EVEN BETTER THAN A $3,600 BOTTLE OF KRUGThe club wars hit the courtroom

Remember May, when everyone was slinking off from events at Enclave to go to Crescendo, which was kind of sort of maybe doing a soft opening? Right, and it was.

And it was getting quite a bit of buzz. You know, it had that supper club thing going on, and it was playing heir to Reserve (those are underage Northwestern students on Reserve's website, which unsurprisingly has nothing to do with why it got shut down in July), and it had a 4 a.m. liquor license.

And you know what? Now Crescendo is dead! And about the least likely person in the world figured out why.

Back in July, a Chicago Tribune columnist named Jon Kass reported that the owner of RiNo, a club about a block from Crescendo, was kind of pissed of about the new club. The owner has that weird type of blue-blood Chicago political pull. He got people looking into the finances of the owner of Reserve and Crescendo, Antony Demasi.

Onwards. It turned out they had no money! At this point Kass' series of events becomes a little foggy—there were some emergency loans, some political strings, some muffled threats.

It all ended when armed guards "seized" Reserve and Crescendo on July 5. I don't know if it happened at night, but let's all entertain the possibility.

Regardless, the bank that made the emergency loans is now thinking of selling the properties to RiNo's owner, which would really add insult to injury, don't you think?

Whatever. The real question here is, with two of Chicago's best 19-year-old-friendly clubs shuttered indefinitely, where will the weekly, boozy migration of Northwestern students park next year? Crobar? Le Passage? Hit us.


Feds getting hip to Chicago club scene [Chicago Tribune]

ANNALS OF RETARDATIONHere's a Nalgene. Use it! We'll give you ten cents.

Oy, the Tribune and its trend stories. And what has everyone's favorite newspaper dug up today?

Why, Northwestern University is giving its new freshmen free 21-ounce Nalgenes! And if they reuse them at dining halls, guess what? They get ten cents!

This is not a joke. Given our student body, it might even work. If you see small Asian children with indestructible purple bottles hanging off their oversize backpacks at Sargent next year, you now know why.

Oh, also, this is a trend story, so something else must be going on, right? Right. Apparently administrators are going to encourage people to corded phones in their dorm rooms instead of cordless ones. Remind me who uses dorm room land lines?

Whatever. Go environment!

Class of 2011 encouraged to adopt greener lifestyle [Chicago Tribune]