24 March, 2010

Weekend! (Chicago Edition)


Oof, I have been neglecting this poor blog! I have started a bunch of posts but finished none of them... I plan to remedy that next week so please bear with me. In the meantime, I thought I'd tell you about my weekend. I went to Chicago to visit my friend Piper and we had a great time. We made my annual pilgrimage to Hot Doug's (the goat sausage with roasted plantains and smoked Gouda was amazing), met up with my friend Amanda, went to the record release party of Piper's friend's band, had brunch at Tweet, lunch at Bin 36, dinner at both Big Star and Publican, went antiquing, made pizza, printed Piper's first letterpress job in her kitchen, shopped till we dropped, and watched one of the most amazing movies of all time. I even got to spend an extra night when my homebound flight was overbooked (thank you, Southwest for paying me to spend more time with my friends!).

But I think the undeniable highlight of the trip was on Saturday, when we drove up to Wadsworth to visit North America's largest gold plated object, Onan's Gold Pyramid. You see, Saturday was Obscura Day, and I am not sure there is anything more obscure or bizarre than a 6 story home (surrounded by a moat) in the middle of suburbia, built in the 1970's by an eccentric man who still lives there and gives tours every weekend*. There are really no words to adequately describe the experience of visiting the pyramid, so my photos will simply have to do. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside the home itself; if you are ever in the Chicago area on a weekend, I highly recommend taking the tour.








*He and his wife raised five children in the pyramid... can you imagine being the kid in 5th grade who lives in a gold pyramid?

3 comments:

Bubeau said...

oh it's a lot smaller than i pictured in my mind! But still awesome.

jennwhisper said...

That moat is NUTS!!

Hello. Welcome to Ink-Dwell said...

what? i grew up in the chicagoland area and i can't believe i never heard of this! can't wait to go next time i am home.