so i thought i'd tell you about our st. patrick's day. after all, it is such a major holiday in chicago that they dye the river green, for chrissake. anyhow, we didn't have plans initially, so we decided just to lay low. you know, go to the local pub. well, it turns out that the local pub we decided on has a great irish pub name; lizzie mcneill's. it's not known for being one of the hipper irish bars, so we thought it would be a pretty mello evening.
we went with two of my colleagues from work (actually, they're two fun women who try to sell me stuff) and somehow we magically got an entire bench to share in a pub packed wall-to-wall with people. there were four people from my office coming to meet us, but since they arrived after us, they were actually turned away at the door of the pub because the pub was full. so anyhow, we had about four or five pints (i can't believe that the server was able to get to us that many times, but she did!) and thought that was about as much fun as we could handle. by that time we were hungry anyhow, and there wasn't any imaginable way to get food when we couldn't get any closer to the bar, so we set off to a local burger joint.
on the way there we lost one of our merry band of revelers, so there were three of us walking together when the non-Hall in the group pointed out a little Italian restaurant and said that they had some sort of magical chicken dish that she was really craving. since we're nice people and she would be able to expense it if we joined her for dinner, we went in. anyhow, the place was dead. and they don't have the magical chicken dish anymore. *but* our waiter pointed out that if we wanted to linger over our dinner -- or maybe get coffee -- we would see the place totally fill up with people for a wild party.
it seemed like a very dubious claim on st. patrick's day, when it was already 10:30 and there were only two other non-employees in the place.
however, the waiter was not lying -- or even exaggerating! around 11 pm the place started to get packed with arab men and women, and the kitchen staff started bringing out hookahs (!). a guy set up an electronic keyboard, and a little after 11 he began his set.
at this point the non-Hall pointed out that one of the men at the next table is our state's illustrious Secretary of State, and that next to him was a news anchor from the local NBC affiliate. and then the best part happened: a belly dancer came out, wearing what must have been an A-cup bra, and she had breasts the size of Amy Lumet. it was nuts, and the crowd went wild. needless to say, we were very surprised.
we didn't stay all that long. the combination of the hookah smoke and the pints (followed by wine) made us feel very strange. or maybe it was that we were partying it up, middle-eastern-style, at midnight on st. patrick's day.
soooo weird. i am definitely going to have to go back to that place again some thursday night, because i'm almost not sure that it really happened...