One flew over the chicken's nest

check out this japanese chicken with tartar sauce

Hello, everyone!

Thank you so much for the words of support from last week after my father passed away. Frankly, I needed them more than I knew, and I’m trying to get back to some semblance of normalcy by living life as usual, though nothing feels right quite yet.

That being said, the newsletter’s back on schedule, meaning today’s edition is for paid subscribers.

Every other edition is for paid subscribers because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to afford to run this newsletter. It’s not a moneymaker, though it is the work of a second job sometimes—your subscriptions help cover the expenses it takes to run this thing.

And before we dive in, let’s give our hometown hero Patrick Bertoletti a big fucking round of applause today! If his name doesn’t ring a bell, Pat did something incredible on the Fourth of July: He won the Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest this year. He took down 58 hot dogs in 10 minutes and brought the win to Chicago. Pat’s an old friend of mine, and he’s one of the kindest, most humble people you’ll ever meet. Today’s newsletter is not about hot dogs, thankfully, since Pat ate enough for all of us.

In order to stay busy lately, Davida and I have been doing some long-delayed spring cleaning. This means we’ve been wrangling up a bunch of clothing and random things to donate, and after we racked up multiple bags of goods, we dropped them off at The Brown Elephant resale shop in Andersonville.

Proceeds from The Brown Elephant’s sales go towards LGBTQ+ healthcare, plus they fund care for those who are underinsured and uninsured at Howard Brown Health. Having been through some scary underinsured moments in my life, I don’t want any other people to be as terrified as I was back then, so I firmly believe that this is a good cause.

Davida and I don’t find ourselves in Andersonville very often, so we thought we’d make the most of it. Andersonville is home to some really wonderful restaurants, like Hopleaf, and my friend Paul Fehribach’s Southern restaurant, Big Jones. Then there’s It’s Greek 2 U Grill, which fellow Substack writer

Whitney Moeller

swears by, along with many other cool places to visit.

Those establishments deservedly get a lot of love, but Andersonville has a ton of other spots that are worth checking out. Our curiosity eventually led us to a Korean chicken wing specialist that has a few unexpected surprises on its menu.