Thursday, January 12, 2012

Upstairs Gallery and Simon's Tavern (Andersonville)

Upstairs Gallery
Last night, my pals and I attended a free improv show (suggested donation) at the Upstairs Gallery in Andersonville. Located at 5219 N. Clark St. near Clark St. and Foster Ave., this cozy performance space on the third floor is a place for creative peeps, such as improv teams, sketch groups, etc., to perform, rehearse, and get their goodness seen. And, when we walked in, it smelled like apple cider, so I really had no reason to leave any time soon.

We saw two groups perform: Ruptured Childhood and The Pitch. Ruptured Childhood performed long-form improv--the audience throws out a suggestion and they create scenes for their allotted time.

The Pitch
The Pitch 
The Pitch had their debut last night and we felt honored to be among the first civilians to see their very first performance. The premise is each player pitches a movie, maybe a few sentences and a couple major plot ideas, then the audience picks which movie they would like to see performed. The group then centers their set around the movie idea, switching from scene to scene and creating new characters on the spot. I love the unique approach to generating scenes. It was a blast and amazing to watch.

The Upstairs Gallery has weekly recurring shows and groups rotate in and out. Check out their Tumblr for more information and schedule bidness: http://upstairsgallery.tumblr.com/

After the show, we went to Simon's Tavern across the street at 5210 N. Clark Street. Simon's has been around since 1934 (ahh! that's old!) and is well known for its glogg. Yummmm. I worked next door to Simon's for two years and never went in. I have no explanation for this statement.

Simon's Tavern
We walked in and a live band was playing, which I get extremely excited about by yelling, "LIVE BAND! LIVE BAND!" It was fairly packed for a Wednesday night, which made it HOT in there. The bar patrons were an older set and some were dancing to the music in the middle of the bar, which I highly approve of. We ended up going to our friend's place to drink instead and avoid the crowd, but, I think Simon's is a great neighborhood bar. It's homey, they still had their Christmas decorations up, which I also highly approve of, and people looked like they were having fun.


And then I'm including this photograph because this is what we did after Simon's. That's right, my lovelies, moon shoes.

This is what Elia looks like with moon shoes.


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