(Photo: I’d like some cream with that…)

Today, I’m the featured guest on Chicago’s homegrown Feast of Fools podcast, the most popular LGBT-themed daily talk show on the planet. Wonder twin powers, activate! Form of: a giddy gay blogger!

Last week, I almost fell off my seat when FoF hosts Fausto Fernós and Marc Felion emailed me an invitation to be on the show. I’m a regular listener to the always hysterical, often touching roundtable discussion program the pair have produced to wide acclaim out of their north-side Chicago home studio since 2005.

However, I’m no RuPaul. Or Kathy Griffin. Or Margaret Cho. Or Alpana Singh. Or Varla Jean Merman. Or one of any number of local and national abject diva luminaries of fabulosity that Fernós and Felion regularly fête on the show. So color me happily astonished and grateful for the opportunity to meet two of my blogosphere heroes in person and sit behind their magic microphone.

Yes, friends, that’s the sound of your favorite crabapple blogger profusely gushing.

I had an awesome time on their “Gay Fun Show”, which recorded Sunday night for debut Monday morning. The FoF pair quizzed me on popular topics from CHICAGO CARLESS, including the Intelligentsia coffee-controversy-that-wouldn’t-die, my struggle with ADD, adventures in gay speed dating, and meeting the only man who ever wanted to dance with me.

In particular, Fernós and Felion questioned me at length about Chicagoist’s flaming reaction to my criticism of Intelligentsia’s recent price increases. I’d like to say that in response I provided some thoughtful commentary regarding that oh-so-wildly waggish, municipally monickered news blog and its right to express an opinion, no matter how inflammatory.

However, regular readers wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, instead, I took off my earrings, put down my purse, slapped Chicagoist’s shit, and told the bitch-ass to get the fuck up out my grill.

And regular readers won’t be disappointed, either. Fasten your seatbelts, folks.

[To hear the rest of my caffeinated comments, visit the Feast of Fools interview page to download or live-stream the show, or subscribe in iTunes.]

(Photo: With employees like these, who needs competitors?)

Ten days ago, when I lamented the over-the-top response of Chicagoist and some of their readers to my Gapers Block piece on how Intelligentsia Coffee alienated me as a customer, I never thought Intelligentsia’s own staff would jump on the bandwagon.

I was wrong. Today a staffer from Intelligentisa’s Randolph Street store whom I quoted but did not name in my original article launched an attack from his personal blog, allegedly on behalf of his employer. I hardly think Intelligentsia honcho Doug Zell would find a rant on a regular customer by store staff to be a useful form of customer service, but at least one of Zell’s staffers seems to think there’s worth in it.

The staffer in question is James Liu (find him pictured publicly on Flickr, on the right in this photo), and oddly enough, he is the person most responsible for my walking away from Intelligentsia after three years as a loyal customer. On his blog, he accuses me of getting the facts wrong about the elimination of sub-$3 coffee at his store, and says that’s because I didn’t talk to store staff. In part, Liu writes:

“…may I suggest fact checking your ‘claims’ with someone who would have known the right answer? Oh, like me, my manager, or for that matter, Doug Zell?”

Funny thing, not only did I talk to Liu, but his was the featured quote in my original article. Perhaps he doesn’t remember his own words, appearing in this passage from Gapers Block (emphasis added):

I could be wrong. I did speak with one staffer who thinks the change will pose no problem at all. His reasoning was telling. “After all,” he said, “we already have you paying $3.50 for a cup of gourmet tea and you keep coming back.”

Liu was specifically referring to the fact that for months I regularly came into the store and ordered an obviously expensive cup of tea without fail. He went on to tell me that if customers like me weren’t turned off by tea prices like that, why should Intelligentsia expect me to walk away if they raised the price of regular coffee–no matter how I might protest at the beginning.

