Rate Field
333 W. 35th StreetNew name. New blog. That’s how things work around here. Also, it’s been almost 10 years since I’ve blogged about this place.
I bet most people didn’t even realize the name of the stadium the White Sox play in changed names a couple of years ago. It’s just a slight name change. The old name, Guaranteed Rate Field was shortened to Rate Field. It’s the same mortgage company that owns the naming rights. They just shortened their name to Rate.
I’m not going to get in to the whole back story again but this is a yearly trip where I meet my dad, brother, and a friend from elementary/middle school. We’ve done it since my bachelor party in 2009 and it’s become something we all look forward to every year.
Things have obviously changed for all of us since 2009 and it’s hard finding a weekend that the Sox are home and all three of us are available. We all have kids in sports and between that and the regular summer things like vacations (not for me..I don’t get vacations), it’s tough.
We had tried to go to a game in April this year but right before buying tickets, we realized it was prom night for my brother’s kids and he didn’t want to miss that.
A few weeks ago, he texted the group and said what about August 8? It’s Ozzie Guillen retirement night and it was after summer travel softball ended for him. It was a week before my kids had a figure skating competition and the other two were available as well. I said I was in so my brother grabbed some tickets.
Rate Field is on West 35th Street and Wentsworth Avenue in Chicago’s Southside Armour Square Neighborhood. The stadium sits right off the Dan Ryan Expressway and the first time you actually see the stadium on the way to a game is from the Expressway. In most cases, you drive past the stadium (if you’re coming from the south) to get to the parking lots off 33rd Street.
Read more…BadaBing Wings Zone
4754 N. Clark StreetWings and BBQ. That was going to be our tailgate for our once a year trip to see the White Sox plate at Rate Field in Chicago.
I’ve been doing this trip for 17 years now with my dad, my brother, and one of our best friends from elementary/middle school. It started with my bachelor party in 2009 and the only year we have missed was last year…but we made up for it with a Bears game instead.
We have always done wings as our tailgate. It started on that first trip in 2009 when I found Wings Around the World East 75th Street on the southside. We did that for a couple of years then they closed and we had to find new spot. I picked Wingz It Iz in Calumet Park but those weren’t the kind of wings we were used to. They were whole wings so that only last a year.
The next year, I met the guys along Cicero Avenue not too far from where my in-laws used to live in Oak Lawn. That year, I stopped at this new wing joint called Wingstop in Crestwood. That was the first time I had ever heard of the now pretty popular wing chain.
The following year, I found my original wing place again. It was now called Chicago Wingz Around the World. It was still on 75th Street but in a new location. We had a few more years there then they closed again.
Our stopgap became Buffalo Wings and Rings not too far from the park. We did that one for a couple more years then back to the original shop. Another Chicago Wingz Around the World opened up on East 47th Street. We did that for a year then we switched the Bears game. That tailgate was too early so I actually grilled some wings at home and brought them to be reheated at the stadium.
This year, my brother really wanted BBQ from Smoque BBQ on the Northside. It was kind of out of the way but I hadn’t eaten at Smoque in a really long time so I said I’d go get it. I knew my dad isn’t a huge BBQ fan and he really likes the wings tradition so I suggested I do both. I’ll pick up BBQ and then try to find a wing place nearby and get those as well.
I did some digging on Google and came up with a place about 20 minutes away in Chicago’s Uptown Neighborhood.
BadaBing Wings Zone is on North Clark Street south of Lawrence Avenue. The restaurant is on the southern end of a two story red brick building that shares space with a coffee shop. There is street parking all around and I was easily able to find a spot just up the street. I had tried putting an order in online but it wasn’t accepting online orders. I got really nervous my plan had fallen apart and when I pulled up to the restaurant, it didn’t really look open either. I didn’t see anyone inside or any kind of open sign, but when I pushed on the door, it opened so I went in.
Read more…Smoque BBQ
3800 N. Pulaski RoadAnd now I’m off to Chicago.
If you’ve followed this blog at all for the last 17 years, you already know that I have a tradition with my dad, brother, and an elementary/middle school friend. We go to a White Sox game every year.
We started this tradition in 2009 when I got married. I didn’t want to do a traditional bachelor party. I wanted to go to a baseball game. The tradition stuck and last year was the only year we’ve missed…but we made up for it with a Bears game instead.
Back in 2009, I found a wing place on the south side that fed us during a tailgate parking lot. We’ve always tried to do wings for our tailgates but that place moved a couple of times and we had to refind it. We also put a couple of other places in there to either try something new or because we couldn’t figure out if Wings Around the World was still open.
This year my brother asked if we could do BBQ instead. My dad doesn’t love BBQ so I offered to do both. I’d get the BBQ my brother wanted and find a wing place nearby so we would still have wings.
My brother really wanted to try the BBQ from Smoque BBQ on the corner of North Pulaski Road and Grace Street in the Old Irving Park Neighborhood on Chicago’s North side. The very popular restaurant is actually part of a larger building with most of the space belonging to City Smiles dentistry. Parking is a little tough in the area. There is street parking if you can find it. I did carry-out though and there is a 15 minute loading zone along Grace Street so that helps. If you’re dining in, expect to spend a little bit of time looking for a place to park.
