Those days that are just so filled with fun and adventure.....that is how Friday was, plus the best weather you could ask for, for being outdoors all day.
On Friday I took the day off work in order to see one of my favorite bands play in Chicago, My Chemical Romance. The closest they would be playing for the US tour was Chicago at a music festival. I bought two passes before I even knew who I'd go with, and finally the day arrived. They wouldn't be playing until 8:30 that night, and I had taken the day off work so I needed another idea to fill the time. I ended up going with my friend, Faille, and she suggested the Chicago Botanical Gardens.
I didn't really know what to expect, but when looking up the website of all the themed gardens days before I agreed. You can spend all day there, and not even see half of the the gardens. There are photo opportunities everywhere. It's kind of overwhelming to know where to take a picture or what to take a picture of. Everything is just so eye-catching. Looking it up there are 27 themed gardens on 385 acres. The gardens Faille and I visited were: The Bulb Garden, English Walled Garden, Japanese Garden, English Walled Garden, Native Plant Garden, Rose Garden, Aquatic Garden, and Cove. We also looked at a collection of Bonsai trees. Each garden was intricately designed. The Japanese garden went into depth on the histories and meanings of different plants in the garden. Of the ones we visited, my favorite was the English Walled Garden and the Japanese Garden. While visiting the cove which looks out onto the Shokie River I saw a grasshopper walking on the railing. The grasshopper stopped to look at me. Then moved to face me and inched closer. I thought "What if this thing jumps at me?" so I backed up a little, but still looked at it, and a few seconds later he jumped at me. Even though I had that thought I didn't think it actually would, and I ended up giving a little yelp. Faille asked what had happened and I explained to her, but didn't know where the grasshopper had gone. When I lifted up my purse that's where it was. The purse I was carrying was colorful, so I think that's what attracted the grasshopper to it. The outfit I chose wasn't the best for all the walking we did that day, but sometimes beauty is pain. :P
After the Gardens we made the trek to Douglas Park. We decided to drive down so we could have more mobility, not have to worry about train/subway schedules/ubers etc. The only problem was, the traffic. Chicago traffic hadn't crossed my mind, but it didn't end up being to bad anyway. We were able to find a parking spot decently close to the park in a well lit area near the Chicago Police Department and ventured toward the park at around 5pm. Douglas Park is a HUGE park, which is probably why they had a music festival of 100,000 people there.
I didn't know what to expect with Riot Fest. I had kind of hoped they'd play a stadium instead of at a festival. I like Summerfest as a music festival, but Summerfest is different because it's at an actual festival park, where this one was at a park, park. This festival was also different because you didn't buy tickets specifically for the band you were seeing. The passes were for general admission for the whole day. Since it was an all day pass I thought we would see a band before My Chemical Romance started playing. Things didn't go to plan, however. We walked around the grounds a little, finding the stage that MCR would play in a few hours then went to look for food. After walking around we were only able to find one food area nearby. There were plenty of alcohol and merch tents everywhere, but not a lot of food vendors from what we found. I am hoping there were more elsewhere in the park. The website made it seem like there would be way more. Because there were so few vendors the lines were long. Which is another difference between Summerfest and Riot Fest. Summerfest has food vendors everywhere so you never have to wait too long in line. We chose the Corn Dog and Nachos line and ended up waiting 45+ minutes, no exaggeration. I hadn't eaten since that morning, and we needed water as well. Luckily there were a lot of people in interesting outfits to watch while we waited, and it killed some of the time we'd be waiting for the band anyway. Being in line made kind of regret buying the passes for the festival. Finally we got our food, and made our way towards the stage.
Alkaline Trio was playing at the neighboring stage where MCR would be playing. We watched them as we made our way closer to MCR's stage. (Another strange thing was the fact that two stages were very close to each other, and both had sound tents that blocked part of the audience from seeing the stage since they were in the towards the front.) It was after 7pm at this point. We came to a stop, not thinking we could get any closer. Apparently there was plenty of room, according to the 500+ that squished by us in 45 minutes. (This ended up being a problem though, since MCR was headlining and was the only band playing from 8:30-10:00 almost all of the 100,000 people in attendance were there for MCR.) 15 minutes before the show started we were able to get a tiny bit closer than we had been, still in the back though. We could see the megatron and if you looked at the stage you could see them a tiny bit. They looked like ants. MCR came out, and suddenly the regrets of being there faded. It was an incredible show even though it was oversold and a few people passed out. The band would remind the audience to back up after most songs, due to the overcrowding, and not wanting people to get hurt. During the middle of the set, one of the audience members near us began having a seizure. The audience members around them tried to get the band's attention to stop the show in order for the person to get medical attention, but they didn't notice and kept going. It was a little hard to enjoy the concert when there was someone in a life threatening situation nearby, but they were finally able to get help after 3 songs. I was actually glad we weren't closer due to the possibility of getting physically injured due to the mass amounts of people. Yes, it would have been nice to actually see them instead of mostly on the big screen, but wasn't worth the physical harm. For this tour every MCR concert has a different setlist. Each setlist features multiple songs from their entire discography, and each night the lead singer usually wears an outfit/costume, and says something different at each concert. A lot of bands perform mostly their newest songs, wear the same outfit or a few different outfits throughout tour, and have certain scripted lines that they say at every show. The setlist they did play for Chicago was amazing.
MCR hasn't played together in 10+ years, and had even officially broken up back in 2012. However, they announced they would be doing a reunion show at the end of 2019, and were going to do a reunion tour in 2020. I had just gotten into their music towards the beginning of 2019. We all know how 2020 went, and their tour got rescheduled to 2022. The lead singer had been saying that the band had broken up because it was no longer fun to perform anymore. Back when they were performing he was in a dark place. He had to be drunk in order to perform well on stage, and there was so much stress in sounding perfect. However this tour was different. Everyone in the band is now sober, and just enjoying being around each other. There's a lot of joy, and they're the happiest and most comfortable they've ever been on stage and you can tell by the way they look on stage. This was supposed to be a reunion tour, but is no longer seen as that, because they don't want this to be the last tour they ever do. They really enjoy what they're doing again, and it makes my heart so happy to know that they're in such a good place. Being a fan of there's after the break up, I didn't think I'd get to ever see them, but now I have, and maybe will again in the future too.
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