Been a long time since I rock and rolled

When Dave picked me up at the airport last Thursday it was the first time I'd seen him with his pants on.

See, he usually wears shorts. Yes, even in winter. Even to hockey games.

I was at the baggage claim in O'Hare, where we had arranged to meet, but I didn't see him approach because I was watching for my suitcase. Then I heard a familiar voice ask, "Should I start singing Foreigner now?"

I laughed, and handed him a silver bag.

Just before I left home to catch my plane that morning, I had emailed Dave and asked, do you remember what I look like, or should we work out a code — like, I'll be the tall redhead carrying the bottle of Macallan?

He thought I was kidding, but I never kid about sketch.

I've been to Chicago five or six times before, but always either on business, or on vacation. Once, back in the glory days when Mecklermedia did their Internet World shows three times a year, including Chicago in July, I went shopping at Filene's Basement with Tim and Lauren. And once, the X and I and another couple took the train for a St. Paddy's Day long weekend. But before I met Dave I had never known anyone who lived there, so I was thrilled to be back in one of my favourite American cities, this time moving beyond the tourist attractions, like Navy Pier and the Sears Tower, and getting the tour from a local.

So naturally the first place I wanted to go was the Hard Rock Café.

Dave was beginning to learn that there are many things I do not kid about.

I'd been to the HRC in Chicago once before, about ten years ago, and I already have, on my jean jacket, the Chicago guitar pin with the Route 66 logo on it. I thought it was about time to add a second Chicago guitar.

"Look, I know it's overpriced beer and mediocre food," I explained, "So you have to think of it like a museum, and that's the price you have to pay for admission."

What I love about the Hard Rock is the clutter. The handwritten notes from Elvis to a fan. John Lennon's scribblings on a napkin with the title, Imagine. The Sonny and Cher salt and pepper shakers in the Hard Rock in Hollywood. The slightly battered Sex Pistols posters that you can believe were actually once on the wall of a club. The Kurt Cobain guitar in New Orleans.

I wasn't prepared for what I saw when we arrived.

The outside of the building was exactly as I remember it ten years ago, but inside, everything had changed. Gone was the clutter, replaced, instead, with minimal, stylish, enlarged photographs and only the occasional guitar.

You could actually see the walls!

Still reeling with the shock of this initial impression, I bravely proceeded into the restaurant proper where the sight of the bar, something out of a sci-fi nightmare, was nearly enough to send me screaming for the door.

But we'd come this far, so we sat down.

The main atrium bar, once solidly wood and decorated with guitars, was now stainless steel and glass. Towering from the centre was a cylinder composed of eight rows of small silver screens blaring the proprietary HRC video channel, interspersed with glass shelves upon which stood a bottle of Bacardi. I wondered if this were a new form of product placement advertising. The tower was too tall for the bottles to be functional stock.

Dave was looking at the menu. "I'm not a big fan of seafood. Give me a taco and I'm happy as a clam."

The secret to eating at the Hard Rock Café is not to order anything you expect to be good, but to order the most simple item, so that even they have a hard time ruining it for you.

Actually, it's best to avoid eating there at all, but we'd been walking quite a bit and were hungry, so we thought we might as well.

Oh, how I lived to regret that decision.

I ordered a chicken breast sandwich with onion rings. I love onion rings. Whenever I see them on a menu I ask if I can have them instead of fries.

Then I went for a walk around the joint.

Ain't That America was playing on the video screens as I examined the upstairs memorabilia. Where once clutter ruled, now there were only three or four inset glass cases, each featuring a gold record, a photograph, and a tastefully placed guitar. The silvery symmetry of it all made me want to kick the glass in.

I returned to our booth via the back spiral staircase, accompanied by the pants of Cher, John & Yoko, and Gary Glitter, and downed my beer in one gulp.

Our food had arrived.

"How is it?" asked Dave, who had never eaten at a Hard Rock before.

"Well, I was expecting mediocre, but this is unusually mediocre," I replied. "Try an onion ring."

He did so, and said, "It doesn't taste like anything."

"Yeah, I know. What do you suppose they fry them in that has absolutely no taste?" I wondered.

On Michigan Avenue, Chicago's main shopping street, the Victoria's Secret and the Borders, my other two meccas, are located side by side. Have I mentioned, I love this city? It was an hour or so later, in Borders, when I received what in hindsight I recognize to be the first clue as to what, exactly, those onion rings were fried in.

For your information and future reference, Gentle Reader, the bathrooms in Borders are located in the basement. We had been browsing on the fourth floor in the CD/DVD section when the rather urgent need to get to the basement hit me.

But it wasn't until another hour and a half later, back in Dave's part of the city, when we were two blocks from his apartment, on our way to the store to buy beer, that I finally had the answer:

Castor oil.

Ooh, let me get back, let me get back... now.

The Onion Ring Occurrence was not so acute as to require me to get on the next plane back to Toronto and never look Dave in the eye again, but, well, let's just say it's damned fortuitous that my purchases at Victoria's Secret included five new pairs of underwear.

In the next Chicago story, Postmodern Sass becomes Surreal Sass. But first, she sings au revoir to Jack.