Chicago

October 11
Well we got to Chicago for Riot Fest on Thursday for 7 Seconds, but it was sold out, so we didn’t do much on that night. On Friday we went and saw Wax, No Empathy, Rights of the Accused, and Naked Raygun. There was an after party at this dive bar called the cobra lounge so we checked that out, and over there the River Boat Gamblers did a set which was pretty cool. Then we got a cab to some other bar(some bars are open till 4am here) with some people we just met.

Saturday, woke up hung over to hell, didn’t really do much all day. Saturday night was a blast though, day 4 of Riot Fest had an amazing line up of Youth Brigade, Street Dogs, 88 Fingers Louie, and Cocksparer. The venue for the show was this huge old theater, and it was packed, I’ve never seen so many punks and skins in one place(I estimate 2 or 3 thousand people). The shows was great, although I didn’t spend much time on the floor.

88 fingers louie

"Oi!"

More pictures here

NOFX was headlining the show, so we left before they went on. We walked back to the parking lot where the van was parked, except it was no longer there. I recalled that before the show we refused to pay to park because it was $15, so we just left the van in the lot of a 24 hour laundry mat that had a bunch of signs saying no parking(but they  wont tow US, right?). Anyways the tow place was open 24 hours so we got a cab over there and wasted $170 getting the van back. Lesson learned? Probably not.

Next we made our way over to the cobra lounge again, where we met up with some people. Lower Class Brats played and it was amazing, a lot of beer was drank. Then we decided to check out this other bar called Exit, which is supposed to be Chicago’s punk and metal bar. It was alright, but kind of a let down after all the hype I’d heard about it.

Sunday afternoon was another hang over. We hung around all day not doing much, planning on seeing Indian play, but instead we decided to start driving toward Detroit. So right now were in some Wal Mart parking lot again in this town called Kalamazoo in Michigan. Its kind of halfway between Chicago and Detroit.

At this point we have put 25000 kms on the van since it was bought. In some ways I am super burnt out on living in the van, but there’s always something awesome on the horizon to keep the trip moving forward.