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Lit Fest and I've Never Had a Chicago-Style Hot Dog

Jessie Mueller of The Tale of Bessie Bueller won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical last night, which means I almost unnecessarily yelled at a GRAND LADY OF THE THEATRE. Whatever. In my head she'll always be Edwin Drood's Helena Landless. I reject this Carole King situation.

HELENA LANDLESS FOREVER

LitFest and Midsommarfest were this weekend, which meant walking around a lot of books and walking around a lot of lesbians. Chicago is, as some of you might know, colder than the barren reaches of the Arctic, so when summer comes, we have festivals FESTIVALS ALL THE TIME and if you don't go, what're you doing with your life? RibFest was also this weekend, but I strenuously object to messy foods that are not pulled pork sandwiches or ice cream, so that certainly did not happen. What I'm saying though is -- if you want to come to Chicago, come in any weekend in June and you'll have a million festival possibilities.


I met up with Jesse, who I knew from Twitter. Jesse blogs over at Food Riot, which means upon meeting up at LitFest we almost immediately -- while strolling the booths -- had a discussion about Chicago hot dogs, which it turns out Jesse's written about. I've never had a Chicago-style hot dog, because ew, and I 100% just put ketchup on mine. I HAVE NOW BEEN INFORMED WHY THAT IS HORRIBLE. And the upshot of that is I will now try them another way. Mostly though, I just think Chicagoans are being silly, because hot dogs are not delicious and maybe I WANT to cover up the flavor.

Ugh. I just...how does that look good?

LitFest is put on every year in Printer's Row, which is a block south of the main branch of the Chicago Public Library. In the late 19th century, a group of printers and publishers set up shop there, right by the Dearborn Street Station, which was built in 1885 and served as the terminal for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which is famous because it has a kickass song named after it. Now it's just condos and a couple fancy bookstores I never go into.

I know LitFest has Events happening aside from lots of booths selling books at a slightly discounted rate, but I never go to these. I got things to do. But I CAN walk around and take pictures of books:





There was also a book of racist jokes from like 1904 that I thought was hilarious, but Jesse was a decent human being about. "No, Alice, we probably shouldn't be reading jokes about Germans in 1904."

What's great about THOSE is there's obviously nothing about Nazis in there, so it's just like "Hahaha the German accent's funny."

Essentially: Jesse's great and you should all come to Chicago right now. It's one of like three months out of 12 that it's delightful here -- when we're all lulled into a blissful state of forgetfulness, when cold weather seems but the fevered dream of a madman and surely it could never happen here again....not again.

Winterisnevercomingokbye.

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