I had seen an excellent concert (Bill Callahan) at The Hideout last time I was in Chicago. I also stayed at Marina Towers, as in the Wilco album cover. There are lots of hipsters at The Hideout, which seems to be the new generation and style, and lots of people our age. You don't know if the people who are our age are living at home with Mommy or are prominent brain surgeons at Northwestern Hospital. It's a laid-back place. There was a waitress who could have performed on the stage of Lincoln Center: the tray of beer glasses she carried defied gravity. It is also off the beaten path. I like it. I had been to Bin Wine Cafe in March, a restaurant that I now realize is down the street from where a nice sandwich shop called Birchwood Kitchen is. I went with some girlfriends of mine who are marketing professors in Chicago. They are married, but the husbands were not with us. Over dinner, we talked about a research project on GenX and gender. We went out later to a bar (Salud) and casually talked to some young men. They asked us what we did, we told them, and we told them about our research project. They acted knowing, as if they had heard this "business school professor" story all the time, the way a group of women will sometimes compose a fake identity to make going out even more of a group event and a game: “tonight, let’s pretend we are all marketing professors in business schools.” And we are really, I don’t know, friends from high school, and we work in PR, as a yoga instructor, and a lawyer, and we couldn’t get people to believe our professor story, not even by talking about our research.
