Chicago Photobooth Pub Crawl

Like every good adventure, it began with a dream. Tina Le, visiting from New York City rolls over in the morning and says to me, “I had a dream that we went to a photobooth and I licked your face.” I responded, “Let’s make it happen.” And so began a beautifully improtu photobooth pub crawl around my neighborhood, Wicker Park. Now, I don’t go out much and I don’t often buy drinks when I do go out. But I am type-A and I do love goals. So let’s say this evening I was a goal oriented drunk... Buy a different drink and take a photo at all the places with photobooths. Our first stop was the famous Reckless Records on Milwaukee Ave, a place I knew Tina would love because of it's wide selection of Jack White 45's. No drinking at Reckless, but Tina did find a record for her collection.

Next stop was my favorite bookshop, Quimby's ($3 a photo, black&white) on North Ave. Best part of Quimby's was the props they had available. Both Tina and I paid homage to our favorite book, Just Kids by Patti Smith, me with the book, her with her Robert Maplethorpe tee. There was also a fan, cause Tina is my geisha, and a rubber shark cause I am a bathtub explorer.

Our journey was destined to because of a serendipitous street art exhibit that was happening under the Damen Blue Line train station. Kiam had hung a mirror in the shape of "I AM" on the brick wall. We wrote what we were on a post-it and then he took this polaroid of us. We wrote, "Maura's best friend" and "Tina's best friend." How sweet.

Tina says this photo looks like she's meeting a celebrity.

A short jaunt down Damen past Division led us to the Rainbo Club ($3, sorta sepia, analog). The bartender proudly declared that their photobooth was one of two analog photobooths in the state and apparently Liz Phair took the cover photo for her album Exit in Guyville there. We drank Old Fashioned's in honor of Don Draper.

We continued down Damen to my favorite place on the adventure, Bar Deville. ($5, sepia, digital) We drank Tina's favorite beverage in the world, hard cider. There is free pool, lots of space, funky upholstered furniture and the feel of a French dive. We upset some gentleman by borrowing the pool equipment for props... and Tina bit my ear.

Our final stop was Beauty Bar on Chicago Ave where the bouncer was kind enough to let us not pay cover to get in to use the photobooth... but tragically...

And so ended a very well documented evening in Chicago.