Things To Do In Schiller Park

Like the Chicago Bears themselves, tailgaters should have a game plan before heading to Soldier Field. Including the tailgate and the actual game, you’ll clock about eight hours outside—in the winter. You’ll need to stay warm and well-fed, so you’ll want to be prepared. I traveled to Soldier Field’s tailgating lots at 8 a.m. for two consecutive games to glean some tips for those new to tailgating: first, on the idyllic 75-degree morning of the Bears’ 2013 season opener, and then the following home game, a much chillier, rainy affair. I met some seasoned tailgaters—folks who’ve spent decades setting up makeshift living rooms and kitchens in Soldier Field’s parking lots—and asked them to share their advice on what food, grills, games, and gear are necessary to endure and enjoy a proper Bears tailgate. The Etiquette There was a palpable feeling of camaraderie in the tailgate lots. The weather—be it balmy or brisk—and collective Bears pride seemed to elicit a brothers-in-arms attitude that materialized in the form of random high-fives and the sharing of food and drink. “Sometimes people stop by, we offer beer and food,” said Chris Brynolf, a season-ticket holder since 2006. This sentiment was also echoed by Anthony Cassata, who’s been tailgating for 20 years and parks in the same spot at every game. “Everybody borrows from each other. Lot of times we run out of cups, we borrow them from the guys right next to us. We share shots. Everybody gets together; it’s a big community.” Still, first-timers shouldn’t expect to coast on the generosity of others. To earn your place, it’s probably wise to do as Brynolf does: “We always bring extra.” The etiquette extends to the staff as well. “Security and the police are your friends,” Brynolf told me. “We’ll offer the police a sandwich [or] something to stay warm.” Later, as the fans began packing up and heading toward the stadium, I spotted a cluster of security guards feasting on ribs and steaks. The Food “The most important thing is to not confine yourself to burgers and hot dogs and brats,” Brynolf told me. “Because you can do whatever you want.” And Brynolf certainly heeds his own advice. When I spoke to him, he was cooking shrimp on a trailer-hitch grill attached to his tailgate vehicle: a repurposed ambulance decorated with Bears logos and “Bears Tailgating Crew” stenciled across the side. Elsewhere, season-ticket holder Corey O’Brien devised his own unique way to mix up the menu: by incorporating iconic dishes native to the opponents’ city. When I spoke to O’Brien, he was grilling up Juicy Lucys—cheese-stuffed burgers that are a staple of the Minnesota Vikings’ native Minneapolis. The Grill Veteran tailgaters such as Brynolf use elaborate trailer-hitch grills, but first-timers don’t need an extravagant setup to stay nourished. Brynolf recommends “anything portable. These little pop-up grills with the canisters … are great for somebody starting out. The little Smokey Joes, those are great.” One thing Brynolf stressed: “You gotta have time to let [the grills] cool off.” Many tailgaters let their grills cool off during the game, which is wise especially for those planning on making a hasty exit after the game (tailgating lots do stay open two hours after the game ends). The Drink Libations on opening day were in large supply, from fishing coolers full of beer to 15-foot tables with more bottles of booze on display than a neighborhood dive bar. From what I saw, the festivities were high-spirited but never out of hand. Have fun, but pace yourself, was a common refrain told to me by many. After all, once the drinking and partying subsides, there’s still a little matter of the game. Bears tickets aren’t cheap, so it’s probably a good idea to be conscious for kickoff. The Weather The consensus on dressing for the winter is clear: layer up. “Many, many layers,” Brynolf said. “If you get warm, you can take layers off. You can’t put layers on if you don’t got 'em. Don’t try to look good; just try to stay warm.” Hand warmers are also a hot commodity. “Heating pads for the gloves but also for the feet,” Cassata said. “The feet—the toes—are the first things to get cold.” He may not be a doctor, but I’m inclined to believe him: as a 20-year tailgating veteran, he’s clocked more than 1,000 hours standing outside on Chicago’s wintry lakefront. The Hours Before the Game Whenever you’re spending four-plus hours on a slab of cement, it’s a good idea to keep yourself entertained. Brynolf has a flat-screen TV mounted to his ambulance. Other tailgaters blast music through club-sized speakers. Cornhole seems to be the trending lawn game. And at any given time, there will probably be more footballs in the air than stars visible from the observatory at nearby Adler Planetarium. (If you happen to take a football to the head, you’ll likely be offered a couple of ribs or a burger for the damages. I picked up this little nugget of wisdom firsthand.) Then there are those intent on killing time the old-fashioned way: by standing on the roof of their vans, ripping off their shirts, and delivering chest-pounding battle cries to the masses. Everybody I met in the South Lot told me I had to catch Fiesta Bob’s game-day rally speech. I had no trouble finding him, thanks to the colorful beads around his neck, his bushy Chicago-patent mustache, and the fact that “Fiesta Bob” was embroidered on the back of his jersey in bright orange. Bob, who’s been tailgating at Bears games for 20 years, makes a speech before every home game (at 10:30 a.m. before traditional noon kickoffs). And he takes his job seriously. “I have to do my homework,” he said. “I have to study who we’re playing; I gotta know what’s going on.” The fans take it seriously, too. At about 10:20 