I didn’t think the entirety of Liu’s comments merited quoting, nor did I choose to use his name (I wanted to protect the identities of the staffers with whom I spoke). However, since Liu feels it appropriate to call me out on his personal blog on behalf of Intelligentsia Coffee, I’m happy to set the record straight.

Liu and I indeed discussed pricing–in fact he was the store staffer with whom I spoke at greatest length regarding the planned menu changes.  When I mentioned more than once the elimination of a sub-$3 coffee option, he did not correct me.

As it turns out, sub-$3 regular coffee is still available at the Randolph Street Intelligentsia since the changeover. Liu notes on his blog a featured Clover-of-the-Day can be had for $2.65. Considering sales tax in downtown Chicago is 11.25%, that resulting price tag of $2.95 is an almost negligible nickel away from a $3 cup of coffee. But who’s quibbling?

Well, Liu is. And that’s a shame. I was further surprised to read on his blog his contention that nothing objectionable was written in Chicagoist’s rebuttal. I don’t know, calling me a “hater” over a three-year old fight to lessen noise pollution in downtown Chicago that found me on the side of the Chicago City Council instead of illegal street musicians seems pretty objectionable to me. In fact, both NBC 5 and Time Out Chicago called out Chicagoist scribe Chuck Sudo over his unnecessarily rash response and Chicagoist editor Marcus Gilmer emailed me to apologize for Sudo’s zeal.

The bottom line: Intelligentsia’s recent price increases to almost $3 regular cups of coffee do not, in and of themselves, keep me from coming back. As I alluded to in my article, it was Intelligentsia staffer James Liu’s minute-long personal gloat that lost me as a customer.

Hearing Liu tell me that Intelligentsia regulars–like I was–weren’t paying the store what the coffee was worth, were too much on auto-pilot to walk away over a price increase, and (this was the kicker) shouldn’t be coming in anyway if they can’t afford real gourmet coffee turned my stomach. If I made any mistake in my Gapers Block article, it was most likely in not reporting all of Liu’s comments as I have here.

After I left the store that day, Liu’s words rang in my head for hours. Had I really been told by an Intelligentsia staffer that I owed the store more money than I was already paying–in the middle of an unprecedented national recession–for the privilege of drinking their coffee?

In a word, yes. (And perhaps equally disturbingly, Doug Zell, himself, confirmed just that in the Time Out coverage linked above.)

Have I set foot in an Intelligentsia since speaking with Liu?  Two other words fit the bill here.

Never again.

(Photo: The more things change, the more things snark the same.)

Yesterday, I decided to end my contributing relationship with the news & features site, Gapers Block. On Valentine’s Day, I wrote a Drive-Thru food & drink post for them regarding changes at the Randolph Street Intelligentsia coffee bar that had me feeling left out as a regular customer. The same day, I noted publicly on CHICAGO CARLESS the renewed, positive relationship I’ve had with Chicago’s other groups news blog Chicagoist.

Back in 2006, Chicagoist and I differed over the importance of tightening noise-nuisance legislation to protect the many thousands of new residents of revitalized downtown Chicago neighborhoods. At that time, Chicagoist engaged in unnecessary, ad hominem attacks against me and other downtown residents who spoke up in defense of our right to quiet in our own homes. I rebutted the one-sided editorial bias in these pages, and complained about it to Chicagoist’s corporate owners (with no response ever received).

Ultimately, downtowners won the new noise legislation, but the unnecessarily hateful behavior of Chicagoist severely damaged my opinion of the site, and for most of the next three years I rarely read it, much less recommended it to anyone.

In the past few months, however, things seemed to shift in the relationship between CARLESS and Chicagoist. The news site positively covered several stories from my blog (including December’s CTA homeless harassment issue), and Chicagoist editor Marcus Gilmer and I have had several back-channel conversations regarding various news leads.

