The term "Mardi Gras" (pronounced /ˈmɑrdi grɑː/), in English, refers to events of the Carnival celebrations, beginning on or after Epiphany and ending on the day before Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras is French for "Fat Tuesday", referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season.
It also includes crazy drinking on a school night.
Jen and I didn't mean to start at Dick's Last Resort. It's not a great bar, despite a fun location on Chicago River. It feels a little touristy. The people we met were from such exotic locales as Park Ridge. But here's the thing: we tried to find other more awesome bars to celebrate Mardi Gras and were denied. We stopped in to Rockit and the place was deserted. No MG celebration there. We decided that perhaps Chicago doesn't enjoy MG like New Orleans does. Fine. We'd go to Rock Bottom, where just that very morning they had advertised a Mardi Gras party. Well, if you consider three purple, gold and green balloons and a handful of beads a party, then RB is your place. I don't. So we went to DLR. We had visited DLR a year earlier and had a great time (because of people we ran into, not because of the bar) and this was the key: we knew that they would be having a Party. With Hurricanes. For $3. And if it was awful, we'd head to Wrigleyville.
It was not awful. We had a great time chatting, drinking hurricanes purchased for us by suburbanites, discussing travel stories of Brazil with a group of middle aged men who had been hanging out since high school and getting beads from the bouncer.
Then we left. And rather than do the smart thing on a Tuesday night (ie..go home), we decided to "have one more" at Duffy's. The good thing is that Duffy's is superclose to my house. The bad? Well, it was a SCHOOL NIGHT and we had already had three hurricanes. But it was decided and written and done. One more at Duffy's. Which, turned the night into a DrinkDeck2010 night!
Again, the staff at Duffy's was fairly unfamiliar with DrinkDeck. One server knew enough to say "yeah, we take those" but not enough to say "by the way, there's a $30 minimum." Yay! So, our hurricanes were free (Duffy's was having a MG party complete with hurricane specials.) and we were able to tip the bartender big. Everybody wins.
Except that there were shots. The bartender bought one and the random guy next to me bought one.
Shots + hurricanes + school night = what was I thinking? That's the new math.
I've given up Mardi Gras for Lent.
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