Read more…Supino Pizzeria (New Center)
6519 Woodward AvenueWe’re back home from our trip to Upstate New York but that doesn’t mean I’m done traveling.
The week after we got back, I had to go to Detroit for work then Chicago for a baseball game. I’ve been back in Kalamazoo for two weeks and I still haven’t eaten out anywhere locally. I’m still in travel mode.
Last Tuesday, a colleague and I got sent to Detroit for a long shift that would keep us there most of the night and in to the next morning.
We had a couple of hours to kill not long after we got there so I suggested we take a “lunch break” early as it would likely be the only time we would have to eat until we got home very late in to the night.
We were in the New Center District of Detroit north of downtown and there were plenty of options close to our job site for food. I saw a familiar name and suggested we make Tuesday night a pizza night.
We chose Supino Pizzeria on Woodward Avenue near East Milwaukee Avenue just about a mile north of the Woodward Interchange with Interstate 94. This location on Woodward is the second location of Supino Pizzeria in the City of the Detroit. The original location is in the Eastern Market on Russell Street about three miles away. This location opened up in 2021 in a building that looks like it had been abandoned for quite some time. The last thing I can find in the space is Mr. Song Millinery but that was way back in 2009. In the time in between, the building looked to have been shuttered waiting for a revival.
Read more…Tim Hortons (ONroute Cambridge North)
290 ON-401One last day of travel.
Our weeklong adventure to the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships were coming to an end. We left Lake Placid Thursday night, crossed over in to Canada in Ogdensburg, NY via the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge and stayed the night in a surprisingly nice Motel 6 in Kingston, ON.
J’s typical weekday alarm is set for around 5:30 AM and she just decided to leave that alarm on. We were all ready to get home. We still had about an eight hour drive so getting up and on the road by 6 AM would get us back to Kalamazoo late afternoon.
We didn’t stop for breakfast or really anything before we left Kingston. We just got on the road.
About the time we got to Toronto, B asked if we could find a bathroom. I told him as soon as we got out of the city, we’d find something.
Not too long after that, I saw a sign for an ONroute in Cambridge. It said it was about 35km away so about 20 minutes….at least it would have been 20 minutes had we not been going through Toronto during the morning rush. It wasn’t too bad though. 20 turned in to 40 but he was fine.
I decided to try and make it to the ONroute because I knew we could kill two birds with one stone. None of us had eaten yet and we all had to use the bathroom. We could do it all in one place.
The ONroutes are travel plazas just like you see on the Indiana or Ohio toll road. They’re large building that look like a mall food court. We stopped at the Cambridge North On Route which is on ON-401 east of the City of Cambridge. You hit a large parking lot east of the building first but there are also parking lots in front of and to the west where the gas pumps are. We pulled in to the first spot we could find and headed inside quickly to find a bathroom.
Read more…Harvey’s (Kingston – Division St.)
1141 Division StreetOur time in Lake Placid had ended and we needed to head back to Michigan.
On the way to Upstate New York, we went through Niagara Falls so we could stop at the falls and check that out. It’s not actually the quickest way to where we were going. It was still faster than going through Ohio and Pennsylvania, but the quickest route from Kalamazoo, MI to Lake Placid, NY is to take Highway 401 all the way up to Edwardsburg/Cardinal, ON and enter the US at Ogdensburg, NY using the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge.
On the way home, we took that route. We left Lake Placid around 5 PM and headed north to Canada.
We had planned all along to only make it about three hours Thursday night then finish the drive Friday morning. We started looking at hotels near Kingston, ON and J found a very cheap Motel 6 with great reviews. I keep telling people there is no way I would stay in a Motel 6 in the States but this one in Kingston was really nice and not typically what I think of when I think of a Motel 6.
We didn’t eat before leaving Lake Placid and we only stopped for snacks as soon as we got through the border crossing so by the time we were pulling in to Kingston a little after 8:00, everyone was hungry.
J had found a couple of sit down places that sounded good but actually sitting down for a meal didn’t sound like a good idea.
The last time I drove through Canada, I made it a point to stop at a very Canadian fast food place based on a joke from How I Met Your Mother. J used to watch that show with me and wanted to stop for the same reason. They’re all over Ontario and there was one not too far from our hotel. So we stopped.
That chain is Harvey’s. It’s a Canadian hamburger fast food chain with almost 300 locations….most of them are in Ontario. We stopped at the one in Kingston on Division Street south of First Canada Avenue in a highly commercialized area of town just south of the interchange with Highway 401. This Harvey’s looks like any other fast food place with a pretty generic box shape on a narrow lot. Since J and the kids had never been to a Harvey’s before, we skipped the drive thru and went inside.
Read more…Noon Mark Burger and Pie Joint
2488 Main StreetOne last day in Lake Placid.
L had one more skate at The Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at the The Olympic Center. It was at about 11:00 AM but we weren’t planning on leaving right away. We still wanted to stay and watch the Senior International Free Dances that started that afternoon. We didn’t plan on driving all the way home anyway so hanging around until five or so wouldn’t be a big deal.
