Visiting Chicago. help!

In early June, my girlfriend and I will be visiting Chicago for a couple of days. Neither of us have been in Chi town before and we’ree pretty much clueless as what to do, or where to go. I checked out some other “Chicago message boards” but I’ve always loved the Straight Dope books and thought I could get some decent advice from someone on here. Just to give you an idea, we’re staying at some place called the “Miracle mile” or something to that extent, and we both have pretty bizarre senses of entertainment. In fact, we were set to go check out john Wayne Gacy’s home in des Plaines, untill we discovered it was torn down. Any suggestions on how we could have a good time? (please, no touristy stuff eg. Sears Tower, Wrigley Field, etc…)
Thanks!

I won’t be much help…I’m also visiting Chicago in the next few weeks, but my itinerary is just touristy stuff…Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, The Art Institute, the planetarium, etc.

The Museum of Surgical Science is not very touristy and is not too far from the Magnificent Mile (which is a nickname for N. Michigan Avenue).

Other than that I can’t think of anything that would share an itinerary with a visit to Gacy’s home.

Chicago does offer a Gangland tour highlighting various locations made infamous during prohibition. I believe it passes by the sight of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre among others.

Kinda cheesy but dark and historical.

Also the field museum, while being on the beaten tourist path, has (or had, possibly still has) the lion from “The Ghost and The Darkness” stuffed and mounted. Good movie, huge lion.

Two lions actually, the “Ghost” and the “Darkness”, but yes, they are still there.

See here, second from the bottom, The Lions of Tsavo.

How do you feel about architecture? Chicago is a great architecture town, and there are a few boat tours that highlight it, both on the river and on the lakefront. You can also go down to Hyde Park and see the Henry Moore sculpture memorializing Enrico Fermi’s first man-made sustained atomic chain reaction. You could tour Fermilab too, but that’s way out in the western suburbs.

Pick up a copy of “Time Out Chicago” at just about any newsstand for pretty comprehensive listings of clubs, theater, tours, etc.

A very recent thread.

Also check out our host, the Chicago Reader http://www.chicagoreader.com/, and http://www.gapersblock.com/.

Architectural Tours. My sisters and I took the walking tour for Architecture of Culture & Commerce last month; it was fun and the tour guide was a hoot. I would so love to go on the Devil in the White City bus tour, but I didn’t have any takers to go with. There’s a White City Revisited tour as well, but that one looks to be more focused on the World’s Fair itself rather than the mass murder aspect.