on opening day, a large crowd formed around Bob’s white utility van. They began chanting “Bob! Bob! Bob!” At 10:35, Bob grabbed the mic, leapt onto the hood of the van, and addressed the crowd: “Last night, I was like a kid on Christmas Eve!” During his speech, he expressed hope for the upcoming season and, via colorful adjectives, sent a warning to rival teams. “We’re going to go back to the playoffs,” he yelled, “where we belong!” Cheers and fist pumps ensued. Then Fiesta Bob tore off his jersey and started beating his bare chest with both fists. Somebody handed him a bottle of liquor, about a third full, which he drained with one long, savage pull. The crowd roared. Forget kickoff; it seemed that for the fans in that little corner of the South Lot, this marked the official start to the Bears’ 2013 season. The Hard Facts Tailgating is allowed on all surface lots in the Museum Campus, on the upper level of the Waldron deck, and in the 31st Street McCormick Place Lot B. Tailgating is allowed four hours before the game and two hours after the game. Tailgating is prohibited during the game. You must purchase parking tickets to park in the tailgating lots, and you must have a ticket to the game to park in a tailgate lot. Tailgaters are limited to one single parking space per vehicle. Alcohol is allowed, but only within the confines of the parking lot. A new NFL-wide rule prohibits fans from bringing bags into the stadium, so plan accordingly Click here to view a full list of rules and regulations. Photo: © Adam Hirsch

The members of Friends of the Gamelan agree that there’s something familiar about Dan Deacon’s music. But they can’t quite seem to put their finger on it. “You know how Dan’s music is sort of hypnotic?” says Linda Maher, a founding member of the group—the only one in Chicago dedicated to performing and teaching the gamelan, an ancient Indonesian instrumental ensemble. “[The gamelan] is hypnotic.” She backtracks a little. “Not like we’re going into a trance or anything, though.” On Thursday, July 11, the Friends of the Gamelan—or FROG, as they’re known—will open for Deacon as part of the Loops and Variations concert series at Millennium Park. The group’s 20–30 members—who practice weekly in the basement of a Hyde Park church—perform up to a dozen instruments, from the rebab, or spike fiddle, to huge hanging gongs, to the gendèr, whose xylophone-like keys hang above a resonating tube. Several ensemble members sing as well. When layered one on top of each other, the instruments and voices create a full, haunting sound that can indeed lull one into—if not a trance, then at least a very relaxed state. On the surface, at least, this ancient, meditative music seems an odd match for Dan Deacon’s hyperactive brand of electronica. (Though the songs on his latest release, USA, tend to be more sedate, he’s still best known for blasting high-BPM dance music from a DJ rig surmounted by a green plastic skull.) But FROG’s ties with Deacon go deep. Ensemble member April Camlin, a needlework artist, performer, and musician, is a member of the Baltimore-based Wham City collective, of which Deacon is also a part. On his side, Deacon incorporated gamelan-like instrumentation into some of his songs—such as 2009’s “Paddling Ghost”—and was even at one point planning to write an original composition for FROG, according to Maher. “You could keep playing forever” Though he knows “nothing” about electronic music, by his own admission, FROG board member Peter Ludwig says he could guess as to how the form might relate to the gamelan. He fastens onto the “loop” part of “Loops and Variations”—usually taken to refer to the “looped” or repeated samples common in electronic music. Songs composed for the gamelan, he explains, aren’t like Western symphonies, which have a set form for each movement. Instead, the ensemble usually plays the same series of notes over and over in a cycle until they are signaled to change. “It creates a kind of philosophical quandary,” says Ludwig, who has played with the ensemble since 2006. “If you’re playing and no one gives you a signal to move on, you could keep playing forever.” In fact, on some ceremonial occasions, gamelan ensembles do play the same songs over and over in a loop, sometimes for hours. But FROG won’t be subjecting their audiences to that. “We [Westerners] have a shorter attention span,” Ludwig says. Instead, at their July 11 concert, the group will be playing four shorter pieces. These include “Talu,” a traditional song usually played as an overture for shadow-puppet shows, as well as the poppier “Caping Ngung,” which incorporates elements of Indian tabla music and a danceable samba beat. Another piece, “Kutut Manguung,” showcases the complexity of traditional gamelan, with multiple vocal styles and interlocking parts that increase in density as the song progresses. At the World’s Fair The exposure of the Millennium Park concert will be a great opportunity for FROG, who are “hoping to introduce some new people to the gamelan,” Maher says. But July 11 won’t be the first time that a gamelan has made a splash in Chicago. It was actually here—specifically, at the Java Village of the World Columbian Exposition of 1893—that the form was heard for the first time in the West. Though some visitors found the unfamiliar rhythms at Midway Plaisance abrasive, many Westerners were inspired by the new sounds. A wax-cylinder recording made by Benjamin Ives Gilman at the fair is believed to be the earliest recording of gamelan music, ever. Later, a similar instrument played at the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris would inspire pieces by Impressionist composer Claude Debussy. The World Columbian Exposition also inspired—albeit indirectly—the founding of FROG. When