This is Candyality (candy + personality). It’s one of those by weight lolly shops. Their big draw is that you can get gummi bears by colour/flavour. I bought some vanilla flavoured jelly beans and some caramel flavoured jelly beans.
I am sitting right now near Dock 2 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s river cruise. I got the absolute last ticket on their 330 cruise.
Saw shows last night at iO (more on that later). Got home round 1230, started sleeping round 1. At 250 the small conversations in the courtyard outside my window became loud music and shouting over the music.
Hereafter is a rant about Arlington House in Chicago, and it’s hopelessness. Skip a para or 2 if you need to. I am on a vendetta.
So I asked the courtyard revellers to keep it down. I got smartarse back chat. I asked again the volume went down for about 20 minutes. So I got up and turned on the net and found the front desk number and called them. The staff here do a great passive aggressive thing. The guy said he didn’t want to be “the harbringer” (sic) of bad news, so he didn’t want to ask them. A few mins later the volume dropped, only to come again. Few minutes later it went up again.
If I were at home I’d have called the cops. Here I don’t know how it works. I called the front desk guy, who said he was basically too busy. I suggested he ask them to move to what is kindly called a “media room” here – a 12 inch tv, a $20 dvd player and some lounges, that smells like 75 day old pizza but has the rare distinction of both air conditioning AND being not on the courtyard where three or four hundred people were trying to sleep. “Oh, the media room is a men’s dormitory now, so they have nowhere else to party”, he said. So clearly the inalienable right to party trumps the innate need for sleep, right.
So I googled ever travel review site that I could, and put my damning opinions on the site.
For the record here are some things that suck about Arlington House.
– bed bugs (I haven’t had them but I know of at least 4 people who’ve reported having them)
– no air conditioning
– only servicing rooms if you know to request them
– kitchen smells of vomit
– no media room (any more!)
– surly staff who tell you nothing that you don’t ask for
– common bathrooms have no doors on the showers, so you get out of the shower into the bathroom area
– clothes go missing (now it’s my night gown, last week a pair of shorts…)
I looked for other places at 330 this morning, but there’s something called Lollapalooza on this week (a Big Day Out style thing), and the Cubs are in town, so very little availability under $350 a day (+15% tax!!).
I can definitely get a nice room for a good price at the airport, but it’s 17 miles from the theatre. So who knows how the last 2 weeks will be? (Fingers crossed the worst is over?).
Now to the important stuff. Saw Revolver who did a half hour or so of improv and then Bullet Lounge, with a dream in between and a freeze tag to end.
Both were fine. Solid, but not inspiring. Bullet Lounge were better than last week. There were 4 of them this week (all boys again). It’s frantic, constantly changing scenes. This week Lincoln’s assassination became 4 guys watching the History Channel and talking about Kant. Leapt all over the place. Maybe needed a little light and shade.
So Architecture Cruise next and more shows tonight.
