Life of Wry

Feeling all Chicagoey!

First, we went to a wonderful breakfast place (another great find of Jim’s). It was called Sunny Side Up, on Superior.. and it’s always a good sign when it’s where the police hang out.

And then it was time for baseball!

The Red Line runs from our part of downtown right to Wrigley Field, so that was easy. Our station was at an underground part of the line..

It wasn’t many stops… 5 or 6? Can’t remember. I think tickets were about $3 apiece.

And here we are! Got off the train and we were mere steps from the stadium.

The game was sold out, but the stadium was not at capacity. Attendance that day was in the 11,000s. They zip-tied great gobs of seats together so you couldn’t pull them down.

We sat way up near the top and at the far end of right field. And still paid $400 for three seats. I’m not sure if they’re always that high. Those were Stubhub tickets, too.. usually pretty good prices. That said, they were wonderful seats… shaded, breezy (it was a hot day), protected in case it had rained (which had been predicted up until the day of) and a perfectly fine view. No complaints whatsoever. And I loved all the space around us. These were shot well before the game; it filled in a little before game time.. but again, it never got more than about a quarter filled, due to zip-tied seats.

The scoreboard was right there and we were on the warning tracks. 🙂 You can also see a couple of the nearby rooftops, which sell bleacher seats on their roofs. They surrounded the entire outfield.. it was pretty neat, sure they’re much cheaper.

It was a notable day.. another MLB stadium (we counted: Giants, As, Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Mariners, Yankees, Red Sox, and now Cubs — nine of thirty). And, of course, first baseball game post pandemic. But another notable: we got to see a young player — Nico Hoerner — from Oakland who’d been on the Lamorinda travel team (Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, loosely) and had played against Davis kids. Peter’s travel team had never played Lamorinda, but other regional teams had. Peter knew him right away and he became our player to watch.

(The center field bleachers were for those who identified as vaccinated (and proved it) and that section was not required to observe any covid precautions.)

As usual, the highlight of the game was the ballpark food (ha!). We went for it all: Chicago Dogs, beer, peanuts, Cracker Jacks and Cotton Candy. All fabulous.

The Cubs beat the Washington Nationals 5-2 and it was a pretty good game! Lots of great energy following, and lots of singing.

We took a walk around the stadium after the game to get a feel for the neighborhood.. it was a fun crowd to be among. Just a couple pics from the walk:

This was clever:

We returned to the Acme so Peter could get some work done on a paper he was writing (his first scientific paper they hope to get published). Then headed out for another late dinner.. this time deep dish pizza at Giordano’s on Rush and Superior.

It was starting to get extremely busy and lively in the evenings in that part of town.. streets packed, very noisy. While we waited for our table to be ready, we explored a little to the north, around the area of the Water Tower.. very pretty at night:

We were also in the vicinity, apparently, of some parts or departments of both Loyola University and Northwestern campus. There is a lot going on in Chicago.