Tasting the 815

As everyone in the world knows , this past weekend was the historic, red carpet event known as the Taste of Joliet.  I'm going to get the obvious joke out of the way, and allude to the fact that if someone physically tasted Joliet, it would taste like asphalt, gun powder, and fake weed. However, this festival of sin and obesity actually tastes delicious. The Taste combines everything bored suburbanites crave like meth (who am I kidding, it's Joliet, it's everything they crave besides meth). First off, there is a dirty carnival at one end, run by Illinois' finest toothless carnies. I swear to god, last year I went to go on a ride and the man operating it had the word "Carnie" tattooed on his neck. I'm not going to even begin to address all the burning questions I have about that.

The name of the Taste is a takeoff of The Taste of Chicago, where all the awesome Chicago restaurants offer sample sizes of their food in a big festival. Joliet- style, this idea turns into a grotesque amount of fair food being offered in disgusting proportions (Joliet cuisine of choice). Nothing quite like the Taste makes a footlong corndog plus a pork chop on a stick seem like an acceptable meal. Honestly, I'm pretty sure the go- to formula is just take any form of meat-ish material and throw it on a stick. I had a sausage on Sunday that was a combination of beef, pork, and lamb all in one. Now that your opinion of me has been reduced to a bored tween eating greasy peasant food,  you can understand why this is the event of my summer.

                                   ^ A daytime shot of the Taste, everything gets hotter (and meatier) when the sun goes down

I' m going to make the other obvious joke here and say that this is the one time a year where if it's fun it's NOT in downtown Joliet (My college friends have yet to grasp a single one of these stellar jokes). The Taste of Joliet is a time for everyone to come together, and for parents to get hammered. The music choices for this high class event always include some form of classic rock and country. Basically anything middle aged, overweight people can drunkenly sway to until they pass out on a pile of their old Bud Light Lime bottles.  I learned my excellent partying skills from my mom and her girlfriends every year at the Taste. Nothing emotionally scars a preteen like watching a group of 40- year- old women grind on each other , and then call you a "buzz- killing bitch" when you tell them it's time to leave. Actually, it might have been more scarring to watch my own mother try to lick Rick Springfield when he crowd surfed a few years back.

The beautiful part of this event is that, in classic suburban fashion, everywhere you turn there is someone you know and a new innocent face to embarrass yourself in front of. Whether its the small girl you used to babysit, your best friend's super religious parents, or your old high school dean, they're going to see you drinking a margarita out of a pouch and falling over on top of your equally sloppy friends. This , as hilarious as it is, is a recipe for Joliet disaster. I have witnessed infidelity, vomiting, and drunken fist fights, all from "adults" over 40. Or you could play it like me, (after an intense pre- game) and walk up to the beer tent with your guy friend and try to use your East Coast fake IDs with an elaborate back story about you both being Pennsylvania Josh Turner groupies, and then realize you handed them to your friend's grandma.

I guess the true beauty of the Taste of Joliet is that it brings the 815 together. Whether you're an awkward teen waiting to molest some random Disney Channel star they bring, one of Joliet's finest gang members, a new mom who finally got a babysitter and wants to get weird, a police man doing nothing to control anyone on a Segway,  a high schooler who didn't pre -game enough, or a college kid who pre-gamed like Burnett's was going out of style, you're going to be at the Taste and you're probably going to be eating meat on a stick.