Day 1: Andersonville

Thursday was my last day at my previous job and I don't begin my new one until September 19.

My parents flew into town yesterday morning and we had a full day of activities.

11am: Calumet Fisheries. We chatted with Carlos, the manager, and he gave us a salmon head to snack on. He showed us the smokehouse and told us about how he'd like to live in a quiet place on the countryside. The smoked salmon, smoked shrimp and fried shrimp were, as usual, out-of-control good.

12:30pm: Checked my parents into Hotel Allegro, part of the Klimpton properties. Their lobby looks like a circus. We play with a Chow Chow.

I didn't have her oral consent to take this photo so I'm taking care to hide her identity.

2:15pm: Walked around Andersonville.

Things I found out about Andersonville on the internet:

• After the fire, you couldn't build wooden houses in Chicago and Swedish immigrants couldn't yet afford brick or stone so they settled in the city's northern limits. 
• In 1910, Chicago had the second largest Swedish population in the world after Stockholm, Sweden.

There are a lot of cool stores on Clark Street and we spent almost two hours on the stretch between 5200 and 5400 N.


The highlight of the day for me was two sets of lamps I saw in Scout. A designer makes them from salvaged materials.

The bases are parts from oxygen tanks.

I didn't ask what the bases of these were -- bedposts?

While cool, they were ultimately too spendy for me at $295 each. I intend to browse more furniture in the coming weeks so hopefully I'll be able to tell you if these are reasonably priced by the end of my sabbatical.

Places I grabbed business cards:

• Scout
• Brimfield. I purchased three glass bowls here for $2 each (sale price) and a pair of tiny, vintage Schlitz salt and pepper shakers in the shape of beer bottles at $22. I commented on how expensive the latter was, hoping to open up a haggling conversation and got rebuffed pretty quickly. I like their stuff, but I'm not sure they'll be willing to negotiate on prices in the future. Bummer, since that's part of the fun in antiquing.
• Room Service. There were some pieces in here made by Urban Remains, a one-man company located in Milwaukee who creates furniture with an industrial/urban aesthetic from ... urban remains. Do not confuse this with Urban Remains Chicago. His stuff was nice, but an end table would set you back $495.
• Brownstone Antiques. This place was a mess and there's a lot of stuff in there that I don't want. But, it's priced low and if you have the energy to search, I'm confident you'd find some real gems. 

5pm: Had a wonderful dinner at Great Lake and met fellow diners Doug, his daughter Emily and her boyfriend Spike. We all had a lot of fun comparing food notes and the pizza was, needless to say, phenomenal. We got the #1 -- tomato sauce, farmer's cheese, dante cheese -- with Butcher & Larder mortadella and the #3 -- sweet corn, fresh cream, garlic, onion and dante cheese.

#3

My dad took a photo of everyone who was waiting outside before the restaurant opened. I'll post that later.

8:30pm: Met up with my sister and her husband at the Hotel Allegro and had drinks with them and her friend, Jenny at the Atwood Cafe. If I play my cards right, I might be able to dog-sit for Jenny's dog, Puffy, in September.