On The Road (Day 1): Champaign, IL and Chicago, IL

Day 0: click here.

Time to hit the road! We shift our tC into gear, and aim our Scion at Champaign. With tons of bands and college kids, we knew it would be an excellent place to spend the afternoon. See our adventure after the jump.

Here’s something to love about Champaign, IL: The parking. We easily find a spot streetside on the main strip—thank god we won’t have to deal with parallel parking in manual yet—and find that a quarter in the local meters will last up to an entire hour. St. Louis could take a hint.

On a recommendation, we got lunch at the Courier Café, an off-the-beaten-path shop which fills us up with tasty sandwiches. Near the front door of the restaurant, we discovered a free local paper filled front to back with sex advice from new toys to try to the four different positions to engage in 69-ing. The café was largely filled with middle aged patrons and readers; we wonder how a branch of Eleven would fare locally.

After wandering out into town and nearer to the university, we chance upon the school radio station, WPGU 107.1 (the217.com). Anticipating a shared interest in music was one thing, but a fervent passion for Mario Kart another thing entirely. Ricky, the Director of Production and Marketing, casually mentions his Nintendo 64 binges during downtime, and the gloves come off almost immediately.

We take out the home team in Luigi Raceway and Wario Stadium (even without the cheat) before on-air host Erik approaches and asks, “So, do you guys want to go on the air?”

Our time on the waves was brief, but at least one lucky twitter follower heeded the call and tuned in to listen—our heart goes out to you again, Danny @greatheights1.

Next stop: everyone’s favorite indie music label, Polyvinyl Record Co. The group’s current roster of artists is stacked: Of Montreal, Japandroids, Deerhoof, Asobi Seksu, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, and many more fly the Polyvinyl banner.

We met up with co-founder Matt Lunsford at the label’s HQ, which was a cozy office space overflowing with posters, LPs, and t-shirts. Matt explains that all of the label’s mail orders are filled by hand from their Champaign office—and as an added bonus, each order gets a complimentary Airhead candy.

“We tried contacting them once,” Matt says, referring to Polyvinyl’s attempt to strike up a deal with the candy company. It seemed to make sense—we’d guess that the label is the candy company’s best customer in town.

The room snakes into a back area, full of shelves and boxes of CDs and vinyl. Before we could subtly mention that we had our eyes on the stack of Casiokids CDs on the shelf, Matt kindly offers us our pick of albums from Polyvinyl’s collection. His generosity doesn’t stop there – he scours a pile of promos to find advances of Vivian Girls’ and Joan of Arc’s upcoming records for a mid-road trip critique. Caught up in the spirit of giving, we run out to the car to return with some Eleven tees and stickers for the Polyvinyl crew.

We end the quick tour in Matt’s office, where he recounted to us Polyvinyl Record’s humble beginnings when in 1995, he and his friend Darcy (who would later become his wife) included a 7″ split in an issue of their fanzine Polyvinyl Press. The pair decided to really focus on the young label’s potential after its first full length release, Rainer Maria’s Past Worn Searching. Since then, Polyvinyl has released over 200 records (including some of our favorites from the nebulous Kinsella family), and the company is excited about the future. “We’re so small and nimble and forward thinking,” Matt proudly states. “We’ve always been changing and adapting, so it’s exciting to see new technologies that are coming along to connect music with people.”

We bid Matt and the rest of the Polyvinyl staff farewell, and continue on to our next destination: Parasol, a record store and small, independent label. Our new friends from WPGU and Polyvinyl urged us to swing by, and we’re very glad we did!

We get the low-down from Retail Distribution chief, Angie Heaton, who shares with us information about Parasol’s bands and some funny stories about the store (an intern on acid, for one!). We are particularly excited to learn that The 1900s—who we will be interviewing later in trip—are a member of the club.

With a gift of even more albums—including the latest from Champaign hometown heroes Elsinore—and an Eleven sticker properly placed at the front desk, we drive off into the dusk towards Chicago. Northwestern University, in Evanston (just north of the city), to be exact.

More CDs and gas, and off to Chitown.

Upon arriving in Evanston, we are greeted by the typical university cavalcade of relentlessly confusing parking stickers, zones, and regulations. After settling on a spot that should keep us safe from the meter maids until around 9 AM, we meet up with our host for the evening, Josh’s sister Alyssa. The accommodations are startling—rooms are clean? College kids can have nice things? We can sleep on the floor without worrying about puddles of stagnant beer that my bro Vinny totally said he was going to clean up? This may be too nice for comfort.

Fortunately, after dropping our night gear, we quickly righted the ship and headed over to a NU frat house. The night kicks into gear with the familiar smell of spilled watery beer (we scale things up a bit with a gift of a PBR sixer), and three shots and three beers later, we’re off to the local bar scene.

We requested a night typical of the Northwestern student body, and our hosts didn’t fail to deliver. The cab pulls up to “The Deuce,” a local favorite due to the bar’s, *ahem*, looser ID-ing policy. Though they’ll probably tell you the bar is popular because of the free pizza given out inside. A night of drinking, eating, and saying ridiculous things to strangers (“How do you feel about people…with sunglasses?”) ensues.

At four-ish as the bar clears out, we cap our night and our successful first day with a trip to the nearby IHOP. Nothing like bacon and waffles in the morning.

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