L got one more medal in her last event for a total of three on the week. I watched her get her medal and take one last set of pictures on the balcony with the Olympic rings in the background and then I wandered away from The Olympic Center to get something to eat.
Earlier in the week, B and I had walked down to a burger joint but they were closing just as we got there. I ended up taking him for ice cream for dinner at Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery then later in the night, I ordered a pizza from Ere’s Pizza.
I spent the rest of the week wanting to get back to this place and this was my last chance to do so.
Noon Mark Burger and Pie Joint is on Main Street towards the middle of downtown Lake Placid north of Marcy Road. The restaurant is a small log cabin type addition to a larger stone and wood building that has kind of a mountain lodge theme to it. The restaurant sits up off of street level and has a wooden staircase to get to the entrance. It sits right next to a municipal parking lot and across the street from Smoke Signals where we ordered dinner from the night before.
Read more…Blue Line Creamery
2241 Saranac AvenueIce cream for dinner is a thing when you’re on vacation….right?
It was for B most of the week while we were in Lake Placid, NY for the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center.
He had eaten at Emma’s Lake Placid Creamery a couple of times then he and J did the Ben & Jerry’s on the north end of downtown one night too.
Our last night in Lake Placid we found ourselves back in the hotel fairly early. I didn’t feel great and J and B were tired of sitting at the rink. L stayed downtown with her friends though. They went to dinner and got ice cream before heading back to The Olympic Center to get their stuff.
The previous nights, I had gone by myself to pick her up but this time, she had a lot of stuff. B still had his competitor badge so he was able to run in at the athlete’s entrance and help her carry bags out to the car.
He didn’t really want to leave the hotel….so we bribed him with ice cream.
We were kind of in a hurry to get back to the arena to get L and neither of us wanted to deal with the downtown crowds. We had been driving past a little walk up ice cream shop every day so I suggested we just stop there.
Blue Line Creamery is on Saranac Avenue at Nash Street on the west side of Lake Placid. The shop on the corner is part of a multi business building that is designed to fit in to the neighborhood around it. They look to have opened in the fall of last year. This spot was an ice cream joint in the past but it was called Mountain Mist Ice Cream which was an off shoot of a long time popular ice cream spot in nearby Saranac Lake.
Read more…Smoke Signals
2489 Main StreetI spent a pretty good chunk of our Wednesday in Lake Placid back in the hotel.
Wednesday was the day most of L’s skates happened at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships at The Olympic Center. She was done by about 2 PM. She medaled in both of her events so I stuck around the arena to see her get her medals then I asked J if I could go back to the hotel and take a nap.
The kids and J (and to be honest, me too) wanted to stick around and watch the Junior International Free Dance and Senior International Rhythm Dances. I was bummed because I was really curious to see how the Rhythm and Waltz was going to work this year but I know I’ll get many chances to see it over the next few months.
I took about a three hour nap and at about the time I woke up, I got a text messages from J asking if I’d come pick her and B up. They had watched the Senior rhythm and were ready to call it a night. The hotel was only a few minutes from The Olympic Center so I put on shoes and went and picked them.
We got back to the hotel and started talking about dinner. Neither of us really wanted to go sit down anywhere but we were both kind of hungry.
The thing we noticed, that neither of us realized, is that northern New York seems to be a hot bed for BBQ. There were several places in Lake Placid and several places we passed on the way from Watertown to Lake Placid that had BBQ. We decided to pick one that had online ordering then I was going to head out to grab it.
We picked Smoke Signals in kind of the middle of downtown Lake Placid on Main Street just north of Marcy Road. The restaurant is a two story building that kind of looks like an Alpine Lodge. The space used to be Alpine Mall with shops and smaller restaurants right on Mirror Lake. At some point before 2014, Smoke Signals took over the space but kept the Lodge motif on the exterior.
Read more…Bazzi’s Pizzeria
2536 Main StreetWednesday at the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships was L’s day to skate. B was done for the week and he could just hang out with his friend from Florida he gets to see like once a year.
L’s schedule was somewhat compact for the day. Her first event was at 8 am and the last started around 1 PM. She surprised herself and podiumed in that first event so I hung around The Olympic Center for a while to see her get her medal.
I wasn’t really feeling very good so I kind of just kept to myself and sat in the stands during the break. There was other skating going on and it was nice and cool in the arena. It was surprisingly humid all week in Lake Placid and it could be uncomfortable outside.
I started to get hungry though and didn’t really want a burger from Roamers Cafe. I decided to venture out. There was still a pizza place not too far away that J and L had been raving about for the past year.
Bazzi’s Pizzeria is on Main Street on the south end of downtown Lake Placid across the street from the Golden Arrow Resort. The restaurant is one of several businesses on the main floor of a large three story brick building that has winter sports icons along the roofline. There are a few picnic tables out front and these were the tables we used earlier in the week when we got breakfast at Soulshine Bagel. The exterior has kind of a lodge feel to it which is on theme in the mountains.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 