Crain’s Chicago Business has a fun little column that appears on Thursdays. It’s called Ten Things To Do This Weekend. It is a nice list. And it’s good for Chicago area events and businesses, because it supposes that everything there is to do on a weekend should happen in the city or the suburbs. The events are wildly varied but somehow all the same. Come visit a three piece cello band while they play you their greatest hits at some outdoor place in some suburb. That strangely sounds the same to me as a painting class at some university under some tutelage of some artist, who painted some piece that no one has heard of. See, the things are very different but somehow both the same.
The list fails most, because anyone with any sort of sense knows that if you live in the city the weekends are for anything but the city. If you live in the suburbs, and you’re not tethered to your child’s soccer or baseball schedule, you also know that the suburbs are lame and that you should leave them whenever possible. This list is, at the very heart of it, what’s wrong with the thinking of most city and suburban dwelling affluents. Tuesdays you have little choice where you’ll be, but Saturdays? Well, Saturdays you could either make the hour drive from Naperville to Millennium park to witness the first ever Basketweaving While Blindfolded competition, or you could point your car north and drive as fast as possible. I choose North.
And why wouldn’t you? This weekend, like all weekends, there are things to do at Lake Geneva. But this weekend, unlike all of the other weekends, there’s a wood boat show. That’s not really fair, to call this a wood boat show. Because it’s not a show, it’s the show, and if you’re anyone who appreciates fine things, you’ll be here. Note I didn’t say you had to appreciate wood boats. That’s the same reason I don’t think you have to love golf to live on a golf course. It’s nice to look at something that’s beautifully maintained, no matter if it’s a sprawling green golf course or a highly polished wooden watercraft. Nice is nice, and if it’s at Lake Geneva it’s usually nice made nicer.
The show takes place Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the Abbey Harbor in Fontana. The forecast, as you may have noticed, calls for 75 and sunny on both Saturday and Sunday. The real highlight of the show is the boat tour that happens today, Friday. This tour is mostly missed by the casual boat show attendee, as those patrons visit on Saturday and Sunday, oblivious to the fact that they missed the most important event of the weekend. Then again, if you’re reading this right now you’ve likely already missed the Friday portion and you’re completely and utterly out of luck. But still, come Saturday or Sunday and you’ll enjoy the finest wooden boats in the country as they ply the finest lake in the Midwest.