A shock to the system!

So I took last night off DJing to hang out with Photogal since I'm going to be tied up with shows both Friday and Saturday and, to my great surprise, she wanted to go out to a bar! She's been sick for the last week so she must've been suffering a bout of cabin fever but I wasn't going to complain about going out. However I could complain about her choice of bars since she wanted to go to Rainbo. Or as I prefer to call it, Rainblo.

Rainbo is the hippest of hister bars. It makes the bars in Williamsburg look like Coyote Ugly. The music is always on the verge of annoying, the clientele tends to be mostly people I know but don't usually choose to hang out with and the general vibe of the place is "I'm too cool to actually have any fun."

Apparently that's changing. And I'm not sure how I feel about it.

I guess as Wicker Park gentrifies it only makes sense that the Rainbo would follow. Last night the music was mostly mainstream, the majority of the clientele was more "ex-frat boy" than "fan of Tortoise" and the photobooth seemed to be constantly in use for something other than postmodern ironic posturing. I felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone. I can honestly say I had a really nice time hanging out there with my girlfriend whereas usually I would exit with clenched teeth built up through having to listen to hours of vapidly self-interested faux-artistic conversation.

On the other hand the change worries me. I mean, we need a hipper than thou bar to count on. If Rainbo falls than Wicker Park's transformation into Lincoln Park¹ will be virtually complete. When the yuppies take post-modern ironic posturing and commodify it into a weekend diversion where the hell does that leave the segment of the population that lives to be miserable? It'll throw the whole balance of the universe off!

So please please please local Chicago yuppies. Leave the Rainbo alone. I need a bar that annoys me with its cloying hipster quotient and Wicker Park needs a bar that'll continue to look down on the neighborhood that provides it succor. Whoop it up at Cans or Nick's but for God's sake leave Rainbo alone.

¹For out-of-town readers, Lincoln Park is the most heavily gentrified area of Chicago. Everyone drives Jettas and enjoys The Dave Matthews Band. It's really scary.