Mad shenanegans with Devin (remember Devin? From Ireland? No? Anyway he was in town.) and Emily last night.
We were all, let's hang out! So Emily and I went to this gallery/rock concert party at the army store (confused by the venue too) on Milwaukee, which was real loud and awkward. Devin somehow knew like everyone there and he doesn't even live in this city. How? We don't know.
Mckenzie from school apparently was working the event and she scrubbed off the under-21 sharpie X on my hand so that I could get "fucked up". I was like, thanks. gross beer.. >_> woo.
The party ended early for a party, and suddenly we're standing in a group of Devin's friends and there's about 11 different potential parties/bars/raves to go to, and no one's making a decision, and Emily and I are standing off to the side going, How do you know about so many parties??
This one guy has a car, so we drive to someone's house where I think we crashed a "party", though even I could tell it was super lame, so we obviously didn't stay there long.
Then we drive to downtown to this high-rise apartment building to this other party which had way too many bros in it. But the building had a pool, and we were like, hell yeah. Let's go swimming.
But the pool was closed and we couldn't get in, but we found an open door to the roof, which was probably the best part of the night.
This building is about 40 stories high. Outside and all night is some major heat lightning going on. We climb up this short ladder to the very top of the roof, which is just a flat plane of weird squishy white roof material jutting above the regular, larger part of the roof around and below it.
The experience was incredible. As soon as I stepped off the ladder, the warm wind was whipping everywhere. It was almost strong enough to knock me over, and most of us sat down rather than fight for stable footing. Right next to us was the slanted roof of the Smurfit-Stone building. It's one of those city buildings I look up at almost every day but seeing from this new, closer angle really made a striking impact on how large the building is, and how high up I was.
We could see the light-devoid area of the lake, and the top of the Columbus building/museum. The whole aroma of colors was the storm's dark purple and the yellow lights from the city streets, a dizzying look down. It was perfect to sit and watch the lightning snaking in between the buildings and over the lake.
I could have stayed up there a really long time but we returned to the party after only 15 minutes or so. Of all the things I've done in Chicago, this was by far the most inspiring.
It was good that we went back indoors, because shortly thereafter it started pouring. By the time we left the party for good, it was full-on flash flood.
We scrapped any further party plans and made a mad dash to the car, which still ended with all of us quite soaking.
The roads were an absolute mess. We were headed back to the driver's house to just hang and finish the night, and we had a ways to drive from the loop to Wicker Park. We drove through rivers on the street, had to detour around lakes formed under bridges, and thankfully did not end up like the stranded truck drivers in the news this morning who had to be rescued by boat.
Emily and I slogged home before dawn, and conclued our night of masquerading as normal party people. The awkward party parts of the night were super lame, but I could get used to having rooftop or rain adventures on the weekends..
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