the fair was over, the gamelan instruments that had been played there were auctioned off to the Field Museum. They sat mostly in storage for decades, until they were rediscovered—in the aftermath of a basement flood, according to Maher—in the late 1970s. The discovery coincided with an upswing of interest in gamelan music, due in part to its influence on minimalist Western composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. Following in the footsteps of many colleges and universities, the Field Museum began offering gamelan classes to the general public. A FROG is born Maher, who had then just finished a master’s degree in music at DePaul University, was one of the first students at the Field Museum. She had “had it up to the eyeballs” with Western music, she says. Gamelan was a refreshing change because it was wildly different from the traditional classical pieces she’d been studying. The main reason was the tuning. When you play a Western instrument such as a violin, for instance, an F sharp is always an F sharp, no matter what orchestra you’re playing with. Not so with a gendèr or siter. Each gamelan is “tuned to itself,” which means that the intervals between notes vary from ensemble to ensemble. This idiosyncrasy can be grating for listeners with perfect pitch—”it sounds like the gamelan hasn’t been tuned properly,” Maher says—but it also helps create a unique sound. Some experts can even tell which set of instruments is being played just by listening for the tuning. Maher was hooked—and so were several of her classmates. When the Field Museum stopped performances on the World’s Fair instruments, citing their age and fragility, the crew banded together to raise funds to buy their own gamelan. And thus, in 1980, FROG was born. Playing first on a cheaper iron gamelan, and then on an upgraded bronze one—bronze resonates better, creating a richer sound, Maher explains—the group has given performances at least once a year in the decades since. “The most relaxing thing” Besides attending weekly practices, a few members of FROG also volunteer to teach introductory gamelan classes to around 15 new students each fall. They can start “making noise” almost immediately, Ludwig says, because the structure of the ensemble makes it possible for even inexperienced players to contribute to the whole. Some of the most important instruments—such as the large gong that signals the beginning and the end of each movement—are also the simplest to play. “There aren’t too many solos or anything,” he says. “It’s more about playing together as a group.” It makes sense, given its unique sound, that the gamelan has influenced contemporary Western musicians from Deacon to Xiu Xiu and Sonic Youth. But it seems like a less likely hobby for a group that includes grad students, lawyers, nonprofit managers, and other professionals. The key to the gamelan’s appeal, Maher says, is how it gets you out of your daily routine. “It’s so different from what we typically do with our regular days, like office work or staring at a computer,” she says. “It’s the most relaxing thing.”   Friends of the Gamelan and Dan Deacon will perform on July 11 at 8 p.m. in Millennium Park. Admission is free.

Advance Base, Nesey Gallons, and Gold Light Where: Empty Bottle | 1035 N. Western Ave. When: 9 p.m. How Much: $5; buy tickets here Owen Ashworth tried happiness once, but it didn’t really agree with him. Since then, the Chicago synthesizer devotee and home-recording whiz has dedicated his life to producing catchy sad-sack pop, first as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone and now as Advance Base. During tonight’s set at the Empty Bottle, he’ll fine-tune some new material during what he describes as “my last local Advance Base show for a very long time.” Two out-of-town openers will add their voices to the chorus of sighs: Elephant 6 veteran Nesey Gallons contributes muted, nostalgia-soaked confessions tailored especially for autumn walks, and Asheville-based garage troubadours Gold Light strum out sun-faded slices of vintage Americana. I Saw You Where: Town Hall Pub | 3340 N. Halsted St. When: 8 p.m. How Much: $5 Consider the humble missed connection: love’s last-chance Hail Mary, a symptom of our increasingly isolated urban condition, and the building blocks of Craigslist’s most unintentionally hilarious subsection. Although most of the lonely-hearts behind these ads have earnest intentions, the actors of the Bruised Orange Theater Company make it their mission to tease out the underlying ridiculousness of the format and its devotees. At I Saw You, they put their training to use, delivering dramatic readings of the strange missives and awkward OkCupid profiles that dot the alien landscape of online dating. Sometimes cringeworthy, sometimes revealing, tonight’s performances will likely leave you grateful for your steady sweetheart or even more secure in your life of singledom. The Merry Wives of Windsor Where: Navy Pier, Chicago Shakespeare Theater | 800 E. Grand Ave. When: 7:30 p.m. How Much: $48+; buy tickets here Ladies, be advised. Sir John Falstaff is back in town, and he’s looking for love where it ought not be found. In the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s first production of The Merry Wives of Windsor in nearly a decade, Falstaff and his compatriots get a late-1940s makeover, with the Bard’s beloved ignoble noble unspooling his romantic scheme against a backdrop of big-band brass and swinging dance numbers. These new musical moments aren’t just there for show, though. In an interview with Splash’s Thomas Connor, director and CST founder Barbara Gaines notes that spinning the “joyous,” hopeful tunes led to “[her] ‘aha’ moment in finding the soul of production.” Photo by Tom Cops