I am influencing early because I've wanted this for a while now:

Host EC/WC/CC-08 in Chicago, Illinois. Or else.

We should go there because Chicago:
-hosts a wide variety of events on a weekly basis. If we can make the first week of July, we could catch the Taste of Chicago
-is home to me, and I have a decent amount of rooms to my disposal*
-has free boring museums, and cheap disgustingly amusing museums.
-holds great public art in Millennium Park.
-has a great subway system we can use to travel close to everywhere.**
-resides near O'hare Airport, just reading the first section of the article should give you a nice secure feeling about traveling.
-contains the Beast and saves the world on a daily basis.
-has Navy Pier. Definitely worth a day if we feel like theme-parks.
-holds a short fireworks show every Wednesday and Saturday night of the summer. Yeah! Eat that Berkeley!

But in all seriousness, Chicago is a great city worth visiting twice, and I can't think of any reason to hate it.

* = The catch: By "my disposal", I mean that I beg my relatives to lend over their awesome real-estate powers to put roofs over everyones' heads. These are the real-estate capabilities as of right now:

Three condominiums near Millennium Park (seriously, it's like five blocks away).

Condo-1 is an office currently with a resident. This resident is borrowing the bedroom (queen-sized bed included) and bathroom right now, but doesn't really have any rights to them. She supposedly is moving out next year. I figure that if two people bring an air-mattress, and two people share the bed, that's four people in that condominium moving around furniture (no office workers care if it's in that room). The 4th person will have to get up early though (~8:00 AM) and avoid the workers and pick up their bed and store it into that room.

That's four people roomed with no charge. The condo has two functional toilets, one functional bath-shower, and one shower not prepared to used currently. This one also has a cable-connection and (WEP-keyed but ours) wireless access. Hooray.


Condo-2 is a living space with a resident that pops in every month or so for a few days. Hopefully we can avoid her (though chances slim near July 4th). Anyway, this one has two bedrooms with a queen-sized bed each. There's an air-mattress already packed to fit into the living room. And there's an L-shaped sofa that two could sleep on (it's extremely comfortable). I figure with creative arranging, we can fit two more air mattresses in this place. There's one fully functional bed-shower and one non-prepped shower. There are also two low-flow toilets that clog easily. Don't throw things into them. Last, there's a decent HDTV with digital cable for gaming. If two share the queen-sized beds, that's nine people. This condo has no pending changes upon it.

Condo-3 is a pent-house and bigger than the other condos. If I recall correctly, it's been recently purchased, furnished, and has four bedrooms. But this place belongs to my mom's worst family-friend (enemy?!). It's also becoming an office in... three days from now. I don't have the information I need to say much about this place, but I'd estimate 8 (+/- 4) people could stay here. It's the best furnished and the couches (I heard the bedrooms were turned into living rooms) are usually picked to be comfortable enough to sleep on.

More catches:
-We cannot be loud/destructive in these rooms. But there is a pool on the roof that we can go to at any hour and probably be loud as we want. Just don't jump off the edge. It's also windy, so worst case scenario, we're playing Apples to Apples inside a tent (or with paperweights).

-Seeing as how we're borrowing these rooms, do not break things >|! And clean up after yourself.

-Food is costly in Chicago. There's several solutions:
1) >( We won't eat out for every meal. We can probably just hit the highlights (pizza and whatnot) every other day.
2) There are kitchens (some smaller than others) and fridges (some full of delicious leftovers and frozen meals nobody will miss) with each condo.
** = 3) Groceries are also expensive, but perhaps we could make a preemptive shopping-list and buy a week's worth of food in one day. That way, on the arriving day, we can go grocery shopping in the suburbs (home-like cheapness) and get back the same day. I think there's enough fridge-space for everybody.

Dates:
July 1st - July 7th: This is really the most eventful week in Chicago. We have the Taste of Chicago, and that alone puts exotic food up for grabs and daily events that catch interest. If they don't, we have the city's static entertainment. Also, the 4th's fireworks attract huge crowds (although somewhat inferior to Vancouver's celebration.)

August 1st - August 7th: Classic dates make this easy for everybody to schedule for as they have before. These dates have the added advantage of the real residents of the free-rooms not being there (and complicating things hard). The ToC is over, but the city is still full of things to tour around and events do pop up every now and then.

I'd favor August personally because it's been done, but I'm open for suggestions and I'd like it if everybody could make rough estimates of what ranges are good for them.

In short:
We're looking at around (worst case scenario) 15 free rooms (commune style!!) if we go to Chicago. There's self-sufficient cooking available to save on food money as well. There's a pool and down-town is literally within comfortable walking distance. The city has no lack of attractions, static or eventful. Even if we have more than 15 people, I'm pretty sure we can find somewhere free (maybe far) to put them, or somewhat costful (and close) to put them. Either way, that's the cost of 4~ divided by 19.

There could be vehicle transportation, but we'll have to work to empty out the SUV (and hide bodies in the back).



Ask now if you have questions on the building's policies or benefits. Or food questions, or whatever.