Day 13 - Welcome to Wrigley

I woke up early and set off walking towards Wrigley Field. I had tickets for the game, which didn't start until 1pm, so my plan was to find a cafe along the way and relax for a little bit. It's weird, but walking down Clark St, a major commercial street, it took forever to find a cafe. I was expecting to be able to come across one right away, but they just weren't on the path I took. Anyway, I eventually found one and sat down to have some tea and read a book.

After a while, I set off again. I arrived at Wrigley a little early, so I picked up my tickets and moved on to explore the area. Right around Wrigley, the aptly named Wrigleyville district, it reminded me of Landsdown street right around Fenway; it was basically filled with bars and souvenir shops.

A little further down the street, I ended up in North Hampstead, the gay district. If the rainbow pillars hadn't given it away, all the gay sex shops definitely did! It was pretty quiet, but that wasn't too surprising for late morning on a Thursday.

I also managed to wander into two food stores and found a couple of gems. The first was the liquor/wine store. I was curious if they'd have any sparkling shirazes since I'd had to leave my last bottle in San Francisco with Sarah, Jim and Jeff. Going to the champagne aisle, I discovered to my amazement that not only did they have two brands of the shiraz, but one of them was the exact same one I had to leave behind! The second gem I found at a Whole Foods. I just went in looking for lunch/snack because I didn't want to pay ballpark prices and lo and behold, they had fresh figs! It was one of those things in California that I fell in love with because they're so good and I wasn't expecting to see them again until I got back to the west coast, but here they were in Chicago. Now, I couldn't buy either the wine or the figs before the game because they'd be confiscated going in, but after the game, I came back and bought some of each, partially for my own uses and to give to Jenn for letting me crash at her place.

Finally, it was getting close enough to game time that I went back to Wrigley. The park was gorgeous. It was just so classic. The only ads in the whole place were on the two doors in the outfield, the scoreboard was done by hand and the ivy was a beautiful emerald green. In contrast to Fenway, it was a very symmetric park so there wasn't much in the way of nooks and crannies. However, like Fenway and its Monster Seats, Wrigley has come up with a novel way to add more seats as the fan base has grown. I have to say I like the Wrigley solution more, just because it's so funny. There are seats on the roofs of all the buildings across the road from the park. I'd known about this before and that at one point the Cubs were upset that people were capitalizing on the entertainment they were providing so they were talking about putting up opaque nets. However, they apparently reached a rev share deal with the building owners so that everybody's happy and Wrigley gets some of the most interesting stands in baseball. Out of curiosity, I looked into the price for a seat on one of the buildings well beyond the outfield fence. They're all catered seats and you basically have to buy a large portion of the roof to go, but they come out to well over $100 a seat. Kind of crazy methinks.

Anyway, the game was a lot of fun too, largely because the fans were so into it and the guy beside me was a big ball fan so I got to shoot the shit with him for most of the game. It started off as a fast game as the Cubs plated 4 runs in the bottom of the first, but in the next half inning, the Reds game roaring back to tie the game. The game stayed pretty close until the late innings, when the cubs blew the game open and ended up winning 12-4.

After the game was over, I picked up the wine and figs and headed back to Jenn's place. We went on a 6 mile run along the lakeshore, known to all serious runners as THE place to run in Chicago. It deserves its title, but unfortunately, my leg really wasn't healed yet so I ended up aggravating it. Stupid injuries.

For dinner we went to a contemporary Korean restaurant. Their concept is to introduce the North American diner to Korean cuisine by making sure the wait staff spoke English well, setting up the decor like a normal contemporary restaurant and making the menu easy to understand. The food was excellent and I got to try soju for the first time. It's the main Korean distilled liquor and it's made primarily from potatoes. It was excellent. So incredibly smooth that it put any of the vodka I've ever had to shame. Of course it wouldn't surprise me if we were actually drinking really good soju, but even still, I was impressed.