Our scale is a rating from 1 to 10 with 10 being mind-blowingly fantastic and 1 being why did you even leave your house in the first place?
1. The Printers Row Literary Festival
Elizabeth: Printers Row is supes cool, yo!
Michel: Even without the festival, Printers Row is really neat. Essentially it's a big book fair.
Elizabeth: Miles and miles of books as far as the eye can see! Along with all the accoutrement a reader or writer could need.
Michel: Also, for some reason, multiple chiropractor booths.
Elizabeth: We visited some of Michel's friends at the Roosevelt booth that, while small, was nicely located in a shady part of the street. We also plotted to take over Columbia College's much larger tent complex. The coup is still in the works for next year.
Christian and Zach perfectly representing the program!
Michel: All in all, I thought this was a pretty solid street fair. There were a couple of food trucks, which for Chicago is a fairly large gathering. Plus lots of books.
Cute little wine shop near the Roosevelt booth
Our Rating: 7--It's a lovely day in the neighborhood!
2. Rib Fest
Michel: Right off the bat I will say this probably wins all street festival awards. Look at its name.
Elizabeth: AND they even had REAL Texas barbeque, courtesy of Texas Thunder BBQ, a part of Sutphen's BBQ in Amarillo, Texas!
Michel: Probably the best barbeque sauces I've ever had.
Elizabeth: Special thanks go to my cousin, Stephen, my co-worker, Holly, and her husband, Chris for helping us conduct an extremely thorough sampling of the various rib and other barbeque offerings available at Rib Fest. And kudos to the homemade root beer booth for their yummy root beer. It was a bit sticky sweet on the end and no where near St. Arnold's root beer, but it was a tasty addition to all of those ribs.
Michel: This festival also had multiple chiropractor booths. I don't know what's going on.
Elizabeth: The festival ran down Lincoln near our apartment for several blocks, featured several local restaurants (barbeque and otherwise) along with several out of town entries, and sealed the excitement deal with a fundamentalist Christian protest. Among the 5 of us, we were able to sample 8 of the rib varietals in contention for the Best Ribs Prize.
(Smoke Daddy's huge smoker. Seriously impressive.)
(A table of gourmet dog treats. Poppy would love it.)
Michel: The best sauce, hands down, came from Sutphen's (website under construction), and their ribs were quite delicious and definitely the meatiest. The best ribs in terms of texture came, oddly enough, from Mrs. Murphy's and Sons Irish Bistro right there on Lincoln. The meat fell right off the bone. It was great.
Our Rating: Ribs.
3. Old Town Art Festival
Elizabeth: So we were really excited for the Art Festival in Old Town. We love wandering around Old Town, and it seemed like it would be a fun day. It ended up being...meh.
Michel: It was one of the biggest collections of bro-types we've ever seen.
Elizabeth: It was clearly a see-and-be-seen festival for all of the posh young people of Lincoln Park. All of them were on the restaurant patios or in the streets, drinking and eating and socializing. Hardly anyone was actually looking at the art in the booths.
Michel: There were no chiropractor booths at this festival, which may be why it was the most disappointing. I don't know why there were chiropractors at the other two festivals, but as yet I have not been disappointed by a festival that had chiropractor booths.
Elizabeth: Some of the art was cool, a lot of it was kitschy, and all of it was too expensive. But we did enjoy some of the booths we wandered into, particularly a booth that specialized in old maps and finishings as art. We also found a really cool grocery store that officially is the closest thing to Central Market that we have found.
Michel: It was a lovely boutique-type grocery store with very reasonable prices on booze.
Our Festival Rating: 4--It didn't seem very arty for an art festival.
Our Grocery Store Rating--8! It was very nice!
We are looking forward to continuing this guide throughout the summer, so rest assured that your festival planning (albeit for next year) will be greatly aided by our completely official and helpful rating system. Enjoy the street festival season!
