“I’m trying to see some people I know … this is more awkward than I’d thought,” said Brilliant Pebbles lead singer Monika Bukowska as she threaded her way through the crowd of hipsters at the Wicker Park Fest on a bright Sunday in late July. Ostensibly, she and keyboardist Samuel Ng were out promoting the show they would play a few hours later at Double Door.

Welles Park, in the city's Lincoln Square community, will be transformed into a Mecca of music and dance from global cultures this Saturday and Sunday at The Old Town School of Folk Music's Chicago Folk  Roots Festival. A dance tent will offer visitors dance lessons from a variety of cultures, such as Aztec rituals.

This weekend finally felt like summer, and it wasn't because of the heat or the constant hangover.  It was because when I took the el from Evanston to Roscoe Village, I didn't just run into a few people headed my way.  I ran into what appeared to be the entire city of Chicago drunk off their asses.  

"The thing about Chicago," a friend said to me as we passed groups of Sox and Cubs fans staggering onto the train at Addison, "is that it packs all of it's shit into two months when the weather doesn't suck."