explode.



Now that I have my drink and my mountain of German themed eats, we're about ready to disembark on our sightseeing mission. The captain or the tour coordinator or somebody in a position of authority enters our consciousness via a crackly PA system, and gives us the skinny on what's happening. Turns out the Bright Star has been inspected by the Coast Guard, so we can rest assured that we won't sink. I like this. He doesn't say, “We won't sink,” of course, because that would immediately engender ideas about us joining the Edmund Fitzgerald in great seafaring disaster lore. But that's obviously what he meant, my anxiety-wracked brain tells me. But anyway, we're good in the flotation department.

He lets us know that for the rest of the night, the bar will revert to cash-only status. This makes me acutely aware of the fact that boats don't have ATMs onboard. I properly readjust my sipping from “Gulp” to “Trickle” and instead bask in the glory of the food, which the disembodied nice man tells me is catered by the Paulina Meat Market – I, or rather my distended belly, can vouch for their quality.

Side note: While I listen intently and gobble my feast, someone uncanny passes me by. I can't take my eyes off him. I hope he doesn't notice the messy eater staring at him, trying to see into his soul. I can't help it. He looks exactly like the perfect amalgamation of Ted Danson and Albert Brooks, the first who made my sickly younger years comfortable by babysitting me via syndication and the second who greatly influences the worldview of my adult self. I want to thank this unlikely love child for his parents' (this genealogy is unconfirmed) contributions to my happiness.

Back to the boat stuff and not my hopeful genetically engineered celebrity best friend. Our guide tells us we're more of a party boat tonight, with live music provided by the lederhosen-clad band, Euro Express. They go all out for the Oktoberfest theme, with fun, kitschy performances of things like “Happy Birthday” for those passengers celebrating their birth-iversaries and “The Chicken Dance,” all in the Americana-Germanic style you'll recognize if you've been to any Oktoberfest here in the States.




While listening to Euro Express, I notice something about seafaring vessels. They are host to some of the gnarliest spiders known to the world. Big, nasty suckers. I swear I see one bob its head in time with the beat. I make sure I have no arachnid stowaways on my person for the rest of the night.



Upon moving away from the railing with the 'roided out spiders, I take note of how smooth the ride is. There is almost no rocking or swaying. Lake Michigan is calm tonight but waves are still rolling. Perhaps my Buster Keaton-fueled nightmares about water travel were unfounded. Instead of being a gigantic hamster wheel on water, the Bright Starinstead allows us, on one of the clearest, most beautiful nights I can remember in a while, to view the Chicago skyline and take in parts of what make this city special.

The night winds down with me stuffed on my third soft pretzel and Euro Express playing “Sweet Caroline.” I'm ready to burst, I've had a lot of fun except for the disappointment over the nice non-beer drinker not turning into a wild party animal, and I now have a souvenir to fill with more liquid, alcoholic or not, whenever I want. Plus we didn't finish the night on the bottom of Lake Michigan. Thanks, safety!

Shoreline Sightseeing has all kinds of tours to explore Chicago. Visit theirwebsite for tickets and scheduling information.

Hofbrauhaus Chicago Oktoberfest

Originated in Munich, Germany, Oktoberfest is a 16-day-long festival leading up to the first days of October. While the Americanized version of Oktoberfest usually focuses on the drinking aspect of this celebration, German microbrewery, Hofbrauhaus Chicago takes the festival back to its traditional roots.



Located in Rosemont, IL, Hofbrauhaus Chicago is one of four locations in the United States. Through October 31st, Hofbrauhaus guests are invited to enjoy authentic food, Bavarian entertainment, and special events. On September 12th, the opening night of Oktoberfest was commemorated with the first taping of the Oktoberfestbier keg, with special guests, Eric and Kathy of WTMX. Of course I enjoyed a stein for myself while listening to live music and scouting the traditional German fashions. I had never seen so many leiterhosen in one room before!


On Friday and Saturday evenings of the festival, the Masskrugstemmen, contest is scheduled to take place.  Translated to “the lifting of a liter mug of beer”, the goal of the competition is to hold a liter stein full of beer parallel to the floor, with one hand.  The contestant who holds their stein the longest without spilling a drop is the winner!
















Each evening from 4:00pm to 10:00pm, food and drink specials will be featured.  Each night also features special events, listed on the Hofbrauhaus website.  So, sit back, enjoy a soft pretzel the size of your head and raise your stein to October!

The Lemonheads at Oaktoberbest

Indecision ruled Saturday night. I got to Oaktoberfest in Oak Park around 7:30 p.m. and discovered The Lemonheads' sound guys to be unsure of everything. It continued unabated until the band left the stage a few hours later.



