North Side Summerfest

It’s a Friday night around 8 pm and my brother and I. Were in route to a place further south on Lincoln to get food. Luckily for us Lincoln Ave was closed for the North Side Summerfest which which is a festival with different kinds of hot dogs from places around Chicago. It was a no brainer we stopped to try the different kind of hot dogs. I got a homemade corn dog from one of the stands which was good. One of the other high lights was the ice cream.
Jeni’s ice cream had a booth set up. I started to freak out with excitement when I saw that! Having gone to college in Columbus, OH, I have had Jeni’s many times. It was great to see it in Chicago.
The North Side Summerfest was nice. Hopefully I’ll randomly come across it again next year.

Street fest season culminates with Retro on Roscoe but then continues for another six or seven weeks with a series of smaller fests. North Side Summerfest is one of them.
In the past, North Side Summerfest was held on one block of Belle Plaine between Damen and Lincoln and was one of the weakest fests of the summer. I wasn’t going to come back to it this year until I read the link on Metromix and saw that they’d moved it to Lincoln in the two blocks south of Irving.
This fest works much better in the new location. It was big enough to handle two stages and a bunch of food booths unique to this fest (not the usual crap rotating at all other fests) yet small enough that you could walk around without bumping people and spilling beer, making this fest rather relaxed and comfortable.
Of course, they had the usual bands that make the rounds at every other fest. It’s always the same bands, same beer, same portable outhouses and same people at these things.
Speaking of seeing the same people at these things, there was the expected ex sighting at this fest. In the continuing tradition of big city, small world, I ran into a few other ladies from her crew who were not at the fest at another bar four miles away and mentioned that I’d seen the ex with her boyfriend. «Fiancé,» one of them said to correct me. So there. I’ve successfully facilitated yet another marriage. These royalty checks just keep coming.
Four stars for North Side Summerfest.

I’m sorry to have to do this, but this festival was dismal. From the website:
«The North Side Summerfest (NSS) will give the dog days a righteous send-​off, with a full lineup of the area’s best bands, a wide selection of arts and crafts and a mouth-​watering array of food and drinks from all corners of the city.»
No. Four food stands, about ten arts and crafts vendors, and no band during the 40 minutes that we were there. It was both the smallest and most sparsely attended street fair that I have ever seen in our great city. I had some friends visiting from out of town, and we weren’t asking for much – just your basic Chicago street festival. I’ve always said derisively that these things are all the same, which is why I only do one or two per season, but how wrong I was! The «donation» was only five dollars, but we felt gypped.
I will give some small props for the cool Chicago-​flag cutting boards that I saw at one of the crafts vendors, and for the $ 2 Mexican popsicles.