From late September through October, a strange creature appears on streets around Chicago, sporting Peter Pan felt hats, hefting a cold plastic stein, and at times even cavorting to the big band sound of hairy-legged men encased in green shorts. It's Oktoberfest season, bringing the opportunity to wave a brat, chug some hops with strangers at a picnic table, and chicken-dance with other feather-capped partiers. Chicago, of course, has deep-rooted German traditions that have led us to today's celebrations. The city's first German settler, Heinrich Rothenfeld, relocated here in 1825. By the early 1840s, the first German settlement, New Buffalo, was formed between Chicago and North Avenues. Germans later moved north into the Old Town area and then on up Lincoln Avenue to Lincoln Square at Lawrence. Critical to the development of Chicago's German community and, probably Chicago's persona as a whole, was the founding of the city's first brewery in 1836, bubbling out six hundred foamy barrels a year. One of the original founders (sorry, not Berghoff; he didn't show up until the 1890s) then went on to expand his business in partnership with future mayor William B. Ogden. By 1856, Chicago's nine German breweries were churning out 16,270 barrels a year.
Oktoberfest evolved out of a wedding reception that got out of hand - the celebration of Bavarian King Ludwig I's marriage to Therese Sachsen Hildburghause, a festive event marked by a great horse race and much partying among Munich residents. In 1896 the first great beer tent was opened and local breweries began serving a special Oktoberfest brew just for the festival.
The Munich Oktoberfest begins the next to last Saturday in September and continues until the first Sunday in October, luring nearly 6 million tourists from all over the globe to the largest public festival in the world, which is held on Theresienwiese ("Therese's meadow"). Although the party unofficially kicks off with a parade of local brewers riding in ornate carriages, brewery wagons full of beer and dancing beer maidens on decorated floats, it's not truly party time until the Lord Mayor of Munich opens the first barrel with the words "Ozapft is!" (It's tapped!). By the end of the sixteen-day event, festival-goers will have drunk 1.4 million mabs (gallon steins) of beer in fourteen giant beer tents along the main drag, Wirtsbuden-Strasse, seating up to 10,000 at a time. They will have also consumed more than 75,000 roasted chickens; 70,000 sausages; 60,000 legs of pork; and 80 whole oxen.
Oktoberfest has evolved into a worldwide celebration customized by each local community. In New York City, Greenwich Village's Washington Park hosts a Dachshund Oktoberfest with hundreds of "wiener dogs," some wearing tiny leather caps, others in red sweaters. In Cincinnati, the annual Oktoberfest celebration features the world's largest chicken dance, where in 1994, 48,000 people flapped and wiggled right into the Guinness Book of World Records.
If you can't afford the ticket on Lufthansa or aren't able to get yourself to Cincinnati for a mass chicken dance, there are plenty of local options that you might want to check out. Oktoberfest celebrations in the Chicago area started in September, with some of the biggest being Lincoln Square's German-American Festival with its accompanying Von Steuben parade and the Berghoff Oktoberfest. If you missed those two kick-off events, there's still plenty of places to party. After all, you've still got the big daddy of them all, maybe one of the only reasons you'll ever have to travel west of O'Hare - Wheeling's own Hans Bavarian Lodge Oktoberfest, one of the largest celebrations in the Midwest. Starting mid-September and running through October 24, Friday and Saturday nights from 6:30pm-midnight, you can join 2,500 other revelers who like to hang out in covered parking lots and pound plastic steins at endless picnic tables. Nineteen dollars ($20 day of or $10 for admission no food) buys you admittance and dinner: a hefty platter of chicken, bratwurst, Hungarian sausage, German potato salad, sour kraut, rye bread and butter.
Lincoln Square anchor the Chicago Brauhaus hosts an Oktoberfest celebration starting October 7 running through November 8 that features live music and dancing nightly except Tuesdays. If you're a true devotee, check out the four-person band playing every weekend year-round at the Edelweiss Restaurant Oktoberfest on West Irving Park. If you're really searching, check your local church - chances are, even they're probably having a little shindig where the faithful normally park. Just hunt around - any place you can set up a tent and tap a keg is a possibility for indulging in the spirit of Bruderlichkeit. Auf die wies'n: "to the meadow" with you.
(A. Laban)
- Hans Bavarian Lodge, 931 North Milwaukee Avenue, Wheeling, (847)537-4141
Chicago Brauhaus, 4732 North Lincoln Avenue, (773)784-4444
The Berghoff Restaurant, 17 West Adams, (312)427-3170 Edelweiss Restaurant, 7650 Irving Park Road, Norridge, (708)452-6040
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