Chicago Architecture for the Aspiring Inebriate

So as not to be among the martyred slaves of time, be drunken, be drunken without ceasing. With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with architecture, à votre guise.

Do I detect a trend here? I wrote yesterday of Preservation Chicago's May 12th membership fundraiser, Drinking in Your History, at the Green Door Tavern. Today, I'm reminded that, not to be outdone, Landmarks Illinois is having a Historic Pub Crawl in Hegewisch this Wednesday, May 5th.

Now, I learn that the Chicago Architecture Foundation is offering up a Happy Hour Walking Tour, Monday through Friday at 5:30 p.m., through September, each day a different tour. (Tuesdays are Millennium Park). The tours are actually two hours long - does this mean you're only guaranteed to be happy half of the time? The $16.00 tariff ($13.00 for students and seniors, free for CAF members), includes a free drink at local restaurants like the Park Grill, Rhapsody and the Berghoff at tour's end. So get your group together (if you're ten or more, advance reservations will be required), draw straws to pick the designated walker to stuff the rest of you into cabs at the end of the evening - remember: no drinking until the end of the tour - and get high on the glories of Chicago's Great Places and Spaces*

*Persistent binge drinking is a serious medical condition requiring professional medical attention. As good as you feel at 12:00 a.m., you will feel equally as miserable by 7:00. If you find yourself at the end of the bar having a heated argument with Charles Atwood, it is time to go home. Charles Baudelaire died at age 46 after suffering a massive stroke at 45. Projectile vomiting on your boss may cause job insecurity. No matter if he appears to understand you like no one else ever has, six-foot-tall rabbits do not exist. Nor does Chicago's Great Places and Spaces, at least for 2010.