Friday turned out to be one of those "I've only got four weeks left in Chicago, I had better get out and do X amount of things that I haven't done yet."

Thankfully, my friends BSWAN and Dave were in the mood to humor me.

For BSWAN, this really didn't take much effort, but I've got to hand it to Dave, who really doesn't like things that he doesn't know... Any time we go to a restaurant, for example, I could choose between two things on a menu that I know he's going to get... He doesn't really "step out," if you know what I mean -- lots of club sandwiches, chicken strips and steak for that guy -- and let me be quick to point out that there's nothing wrong with that.

For his first test, we took the half-hour drive straight up Lincoln to the Northwest Side to a little Cuban joint called Rancho Luna Cuban Cuisine. It was one of those perfect drives -- good friends, baseball on the AM dial, windows open, cruising along at 25 m.p.h. through a wide cross-section of the city. A drive to enjoy.

The trip begins in the fairly homogenous and monied Lincoln Park and ends in the modest, but burgeoning Cuban neighborhood on the Northwest side -- damn near in Skokie.

Rancho Luna is Very Tasty. Good Cuban food is the best comfort food. Hearty but light, spicy but mild. It's maybe the best balance of decadence and thrift. You really can't beat it.

The waiter spoke perfectly good English, but it was a little bit hard to understand, with his thick accent (if that makes any sense), so I ended up half-translating a bit for Dave.

I had a wonderful chicken dish, the Rancho Luna Especial. It was a quarter chicken, cooked in a garlic-lime-cilantro sauce, served with plantains, rice and black beans. Very tasty. Washed it all down with a Modelo. Great meal.

BSWAN got the seasoned pulled pork (I don't know what the seasonings were, but it was pretty frickin' good), which came piled in a 1 lb. heap on his plate, next to a healthy serving of garlic-infused Yucca and a black-bean-and-rice mixture. Another good choice. Very tasty.

Dave went for the Camarones al ajilo, which came highly recommended from our waiter Roberto. Dave had only one shrimp sauteed in garlic sauce, and sort of pushed his plate aside... BSWAN and I were happy to negotiate a swap with Dave, as we each had a two-person size serving to split and share with him. I kind of felt bad for Dave, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed eating our meals.

Dave's shrimp, by the way, were excellent. I don't generally go for the seafood, and I enjoyed two. I have no idea what turned Dave off to the idea, but all is well that ends well, I suppose.

We relaxed with a Cafe Cubano, and headed back south to see the Dr. Duke Tomatoe and the Something or Other Trio at the venerable Kingston Mines blues club.

Enjoyed the Duke, a 70+-year-old man with a long, full, rounded white beard and a bald head. The Duke rabidly ripped on his guitar with aplomb and screamed his lyrics with burning passion. It seemed a grand paradox. This old, unassuming gray-haired man, dressed modestly in blue jeans and a nice button-down shirt, emitting scathing, hard-nosed blues to a receptive crowd. Good times.

Kingston Mines, while reputable and reasonable, left much to be desired.

It's tourist heaven. All white people visiting from out of town or the suburbs. It's not a smokey and bourbon-filled dive like a good blues bar should be. It's GENTRIFIED.

A gentrified blues club you say? Yeah --- a caricature of what it was formerly... it almost makes fun of itself. Not that any of us, three moderately educated and successful white kids from the North, should take exception to, but, like I said, it left much to be desired. When attempting to take part in Culture wars, you want your experience to be as genuiune as possible, and Kingston Mines didn't do it.

Rancho Luna, however, was just right.

So, there we go --- Two things I wanted to do before leaving town: Blues and Cuban. Done.

If I've done one thing while spending my 9 months in Chicago, I hope it's getting BSWAN and Dave out to a few places they've never been -- and they've lived here for three years.

Still a few things left on the old checklist. Ah, Chicago.