My brother John lives in Chicago and I live in Boston. A while ago my brother called me from Chicago saying he had tickets for a Doc Watson concert there. If you like good music, and I am the number one professional authority at Evil Robots these days, you must like Doc. I, of course, had to go.

I bought plane tickets, cleared my schedule and went. I wanted to drive, but my schedule didn't really allow me to spend all that time on the road. I had to chance getting that disoriented am-I-really-here-or-still-back-at-home feeling that one risks when flying. The trip started out with a delay but I had a window seat. The plane landed at Midway, which is an airport one must see to believe. My brother was waiting for me there.

John and I spent lots of time on the L. They go every where and they are mighty fast. They approach so quickly in the underground parts that your ears pop like crazy from the changing air pressure. Awesome, but annoying. The most notable annoyance, however, to a tourist like me, is the lack of the full system maps posted at the stops. What if you need to transfer but you don't know if it is the red or brown line that you want? Figure that out after you board the train and possibly head off in the wrong direction. I like to know what's going on.

We walked a lot too, which is something I dig. We entered lower Whacker Drive by foot by an entrance from the 15-mile bike path that runs along the shore. They have parking with meters and all kinds of other hidey holes and secret entrances down there like loading docks, a bunch of places where homeless people sleep and stairs to the streets above- cool.

We ate in and we ate out. Mr. Pollo on 2960 N. Lincoln was good and also different. Pollo is "chicken" in Spanish so we had to eat there. There was no question. We chanced upon it when we went out for a movie and couldn't find the theater because we forgot to write down the street number. We ate at Mr. Pollo instead and caught the second show. Our stupidity paid off in spades -and aces because they gave us Mr. Pollo pens.

I have a Mr. Pollo pen.

The food was good, especially for the price. I got their $4.99 special of 1/4 (the breast and wing) South American Rotisserie Chicken with 2 side orders. My sides were Ecuadorian rice and fried plantains. To drink I had a Guanabana shake. Maybe it had banana in it, but I couldn't tell. John had a half-chicken meal with mashed potatoes and a salad. The chicken was tender and their fresh salsa just wouldn't quit.

The Music Box at 3733 N. Southport Ave has all kinds of foreign movies. We saw Beau Travail. It was French and John's idea.

Pancakes

My brother and I checked out the Edgewater Resteraunt at 1123 1/2 W. Granville Ave for breakfast. It is a nice homey place with regulars. I ordered a tall stack and country ham. My brother tried the potato pancakes and maybe something else to go with his grapefruit juice. He has always liked potatoes while I view them only as a vehicle for butter and gravy. My pancakes were excellent, just crispy around the edges. John's potato pancakes were somewhat lacking. More flour than potato. My ham was tasty. John's grapefruit juice was grapefruit juice. All grapefruity and shit.

Another night we ate at an all-night joint on 4340 N. Lincoln Ave called The Golden Angel that resembled Denny's or someplace like that. It was too big to have great food, but any place that's open 24 hours gets extra points. I ordered pancakes, two eggs, sunny-side-up, and sausage. John ordered a corned beef omlette and hash browns - again with the potatoes. We each ordered OJ.

We could smoke so that was good, but we ended up listening some pretty loud and vapid conversations carried on by the college aged girls who seemed to be the only other customers in the smoking section. "Like" is still king in the conversation of the young.

The food came and I had hash browns with my eggs and sausage and John had an omlette. After a brief moment of confusion and some plate scraping and food swapping, we dug in. The eggs were fine, but the sausage was cool and the pancakes a bit soft. John's omlette must have had four eggs, but wasn't good enough to enjoy the whole thing, and his hash browns were a bit cool. The OJ was warm and from concentrate.

Other food items

An institution in Chicago cuisine is the hotdog. Each establishment bears the Vienna Sausage logo and often a picture of the Chicago-style hotdog. This hotdog-to-rival-all-hotdogs includes a hotdog accompanied by -one really can't say topped with- a big dill spear or sometimes pickle slices, lettuce, tomato, mustard, onions and small spicy pickled peppers that make your nose run just a little- not those stupid banana peppers like they try to give you at subway. These dogs are wonderful and cultural and are sold everywhere.

My Schezuan pork in Chinatown was very salty but good, and John was served-all right- so we washed everything down with Tsingtao. I don't remember what John had because I was too busy eating to notice. Schezuan shrimp, I think. Chinatown is a stop on the red line. You Can’t miss the Chinese-style arch unless you are blind.

We bought a load of baked goods at a Chinese bakery across the street from the restaurant and they were cheap. The first thing we tried was a light bun filled with cream. It had a lovely orange flavor and wasn't overly sweet. It was also the best thing we sampled. Two other items of note were the crystal rice pudding and walnut bean paste cookie. The rice pudding was rice cooked until it had turned completely glutinous with a strange flavor that I couldn't immediately nail down. Later I determined that it had the indistinct but unmistakable flavor of candy cigarettes. We ate this back at John's apartment. John molded his into a giraffe and then a camel and I chased mine with beer and whiskey. The cookie I ate later. It had walnuts and a sweet black paste, which I figure was the bean paste part. It tasted like sweetened black beans. Very strange. Asian cultures mystify me.

Stranger still is the Japanese Natto I ate since coming back home- this has nothing to do with Chicago but I thought it was interesting. Natto is fermented beans coated with a goo that is stickier and stringier than melted mozzarella or egg whites and smells like the juice at the bottom of a trashcan. Natto is eaten with rice, green onions and a raw egg yolk. That’s how I ate mine. Probably something people learn to enjoy from a very early age.

Other things

We went to the Art Institute, but missed out on the modern museum because it was closed when we went on Monday. John says there are big Teletubbies there.

We caught some of the Gospel Festival- I missed the Blues Festival by a week, but John says Odetta kicked ass- and saw a gospel vocal quintet of old guys singing old religious stuff. They were good. The woman who sang later to a prerecorded band was not, even if she did talk about smackin' the Devil in the mouth. I, of course, support of mouth-smackin' of any kind.

The parks there are a great place to kill time unless it's windy and cold. The parks near the water can be especially gusty. My brother says Grant Park, where many of the festivals are held (located off Michigan Ave by the Art Institute), is a good place to talk to bums. One guy showed him artwork he had done. If you are going to Chicago in the warm season, make sure to check the festival schedule. We stayed in a few times because doing stuff can be expensive, and we made Spanish Omlettes, drank beer and whiskey, smoked a whole bunch of cigarettes and played guitar. Hanging out is a wonderful thing where the only requirement is good company.

The whole reason

The whole reason for this trip was not to do things in Chicago or hang out with my brother, but to see Doc Watson sing those old time songs I grew up on. He's an old guy, but still with it and as handsome as ever. The show was excellent and I ate pancakes afterward. Truly, though, this trip was about hanging out, just as every trip must be. I had a good time and only forgot where I was for one short moment. All this with my brother. We are both getting to the age where that old adolescent conflict is beginning to fade to where we can appreciate each other's company. This is a good thing to happen between brothers.

I recommend getting a brother, if you don't have one already, and visiting him in Chicago.