Chicago Show Part 2

After 16 Ibuprofen to quell the massive headache I woke up with, Sunday turned into a productive day.  Some of the day’s acquisitions included Nording, Winslow and Turner pipes as well as some nice wood tampers.  A pipe full in the tent in the company of Phil and a couple of Just For Him customers as well as some of the guys from Cornell & Diehl was a nice break in the action.  Certain people in Springfield were rather jealous of the fact that I was sitting next to the famed pipe carver Peter Heeschen.  My friend entered the national pipe smoking contest and placed fifth winning a Red Hat pipe.  After the show we sat around and talked to some of the other show attendees and then went to dinner at Portillo’s.  We then headed back into the city stopping at a local cigar shop and hookah lounge.  We then wandered around the Wicker Park area and visited the three story Myopic Books bookstore, stopped into a small Hispanic grocery store, grabbed a couple of tacos at a local Mexican diner (mine was a very tasty tongue taco) and stopped into a small art gallery where a guy took a picture of my Wolverine t-shirt and declared it the coolest photo of me that had ever been taken (perhaps a bit egotistical of him considering he had never seen any other photographs of me).   After making it back to St. Charles I dropped my tired friend off at the hotel and headed back to the tent for a pipe and some socialization.

Monday morning we checked out the post show to see if there were any great deals that couldn’t be passed up, then headed back into the city where we ate breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s, wondered around a bit and headed to the Navy Pier before walking to see The Second City comedy and improv show.  For those of you that don’t know The Second City has been around since 1959 and had member such as Jim & John Belushi, Bill Murray and Bonnie Hunt.  On the way back to the car we stopped into another tobacco shop to see what was there and then back to the hotel so we could get up and fly out Tuesday morning.

I spent the first part of today pricing pipes so if you’re in the area you need to come on by and check them out!  Whatever your price range is we have something for you to look at.  There are a bunch of good looking pipes that run from about $45 to $290.  In addition to the ones mentioned earlier we also picked up some Luigi Viprati pipes which are beautiful.