I could have gone to the Square Roots Music Fest, the Windy City Smokeout (where I could have eaten beef belly burnt ends, or not), the Roscoe Village Burger Fest, the Southport Art & Music Festival, or the Dearborn Garden Walk, but I chose to go to the Chinatown Summer Fair, which was free and worth every penny of that.

The Dearborn Garden Walk would have been the most convenient, but I’ve been to the Tuileries Garden in Paris and the Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, so why would I pay $35 to see someone’s backyard?

I opted against the Southport Art & Music Festival because I had walked past it the day before, after it closed, only to encounter an unusually foul aroma coming from somewhere in the vicinity (perhaps from a surfeit of skunks) on my way to the Mercury Theater to see Avenue Q, which unfortunately was cancelled due to the illness of one of the actors. I posited that one of the puppets had tasted, after that day’s matinee, whatever I had smelled, and was now retching up felt at the local emergency room or tailor shop.

The Chinatown Summer Fair included a petting zoo of goats, but, alas, no goat yoga, which, as a result, remains on my bucket list. There also was a meager lion dance (a line dance would have been better), and a basketball shooting contest where the two people I briefly watched couldn’t even hit the rim from 15 feet. Confident that I could do better, I walked away to avoid personal embarrassment.

The Fair included a performance by the Jesse White Tumbling Team, but so does every other event in Chicago. Next year I think I’ll opt for the Square Roots Music Fest. After all, I was a math major for a while.