So I'm going to Chicago...

University of Chicago for a football game. Founding member of the Big Ten and all.

 

Ha ha! If Northwestern is home that weekend. May be worth a game. Bet you can get a seat.

 

Maroons have been relegated to the club-football level since Bob Hutchins trashed the program after 1939.

Cat tickets will be no problem first three weekends of the month. 9/29 is home game w/Michigan --
it'll be sold out, and there'll be plenty of blue in the stands.

 

U of C is actually D3. Though one of my friends watched a practice and said it reminded him of high school.

 

I was generalizing. You are precisely correct. Thanks. Sad amd true.

Of course, after NU beat Chicago 38-7 in '26, and the Cats subsequently hired Dick Hanley (who came to Evanston to play for keeps), Stagg saw the writing on the wall, and immediately ended the series.
Too bad.

 

A couple of other suggestions ...

I prefer the Hancock Building to the Sears Tower for the "go to the top of the tall building" thing. There's a few advantages to the Hancock. First of all it's right there by Water Tower and Oak Street beach. Sears Tower is sort of close to the Art Institute, so I guess it depends what you're doing. (The Art Institute it goes without saying is one of the best things to do in Chicago.) Another advantage of the Hancock Building though is that you don't have to buy a ticket to get a view from essentially the top of it. (At least this was the case a few years ago.) They have a fancy (and pricy) restaurant on one of the top floors so you could go that route. They also have a fancy (and pricy) bar on one of the top floors. The drinks are expensive at the bar, but they're eseentially the same price as a ticket to the top of either the Hancock Building or the Sears Tower and you get a drink out of the deal. OR if you want to be really cheap you can go to the bar, not buy a drink and just steal a glance. One final note about the Hancock Building, there's a view from the women's bathroom in the bar. It looks south right down Michigan Ave. So your wife's in luck. Men though are out of luck. There's no view from the men's room, just a wall.

If you're golfers, Chicago also has a ton of good golf courses. One nice 9-hole course is Marovitz (sp?) (Everybody refers to it as Waveland.) It's right up by Wrigley Field and there's a few holes that go right along Lake Michigan. You have to walk it because cart's aren't allowed. Last time I played it, it ran around $20.

Another good Italian restaurant is Tuscany. There's a few of them in the Chicago area and each of them have slightly different menus, but the one in Wrigleyville is the best one. (it's right across the street from Wrigley, but it's a mid-priced nice sit-down restaurant, not just a sports bar type place.) They have this roasted garlic-olive oil-parmesan cheese spread that they bring out with the bread before the meal that's just amazing.

Wow, I so miss Chicago. I was all ready to go for a nice summertime visit. But I have some friends who are expecting their first child and I'd rather wait until their kid is born so I can see the kid instead of going a month before the kid is born.

 

Others have endorsed it, and I do enthusiastically. You'll need to book ahead for tickets, I believe. It was perhaps the third best thing I did on my week up there last year behind seeing Wilco at Lollapalooza and getting fit-shaced in the bleachers at Wrigley, and it ran a close third.

 

I love that. My parents live in the 'burbs and the last time we went up there my mom saw that view. Women get the clean fancy bathrooms with great views and men get a wall.

 

The Lodge is a good bar and you might want to hit the Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Harry Carey's is touristy but the food is pretty good.

 

Fixed.

 

If you want to go to Wrigley but not give money to the Cubs, the best thing to do is hang out around the stadium about an hour before the game to soak in the atmosphere and maybe have a couple of beers at Hi-Tops or Murphy's or Moran's. It's usually pretty dead during the game. I know Hi-Tops is. You can have your beer in peace, watch the game and hear the crowd cheer. If you have an urge to go to the game, sometimes you can get a free or cheap ticket around the fourth or fifth inning. I got a free ticket the other day when I went to Wrigley to scout for a book idea I had. I stayed from the fifth inning to the Seventh Inning Stretch. Another time a couple years ago, I was offered tickets for the bleachers around the fifth or sixth inning, and all the guy wanted was $5.

 

The food is good. It's a nice place and not really a sports bar/restaurant like I was expecting the first time I went.