Mom's Night Out: Late Night Evanston

I’m pretty sure most moms can relate to the notion of getting lost in the slog that is everyday life. It’s not a complaint so much as it’s fact: it’s easy to lose track of yourself while traveling the well-worn paths carved into our days.

Get kids to school.

Attend to critical (a.k.a. pressing/overdue) items on to-do list.

Move multitudes of unaccomplished tasks to tomorrow’s list.

Compare self (against better judgment) to those who seem to get it all done.

Fantasize about naps.

Remember (once again) that groceries don’t appear out of thin air and dinner won’t make itself.

Ask what could be done different/better/more efficiently to make tomorrow easier/more like the commercials we fall asleep watching.

Well, I’m here to give mothers hope, because I felt like a young kid again this past Friday. 

First, I attended a Halloween costume party to benefit Misericordia on Friday night. The party was held at 27 Live, a great new place in Evanston where they actually ask for your I.D. no matter how old you look. In my case, I was wearing a pink flamingo costume – but still -- it felt good knowing I might have resembled an under-aged flamingo than a worn-out 45 year old mother. If you haven’t yet been to 27 Live, it’s where the old Carmen’s Pizza used to be on Church Street. Now it’s a grownup club with a stage and several bars and private rooms where celebrities might hang out if anyone other than Matt Damon or Nicolas Cage came to town to shoot a movie. You’d never know it from the outside, but it’s a cavernous place inside…

…and so is JTs, yet another place I hadn’t been to before Friday. 

After the costume party, our group of 8 (all dressed as flamingos) were hungry. We’d been dancing (remember what that used to feel like?) to Dr. Bombay and so we’d worked up an appetite. Problem was, it was late. Like, after-midnight-late. Rather than order pizza back home and wake our sleeping kids, we decided to act like kids ourselves and find some late-night chow. When someone suggested JT’s, most of us yelled, “WHERE?!” Granted, our ears were still ringing from the music at 27 Live (middle-aged flamingos have very sensitive ears) but at least one member of our quirky flock knew a thing or two about the late-night options in downtown Evanston. What I didn't realize is that JT's Bar & Grill is open 7 days a week from 7am until 3am. When do these people sleep?

We grabbed a table in JT's Bar & Grill (yet another deceptively huge place), way way way way in the back, across from some rowdy tables of Northwestern students playing beer pong and singing (word-for-word) to Katy Perry. The wings and nachos were amazing (and, really, what isn’t at 1 a.m.???) but the burgers took a loooooooong time to arrive. By then, our feathers were molting and the Wildcat crowd was cranking Katy with a twerkish roar and suddenly -- we had to leave. Like, now. 

Miracle of miracles, a cab sat idling outside JTs. Go figure! By the time my husband and I walked in our front door, it was well past 2 a.m. We spent most of the next day on the couch napping and texting pictures to the other flamingos – everything from funny photos of the costume party to all the greasy foods we’d had delivered (top choice: Chicken Shack). 

While it was a painfully late night to recover from, I had a ton of fun stepping out of my usual routine to sneak a peek at the nocturnal habits of a modern-day Wildcat.

Where do you like to go after hours in Evanston?