So you can imagine my surprise when two days after posting a shout out to Chicagoist for what had become a positive relationship again, on Monday Chicagoist scribe Chuck Sudo penned a personal attack on me and my blog over the Intelligentsia post I wrote for Gapers Block, adding insult to injury by dragging up all the old hate from 2006 and aiming it directly and very publicly at me.

What an attack on CHICAGO CARLESS or a noise debate from 2006 has to do with a dissenting opinion about a coffee bar article published in the pages of Gapers Block is beyond me.  As I communicated to Gilmer in a pair of emails yesterday that also did not receive a response, for Chicagoist to engage in unnecessary and wholly irrelevant attacks on a fellow blogger over a dissenting opinion is gratuitously cruel.

It’s also uncalled for. All of the pricing information included in my Gapers Block post came directly from Intelligentsia staff at the Randolph Street store. Chicagoist would have known that if Gilmer or Sudo had simply asked me.

So would Gapers Block, for that matter. Considering that the Drive-Thru food & drink editor, several commenters, and quite a few of my Twitter followers (not for nothing including the Chicago Tribune’s own ColonelTribune) reacted positively to my post, I was surprised for Gapers Block not to take any active stance in the defense of one of its own volunteer writers, especially one bearing the brunt of an attack on his personal blog for words written for and copyrighted to Gapers Block.

I read Sudo’s withering attack and an equally disheartening response regarding it from Gapers Block (telling me not to be so “thin-skinned”) while sitting in the thankfully empty back room of Lido’s Caffé in Oak Park. I should have been writing an article for the Chicago Journal. Instead, I sat there for an hour, stunned, trying not to cry.

Many people assume that because my opinions are strong, so, too is my tolerance for willful offensiveness. They’re wrong, of course. Senseless attacks of the kind Chicagoist apparently thinks generates ad revenue are usually confined to the province of anonymous commenters (of which there were many in response to their attack on me, of an equally invective nature). To find one yet again aimed at me from the front page of a colleague blog was sickening.

Last week on my favorite guilty-pleasure podcast, Feast of Fools, hosts Fausto Fernós and Marc Felion discussed how hard it can be to deal with such uncalled for attacks. In particular, Fernós said a telling thing: “The job of the haters is to hate.” He went on to say you can’t change them, they don’t want to do anything else, and you just need to let them hate and move on.

That was easier said than done yesterday. Fernós and Felion don’t know me personally, but we do share a common friend, the fabulous Cincinnati Jamie. Sitting there unexpectedly demoralized at Lido’s, I found myself emailing the show, asking for advice.

On my ‘L’ ride back downtown, I got a heartfelt response from Felion that helped me put things in perspective. There isn’t much you can do about ignorance but let it be and rise above. And so I will.

Chicagoist can keep on being Chicagoist, and I suppose I can keep on being a lapsed fan. As for my foodie posts, I think it best for all concerned that I confine them to the pages of CHICAGO CARLESS where I can best promote them and, if need be, come to their defense.

Gapers Block can keep on being cool, and although I’ve chosen not to write for them anymore, I can still be an active reader.

And Fausto and Marc? You two can be my heroes. I am grateful for the words of support, they meant a lot to me at a time I needed to hear them. I’ll just let the haters hate. But from the bottom of an altogether more loving heart, I have two words for the Feast of Fools team:

Thank you.

(Photo: Lido’s Caffé food porn. Why, again, do I bother to go to Intelligentsia?)

[Update 2/16/09: The former recommendation of the news blog, Chicagoist, has been deleted from this post. After three years, I thought they had learned that making fun of fellow bloggers is simply not a cool PR strategy. Judging by the open contempt aimed at me and my blog in this post from today, I see I was wrong. So count me back out as a reader or recommender of Chicagoist. Sadly, what on earth was I thinking?]

Good lord, sometimes I should just eat in.  The latest from my Gapers Block: Drive-Thru foodie byline? Two downtown establishments: one I used to love, one I doubt I ever will, but both giving me agida in the same week.