Side note: A trip from the end of the Red Line to the end of the Green Line takes a long time and exponentially increases the odds of peculiar co-passengers. I had one middle aged drunk man fall on top of me because the train took a slight turn. “Oh, nice to meet you,” he said as he slumped beside me, where he struggled against the impending passing out.

Back to the main event: Indecision. Woof. The crowd was massive and seemingly wanted to ebb and flow in every direction at once. Getting around was not the easiest thing.

The cranky sound guy provided a meta narration to it all. “No, a little higher here. Check, check one. Here, here.”

Nothing was to his standards and the crowd responded.

I wanted a beer, but the line was about thirty deep and 100 wide at what I think was the only beer vending section of the beer-themed event. After waiting several minutes and moving up a couple feet, a sign came into focus. “No beer purchases without 21-and-over wristband.” “Where do I get that?” I asked myself.

So I gave up. Beer was off the table. The food tents looked much more sparsely populated.

I walked past the normal options. Burgers, hot dogs, tacos. I wanted something a little stranger, but not, like, cow tongue strange. But I was hungry, so it needed to be fast. My head swiveled along the line of food tents. “I don't know, I don't know,” I muttered to myself. So I went with the most out-of-the-ordinary thing I could think of that was within 20 feet of me: a cup of spicy Venezuelan chili and a bottle of water.

Now the sound check guy was audibly groaning as he couldn't figure out the right microphone configuration for the drums.

I found a spot about 50 feet from the stage where I was able to eat my food. It was physically hot, and the double styrofoam cups solution the restaurant provided was still a bit inadequate. Instead of finding a table – the ones that weren't wet from the day's earlier rains were filled with people talking loudly about drug addict ex-boyfriends – I chowed down rapidly. I downed the near-pint of hot and spicy chili in about five minutes and chugged my water bottle, desperately in need of relief.

But that relief didn't come in the form of more water, for another inebriated man fell into me.

“Woah, I'm drunk!” he said to his embarrassed wife as she shuffled them away from the creepy guy drinking chili remnants from a styrofoam cup.

The Lemonheads were finally about to hit the stage. The crowd of graying Gen Xers and their indifferent children gave a polite introduction to Evan Dando and company.

It's a shame this wasn't a rapturous applause because this band has made some of the best fuzzy pop music I've ever heard. I've been obsessed with them for a decade, when they were already rock elder statesmen. My older sister has long teased me for having a particular pop culture taste set – “Rob bands” – but looking at all the people 15 or more years my senior ready to relive their glory days made me think that my personal ownership of this band's music wasn't true.

The first thing I thought was, “Man, Evan Dando got old.” Obviously that's what happens to people, but when I had never felt the need to check up on him, I had in my mind the 1990s-vintage videos of him looking like a model with long hair. Now he looks like a longshoreman, with a gruff weeklong beard, shorter-but-still-long hair, a beanie, and a windbreaker with the ABC network logo emblazoned on it for some reason.

The band launched into a rollicking, distortion-heavy set. While their sonic output on record is more balanced between lightly fuzzy guitar pop, '60s-inflected garage, and Alt. Country, that changes when they go live. The pedals make the guitars raucous. Punky little love songs like “Allison's Starting to Happen” become giant barnstormers. Dando's usually syrupy vocals become a shredded melange that don't always hit the high notes in pleasant ways. Sometimes, in fact, it seems he purposely makes wacky, nails-on-chalkboard mouth sounds just because it seems fun to him.

His between-song banter confirms his “just having fun for myself and nobody else” attitude. “Usually these things suck but this is kinda fun!” he said early on, before later telling strange, often non sequitur jokes from the stage, including one about how we celebrate births and mourn at funerals because we aren't involved. Then there was something about ducks and microwaves. Some didn't make much sense to the non-initiated (re: anyone not in Dando's brain), but this was his show and he wanted to make it fun for himself.

Dando's banter and constant tinkering with his guitar levels between songs – “Which one are we doing next?” was a regular question posed to the other band members, who had to often think on their feet to let him make up his mind about what to do next – made me think he must be a major annoyance to his bandmates. They seem like Ur-professionals who want to put on a great show and he's the twitchy goofball they need to wrangle into a productive night.

They did wrangle him well enough, because once they began playing the songs, he was magnetic. Mournful classics like“My Drug Buddy” became a celebration of a time and place that can now be looked upon with nostalgic eyes now that the problems described within have left Dando relatively unscathed.

For a five-song interval, the bassist and drummer disembarked from the stage to allow Dando and the other guitarist to perform the band's electric folk output, most notably their masterpiece – it's my favorite, at least – “The Outdoor Type.”



For a short while, the full band returned, ran through “Rudderless,” then left Dando alone for “one more song” that became four. He didn't know where he was going, but he seemed to enjoy himself, and I got to see a great fuzz-pop band that has meant much to me since my formative years.

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