Greetings from Chicago! Thanks to a chorus of friends (a librarian, ad-man, a pastor, and a nanny, for starters), we reminded this city who’s boss. That’d be me. Chicago means a few things, and mostly, it’s eating incredibly delicious and oh-so-bad for you food and buying knick-knacks.

Success on all fronts! First, to Ann Sather’s for a gooey cinnamon-bun inspired breakfast. A honking omelet or egg mess as big as my face, buoyed by two massive fists of dough covered in hot icing. This is not the kind of meal I tell mom about. But, Ann’s is also very much apart of the college narrative I have with this city. It’s a place even we Southsiders went to, late on Sunday morning, when our roommates had locked us out of the shower. Again. In that way, Ann Sather’s—whatever the location, mind you, it is those sticky, gooey, cinnamon buns that matter—is like an older sister: quietly rolling her eyes at our youthful shenanigans, happy to have us when outgrown spoons on our noses.

Next, the main event: the Renegade Craft Fair, back in all it’s Blue Liney, cooler than thou, splendor. And, there are pros and cons I want to put out there to my fellow crafters before day two gets under way. This Winter version of the fall favorite is in the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse—down Division the other way. Not that far. And, I’m not worried—you likely have an iPhone or hipster radar, so you’ll find it. But, the whole indoors thing—taking what was just a few months back a bazar in the streets and stuffing it in to a winding park building with choppy rooms was aggravating. I kept wondering if I had seen said letterpress artist because it appeared I was walking around in circles. But, I picked up some fun stationary and holiday cards from Chicago letterpress Pearl & Marmalade, and even a gift or two. This Renegade, like many others, the buzz was around city pride. The once darling of the craft world, ORK Posters was here with its beautifully typeset maps of Chicago (and now about 20 other cities). But, after buying one of their shirts in September only to notice little holes in it, I wasn’t too keen on a reprise.

Chicago flag goodies were everywhere, capitalizing on our love of this failed Olympic city. But it was Chicagoan and Etsy seller Diffraction Fiber who won my excitement with this:

Um, yes, that’d be the Chicago flag in stitched goodness! I figured if my friend could have a New Orleans doormat in Kentucky, I could have this pillow to show my Chi-town pride wherever I go. Even with a fun an eclectic stock, it was these darling flag pillows that were, by three hours after opening, sold out. Anyone looking to get me a holiday gift could start with a matching Illinois, perhaps? Inevitably more to say, not enough time to say it.

But, coming soon: a bar, with bourbon on tap, sells hamburgers with a three hour wait. And grown men cry. I’m still working on the leftovers. Stay tuned.

Few restaurants in Chicago, to my knowledge, command as much intensity of emotion as that on an otherwise unassuming corner of Belmont Avenue in Avondale. The fans and even those who spew venom made the hajj to the West Side and endured the interminable waits for a table. From the city that waxed encased meats in to an act of dining and tourism and one, a restaurant with so much buzz around one item is nothing new. We’ve done dogs. Kuma’s Corner answers with burgers.

I was among the detractors as we entered who thought a two hour wait for hamburger was insufferable and downright silly. Especially since Kuma’s Corner is but a stone’s throw from a Burger King. The irony of their apparent arrogant perversion of “fast food” was on full display as soon as we were stopped upon entry. The two hours actually moved much quicker, and in reality was probably 45 minutes, but I am told by loyal fans that this is a bit of an anomaly. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

So, we weaseled our way through the walk-in-closet sized restaurant and headed to make our presence known to the barkeep. And, this, is the first thing I noticed:

Yes, those taps say “Buffalo Trace”, “Jack Daniels”, and “Woodford Reserve” as is bourbon on tap. Why? I have no clue, because as best I could tell, the bourbon tasted the same, and worked about well as regular bottled stuff. I’d like to think that we utilize technology and gadgetry to make things taste better/work better, but it doesn’t appear either was the case. It was largely an aesthetic device, sucker though I am for such things.

Oddly, most of the beers were bottled. Happily, most of the rich selection is from the Midwest—culling intrepid selections from Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. The few I tried were complicated, nuanced, and layered with comfortable tastes to create something entirely new and still somewhat awkward.

So, with death metal blaring, we pondered the menu. One glance at the menu, with burgers named after metal acts including the Mastadon, Iron Maiden, and Slayer, you realize (in case you weren’t sure) this is a serious burger joint—and as the music pounds overhead and manga blasts from the flat screen TV over the bar—you realize this is not a place to shoot the breeze with your pals. It is the place to catch your pals covered in barbecue sauce and loving every minute of it.

