Your PopCulteer, attempting to blend in with the wallpaper in the hotel bathroom

Regular readers ought to know by now that, late last month, your humble blogger and his lovely wife took a quick trip to Chicago as an early anniversary jaunt.  I shared photos of our trip to Replay Lincoln Park to see the SpongeBob pop-up bar, and I also dropped “Radio Free Chicago,” an ersatz episode of my video show with music from Thompson Twins Tom Bailey and Thomas Dolby.

However, today I’m going to share more photos from this quick trip with you, and that includes a few bonus shots of Replay and more photos of the bands we saw.

I didn’t take any photos at Steppenwolf, where we saw an amazing play, Little Bear Ridge Road, because they will kick your ass out of the theater for doing that. I did buy a hat there, though.

I’m also tossing in a few pictures of Chicago and stuff we saw.  We went early (our anniversary is actually August 26) because the stuff we wanted to see was happening in July. This year’s anniversary plans are up in the air, and may not result in a photo essay, so enjoy this one instead.

Anyway, here’s some of the fun we had in the Windy City…

City Views (Random)

The view from the thirteenth floor of The Canopy, by Hilton.

LOOK! A PARTY BUS!

Just one of the many big ole streets they have in Chicago

The view of Willis Tower is not so great from across the street.

We were apparently in the Joan Crawford Suite

Meanwhile at Lukes…

One of the legendary official first-ever homes of the famous Italian Beef sandwich.

To be perfectly honest, the Italian Beef did not look even remotely appetizing to me. I had a Chicken Parm sandwich, which was 1.2 times the size of my head (and very tasty). This sculpture of an Italian Beef sandwich is actual size.

They had cool wooden representations of the food all over the place, along with photos of famous Italian athletes and gangsters.

I do not agree with the artistic choices made for this giant slice of pizza. It looks more like Mac & Cheese to me.

This is a giant Chicago hot dog, which is vastly superior to the nasty West Virginia hot dog by virtue of not having nasty cole slaw on it. It’s still not something I would eat. 

Replay Lincoln Park

We have a few photos that didn’t make it into last week’s Replay photo essay, like this one of the left side of the main entrance.

And one of my three favorite arcade games of all time

I don’t think I showed these pinball machines

Thomas Dolby at The House of Blues

In addition to the bootleg video that made it into “Radio Free Chicago,” I got a few decent photos

Dolby was triggering samples and stuff with an iPad (or some other kind of controller–I wasn’t that close)

Both acts had impressive light and video shows

We paid extra so we didn’t have to be down in this crowd. Coincidentally, Mel and I remain COVID-free.

Thompson Twins Tom Bailey at The House of Blues

The day after Mel and I got married, almost ten years ago, we discovered that Tom Bailey was in town…that night, and it was too late to get tickets

Thompson Twins was Mel’s favorite New Wave band, and she finally got to see their leader perform

Bailey’s all-female backing band was called “The Sisters of Mercy,” after a TT song.

Another amazing light show

Random Shots Before We Left Town

The annual PopCult “Mel’s going to kill me for posting a photo of her shot.” Taken at The depleted food court at the Shoppes of Northbridge while we killled time before our train left.

Selfie, taken at the same time (roughly). We were already dressed for the overnight train ride home

What’s the deal with the brown pigeon?

These guys had been doing this all the live-long day.

Finally, I’d picked up some sophisticated British political journals to read on the train ride home.