With options like that in downtown Chicago, is it any wonder I and my laptop have been spending more and more time at the hyper-friendly coffee-, cookie-, and gelato-laden Lido’s Caffé in Oak Park?  Twenty minutes on the Green Line is worth it for me not to have to deal with drama the likes of which you can read all about in my latest Drive-Thru reports, below.

Bliss Is Not More
A recent visit to Sugar Bliss and a bevy of mixed comments and Yelp opinions point out a curious lack of consistency at the Loop’s new gourmet cupcake joint.  You may get a great product, or you may go home with three arid, overbaked hockey pucks covered in sickly sweet, bathroom-grout consistency, altogether disgusting frosting. You know, like I did?

Intelligentsia Dumps Affordable Drinks on Randolph Street
And then there’s my formerly beloved downtown coffeebar, Intelligentsia, where a string of recent, not necessarily customer-friendly changes have left this regular patron un-headed to the premium brew shop any longer. The straw that broke this coffee camel’s back? Choosing to make their menu even more expensive–and then gloating about it to their own customers.

On a more positive note, I hope you’re all reading through the rest of Drive-Thru and its parent site, Gapers Block. They remain among the coolest home-grown Internet news and feature sites ever to come out of the Windy City. And they sure don’t pay me to say that–it’s all love, folks.

Drat, I hate it when I lose my cool like that…

(Photo: A $20 meal at Macy’s Marc Burger? A high price to pay, but a hell of a payoff.)

If it’s any day ending in “-day”, you know I’m still eating. This weekend on my Gaper’s Block Drive-Thru foodie byline, the love is as crispy as it is juicy. Browse through to Chicago’s favorite, home-grown group blog and read all about it:

Eat This Duck at Argyle Street’s Sun Wah
Fried Beijing Duck, duck fried rice, duck soup, and to gild the Chinese lilly, sorbet for $30 per duck? It’s the best Chinese barbeque deal in town folks, and co-proprietor Kelly Cheng will be happy to carve it up for you.

Too Expensive, Too Good at Macy’s Marc Burger
It’s the most expensive food-court burger you’ll ever eat, but this new Macy’s State Street cafeteria counter will have you wishing your wallet was fatter–in order to come back for more.

If any Dear Reader out there has a place they’d like to recommend, leave a comment and let me know! Or a heart doctor, for that matter.

(Photo: My Cincinnati chili king, Tony Plum, poses among his faithful subjects. Credit: Chicago Reader.)

You’d think by this late-holiday time of year Yours Truly would be done eating.  If you didn’t know me at all, that is.  Instead, this week I paid visits to a couple of my regular joints: Lincoln Square’s authentic Cincinnati chili parlor, Cinner’s; and the north Loop’s chainy but yummy Asian bun eatery, Wow Bao. And as usual, I’m telling you all about it on my Gapers Block:Drive-Thru foodie byline:

Sinful Cincy Chili at Cinner’s
Click through to learn why Tony Plum’s Cincinnati chili parlor–the only one in all of Chicago–has given me a great reason to be a Lincoln Square local for months.

Wow Bao, Hold the Rice
Or read my take on the Lettuce Entertain You empire’s consistent but occasionally overpriced local Chinese (oops, I guess I mean “Asian”) bun chain.

What the hell, read them both.  After all, I wrote them just for you and you wouldn’t want to give me agida. Well, would you?

(Photo: Waiter, there’s a splatter movie in my burger.)

My favorite local restaurant in my South River North/North Loop ‘hood is not one I would recommend to my worst enemy.  Well, depending on the day you ask me my opinion on the place.  Because while Emerald Loop’s Irish pub kitchen shines from Monday through Friday, it’s as if the back-of-house is taken over by zombies on the weekend.

Find out why a rare burger at Emerald Loop can be a bloody weekend surprise in my latest Gapers Block: Drive-Thru review, Emerald Loop: It’s Not Easy Being Green.  And then someone please find me a weekend hoodie.