Chicago

Last weekend I took a trip to Chicago to visit some friends and go to Pitchfork Music Festival. I hopped on the Megabus for a mere ten bucks on Thursday evening and six hours later I arrived in the heart of downtown Chicago, ready for a weekend of good fun and good music.

I had never been to a big music festival before, so I was very excited. Pitchfork is smaller and cheaper than most popular summer music festivals like Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo but despite being a little more under-the-radar, it has a very solid lineup each year. Among the many notable acts that were to play at Pitchfork this summer was the headliner, Pavement, a popular indie-rock group from the 1990s that had recently reunited and embarked on a world tour. I'm a pretty big Pavement fan and after not being able to see them perform in the 1990s, I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to go to one of their reunion shows.

Unfortunately, I didn't request media credentials for Pitchfork before the deadline, so I was unable to bring my camera into the festival. I took some photos with a disposable camera which I have yet to develop, so we'll see how those turn out.

I did, however, get a chance to do some exploring around Chicago in the time I spent outside of the festival, and those are the photos I have posted.


When I arrived in Chicago on Thursday night, I met up with two friends from Cincinnati who had also planned to go to the festival. On Friday morning before we headed over to Union Park where the festival was located, we did some exploring and walked around the shopping/tourist district of downtown Chicago.


How often do you walk down the street and see a man touching up the paint-job on a giant Mushroom? OK, so it's the Rainforest Cafe, one of Chicago's tourist hotspots. But I couldn't resist.


For the majority of the weekend I stayed with some friends I went to high school with who go to school at Northwestern University and have a house in Evanston. Evanston is a suburban "city" just north of Chicago that is home to Northwestern University. On Saturday, we checked out the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival at the lakefront in Dawes Park. The festival had a variety of international foods, musical acts, and dance performances. Booths selling pieces of art from various different cultures also lined the park. There were many family activities as well, such as a giant collective paint-by-number piece (pictured above) and other kid-friendly crafts.


African masks are arranged for display in the grass at a vendor's booth.


Hundreds of tubes of scented oils are put on display to be sold at a booth at the Ethnic Arts Festival.


An elderly man carefully dips his paintbrush into his palette while some of his finished paintings hang around him to be sold at the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival.


Men selling various instruments at a booth at the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival play their drums for people passing by.


One of the crafts for the children who attended the festival was a to make a teepee out of sticks and decorate it with scraps of fabric.


Later in the afternoon as the day became hotter, many festival attendees visited the nearby beach to cool off and relax.