I do not think I’ve ever had, nor ever will have, as delicious a hamburger as I had at Kuma’s Corner. I ordered the Plague Bringer: Roasted Garlic Mayo, Tortilla Strips, Hot Sauce, Fresh Garlic, Pepper Jack Cheese, and Sliced Jalapenos on a homemade Pretzel Roll. Three of us split a heaping order of Kuma’s waffle cut fries covered in cheese and pulled pork.

Yes, all rather unapologetically carnivorous in a post-PETA world. But, unapologetic is the shtick at Kuma’s Corner—for the wait, the piercing music, and ultimately, the narrow menu—which is neither grounded in health or morality. No matter—for everyone who rolls their eyes, there are plenty more who appreciate the simplicity and deliciousness of ground beef, a salty sweet pretzel roll, and crispy waffle cut french fries. This isn’t Charlie Trotter’s after all, and no one in the Chicago apartment-sized kitchen is claiming to be a gourmand.

The taunt at the beginning was that I would not be able to finish my burger. This proved to be true—for me, and most, save the bulky guy at the bar on a date with his Blackberry as much as a grinning girl.

2 hours and $12 for a burger? Seems crazy, yes? Well, I thought so, until the kitchen at Kuma’s Corner promptly replied with a hot steaming plate of “oh no!”. I left contrite, stuffed, and with horrendously offensive breath, a convert among the cynics. This is not an everyday sustenance kind-of-place, but hey, when you’re ready to seriously chow, a distinctive and delicious choice.

Happy Black Friday! We’ve survived the turkey and stuffing and the trip to the photo albums for a blow-by-blow of the awkward years. Yup, it’s the holiday season. Time to break out the ugly hat with the ear flaps and brave the cold for some hardcore American-style shopping! You’ve got to do it, you may even want to do it, but skip the florescent-lit box stores, because the real deals are to be found at the Renegade Holiday Craft Fair.

Think of it as “Renegade, Part Deux”. Which it is. Because Renegade was in Chicago but 3 months ago for an ‘oh man, summer is winding down, let’s buy crocheted mustaches!’ romp. The Holiday fair is a shorter second act, but captures the playful creativity that makes a Renegade fair fun. Mostly, it captures my paycheck.

My friend and serious craft nerd Sarah, and I will be there—meticulously rounding the booths and finding the deals, and succumbing to a few impulse purchases—Chicago map t-shirts, anyone? Rest up now, count your pennies and come out this weekend. Louisvillian and Dearest Inez designer Melissa Liptrap (also owner of The Makery) will be there. And plenty of people hawking high-end paper, posters, and of course moustaches. If I’m tech-savvy enough, there will be tweeting and live-streaming (ooh) from the fun. At the very least, we’ll play around with video, because let’s face it: I’m going to be at Best Buy today too, and I’ve been jonesing for a Flip video recorder. We’ll see. Look for inane posts called “hello world!” if in fact I prove successful.

Back in high school, when I fancied myself an intellectual, I realized I could endear myself to my English teachers (objectively to be regarded as ‘cool’, after all) by embracing my emotional sloppiness and erratic curiosities by writing. Writing earned me an admission ticket to an elite club—the English department office—and they ate their lunch, shit with a lot of sprouts on it—in a big, glass-walled room overflowing with books.

I cleverly whipped up half-baked poetry and prose, moving, as they did, from unit to unit. And as they tossed about names like Yeats, Borroughs, and Williams—I would leave lunch with a steno pad full of references to check. One of my dumber ideas was roping my entire high school in to the farce that was my foray in to playwriting. Having a penchant for style over substance, I slickly set the pages in a Courrier font and titled my 30 pages of drivel, Pharmakon, from the greek word for “poison” and “cure”. Death and life in one! I am so fucking brilliant!

Of course, the word nor its meanings were mine. I was simply carpet-bagging both under the guise of loftiness. My Pharmakon, a short play inside a cancer hospital was heavy on the “poison” and not so on the “cure”. It died that spring, but I still felt an odd possessiveness when I found a book in Champaign, Illinois that just debuted called—well, you guessed it. Seeing that book there, it looked great. And I’ll read it, I really will. And when I do, it will clearly be accompanied by the pangs of wist about my high school days, how incredibly supercilious I was, and how much I hid under other people’s brilliance.

I can’t suggest to be free from the shackles of such insecurity—the visual here is my true self as the Nicorette box that magically cuts the chains—but if that damned title was to mean anything, if it’s to actually be ‘poison’ and ‘cure’, well, then it provides, in moments like today, 2009 in Illinois, permission to be honest and self-aware. All that from a book I haven’t even read.