Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town

Other than an extraordinary amount of time spent on the runways both before and after takeoff, and the aforementioned turbulence upon landing, the flight went smoothly. Well, before we started chatting, Anthony did spend the first hour of the flight encroaching on my legroom in the cramped confines of row 33 near the back of our United 757, though he politely retreated after we started chatting about the current states of the Giants and Warriors.

After taxiing into Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood, I got settled into a Vrbo sublet in the basement apartment in the charming area known as Wrigleyville. I’m traveling with my mom — we’re taking a tour of Chicago and Minneapolis to follow the Giants for Mother’s Day week. So, the triplex apartment’s simple two-bedroom renovation, precisely a half mile from Wrigley Field, is the perfect place to stay. I took it as a good sign that, before we met our site host, we were greeted by a fat orange tabby cat named Abbott standing guard on the stoop.

The mission of the day was simple: find a place to grab dinner and watch the Warriors game. Actually finding a place? Not quite as simple.

We’re surrounded by plenty of Chicago nightlife, where a majority of the places are open until 2 a.m., even on Sunday. The problem was, they are primarily all taverns, many of them not even serving food. My mom is a great open-minded traveling partner, but it isn’t like I’m going to drag her into some watering hole. It was an exhaustive Google search for local places with food and basketball, and I had all but given up, when my mom discovered Almost Home, a bar and grill perfectly within walking distance of our apartment.

A lovely stroll

The walk there was awe-inspiring. Since we taxied straight from the airport, this was our first time, other than the short walk from the taxi to the front door of the apartment, setting foot in Chicago. I wondered out loud how many people get a chance to meet her like this — not in some bustling hub via a popular hotel, but through a quiet neighborhood adorned by block after block of houses, foliage and fresh suburban air.

It was six blocks to Almost Home, and short ones at that. The fresh air was cool and sweet, and adding to the Chicago charm, the brief spots of drizzling rain weren’t nearly enough to require an umbrella. Imagine my amazement, as I’d never before traveled to Chicago, at the city’s ubiquitous brickwork. The outfield wall of Wrigley Field is, of course, renowned for its brick and ivy. I never knew this was emblematic of the entire city.

My mom couldn’t have stumbled upon a better place to eat, drink and be merrily nauseous watching a Warriors game. Almost Home isn’t a sport bar, exactly, though there are televisions everywhere; it has partitioned rooms for each of its personalities: part tavern, part restaurant, part pool hall, and a row of video gaming machines below a neon sign emblazoned with the words “This is where the magic happens” in glowing blue letters giving off something of a Las Vegas mystique. It’s a bar-like environment, though, for sure, as every one of the televisions is muted in service of the TouchTunes jukebox cranking an array of rock and roll music.

During the first half of the game, I asked Penny, our waitress, if she could tell me the name of the raucous thrash metal song playing at the time. Sans television commentary, it was the perfect soundtrack for the Warriors-Rockets series. I even asked her if it was possible to play the enigmatic band’s music nonstop for the next two hours. To Penny’s credit, she searched diligently for the name of the band, but since the song was over by the time she got to the jukebox, the music will forever remain a mystery to me.

Fitting, since the same is true of Penny’s true identity. Penny isn’t her real name. It’s the one I imagined for her, because she is the very image of Kaley Cuoco’s character from “The Big Bang Theory.” Her appearance, her personality, even her native state of Oklahoma (the Kaley Cuoco character was from Nebraska, but close enough for jazz), she is Penny through and through, with the exception of her hair color, which in our waitress’s case is radiant brunette, though she does wear similar tousled ringlets falling from her half ponytail, as does television Penny.

An uneasy Game 7

The game went as the game went. The Warriors’ early lead didn’t quite help the hint of familiar nausea, especially as the Rockets made a third-quarter push to close it to a one-possession game. Amen Thompson’s behind-the-back reverse windmill layup at the end of the first half aside, his most impactful play was when he reached through Brandin Podziemski and Buddy Hield for an underhand slap put-back four minutes into the second half. His baseball pass to assist Jabari Smith Jr.’s deep 3 to close it to 63-60 late in the third period also had me clutching my beer.

However, as I need not tell anyone from Dub Nation, Steph is Steph. And, between another brilliant showing of must-win-game heroics from the greatest I’ve ever seen play the game, and my having to provide my own play-by-play call due to the muted TVs, to what was now a nonstop AC/DC soundtrack, I got the chance to run not one, but several victory laps around the surrounding empty tables, to celebrate another Steph Curry immortal.

Cordial locals

By the way, the reason for the surrounding empty tables was because they were vacated by a group of rambunctious young beer drinkers earlier in the evening. The lot of them pulled up chairs at the table next to us during the game and started cussing up a rainstorm. Two f-bombs in, I quickly made a beeline to the men’s room so, on the way, I could ask them to cool it on the grounds I was trying to enjoy dinner with my mother. I was impressed at how a situation I feared might turn into a confrontation, or even trouble, turned out to be a profound bonding moment, as they were immediately contrite. By the time I returned from the men’s room, they had picked up shop and moved to a high-top table in the neighboring partitioned barroom section.

Yes, I sent them a pitcher of beer to say thank you. As the night went along, they even thanked me one by one as they walked by our table on the way to the men’s room. Freakin’ Chicago, man!

Well, back to the business at hand, with the Giants on a two-city road trip from Wrigley to Target Field. We got great tickets in the front row of section 321 for the series opener. Considering our travel itinerary for the week, it’s probably baseball from here on out. Although, depending on what time we arrive Thursday in Minnesota. ...

Terry Bernal is a sports writer for the Daily Journal. His views are his own. Please hold your calls and emails until next week, as he is on vacation. He can be reached at (650) 344-5200 x109 or via email at terry@smdailyjournal.com.