The Hooters Diary

Duke and I started out on a journey way back in March of 2008.  Our goal:  To visit 25 different Hooters restaurants by December 25th and win $25,000 as part of the Hooters 25th anniversary.

He has always been more emotionally committed to this project than I am, but as long as my vacations are going to be scheduled around it, I decided that I should get my own entry book ("passport") and play too, because I'm pretty much the best girlfriend ever.

So instead of talking about Hooters non-stop all year long, I have kept a file of all of my Hooters experiences to post at once, not knowing if we would be successful or not, but wanting to document the journey nonetheless.  

The numbers in parentheses after the location are the count of passport stamps for Duke and myself.  His tally is first, mine second.

Rockford (1, 0)- I wasn't there.  Duke and his coworker Jeff go out after pouring concrete at the house, I'm not invited.  Assholes.

Crystal Lake (2, 0) - Duke goes at lunch with coworker Jeff.  Assholes.

Schaumburg (3, 1) - I get my passport.  I also try their shrimp.  Not impressed.  We are seated next to the beverage station and get to witness the manager berating the waitresses several times for not carrying the sodas on a tray.

Rockford (0, 0) - I go to lunch with coworkers on a Friday and none of us go back to work.  Six hours later we are still there.  I forget to get my passport stamped, film two fools chair dancing and talking about their penises, and talk two Hooters girls into wearing the same sweatshirt at the same time.

Bismarck (4, 2) - Wags (stupid feminist) rolled his eyes and talked about exploitation a lot.  Waitress told us all about her kids and her other job.  Illusion was ruined anyway because she was an A cup with some sort of duct tape contraption pushing her boobs up and out the top of her shirt.  Pipes and I stared at her weird contorted boobs the entire time she was at our table.  And not in a good way.

Fargo (5, 3) - Restaurant is moving shortly, we were there in the last few days before they closed.  Oldest looking Hooters (the building, not the girls, which was a relief after Bismarck) I've ever seen.

Niagara Falls (6, 4) - I didn't go on the Niagara Falls day trip from the Rockford airport just for the Hooters stop, but I'm pretty sure that was Duke's primary motivation.  It was a 2 mile hike straight up hill.  The staff was very friendly and they served poutine, though we didn't order it.  It shared a building with an indoor skydiving machine and a mechanical bull.  Duke sampled every Canadian beer on tap and then found out they were $7 each.

Peoria (7, 5) - Nacho and Denacho joined us.  Hottest waitress so far.  This location has a golf cart to deliver to a dock on the river for boaters who phone in orders.  We watched outdoor bowling on the TV.  Nacho and Denacho made plans for their own outdoor bowling alley.

Greenfield (8, 6) - Marc joined us for our Milwaukee stop.  We are pretty sure the building used to be a Pizza Hut.  It's not actually in Milwaukee, it's in Greenfield.  Friends tell us that the downtown Milwaukee franchise failed a few years ago.

Crystal Lake (8, 7) - I'm catching up!

Davenport (9, - Worst restaurant experience of my life.  The waitress took our drink orders three times before we actually got drinks.  Both times that she came back to re-take our drink orders, she looked at us as if she'd never seen us before.  Then she blamed the bartender for the half hour wait and told Duke she wouldn't charge him for his beer.  After we had to chase her down to put in a food order, our food was delivered late and cold by another waitress.  Duke ordered a water that never arrived after reminding her twice.  We had to remind her to give us back our Passports that she had taken to get stamped, and we got a blank look about that as well.  Finally, we chased her down to get our bill and we were charged for the beer.  The conversation went like this:

Duke:  You said you were going to comp the beer because it took so long?

Waitress:  ~blank look~  What?

Duke:  You said I wouldn't have to pay for my beer.  Because it took half an hour.

Waitress:  Everything on the bill is stuff you have to pay for.  You have to pay for what you order.

Duke:  But you told me that the beer would be free because it took you so long to bring it to me.

Waitress:  ~blank look~  I can bring you a receipt after you pay for it?  Okay?  You pay for it and then I'll bring you a receipt?

It was at this point that we decided she was either on drugs or the stupidest human being ever, and we asked for the manager.  The waitress walked away with Duke's credit card and the bill and the manager returned.  He was approximately 12 years old.  After explaining our situation, he got up and said "Okay, sorry about all of that, we'll get you taken care of . . . " and walked away.  We didn't know what he meant by that, if he was taking the beer off the bill, taking more than just the beer off, whatever.  We sat there waiting for another 10 to 15 minutes - still with our dirty plates in front of us, when Hooters is known for their swift clearing of tables - and finally the waitress walked back with Duke's credit card.  She set it down in front of him, said nothing, and walked away. 

We looked at each other for a minute and guessed that meant we weren't getting a bill at all, so we left. 

Rockford (9, 9) - I went to lunch with coworkers, finally got the stamp for the Hooters closest to my house.  Same waitress as the previous Hooters trip, but no dancing in a sweatshirt with another girl.  Boo hiss.

Janesville (10, 10) - Duke and I stopped at the Hooters in Janesville, which is across the street from a Harley dealership, on the 105th Harley anniversary.  Harley parking guys very confused when we rode our motorcycle past their waving arms and into the Hooters parking lot.

O'Hare (11, 11) - Hooters O'Hare was our first stop on the Marathon Hooters Day, which I discussed a little bit in this post.  We set off on the motorcycle with the intention of visiting 9 different Chicago-area locations on the same day.  We were successful, and as a result, my memories of the individual Chicago-area Hooters all kind of blend together into one big orange and white soup in my brain.  I do know that we had fried pickles at O'Hare.  We arrived at about 11:30 am.

Melrose Park (12, 12) - We didn't eat at Melrose Park, we just had soda.  A couple got into a huge fight here, with the woman crying and getting consoled by a waitress, and the man stomping off.

Chicago (13, 13) -  We had lunch at the downtown Chicago Hooters.  This building was the most visually interesting to me - it didn't fit into the typical Hooters floor plans and the decorating wasn't quite as obscene.

Oak Lawn (14, 14) - Oak Lawn gave us the waitress that wins our award for largest boobs, but they weren't the best boobs.  In fact, they were pretty terrifying. 

Lansing (15, 15) - Lansing topped our list as the most (well, ONLY) uncomfortably trashy stop.  We sat at the bar just across from where the fry cooks were working, and the waitresses would walk up behind us and yell obscenities at the fry cooks, who would respond with obscenities of their own.  We couldn't get out of this one fast enough.

Orland Park (16, 16) - I remember nothing unique about this place.

Joliet (17, 17) - Peoria will go down in the books as having the hottest waitress, but Joliet had the hottest bartender.  Duke used his special low-low-low voice, and numerous mutterings of "I appreciate it" instead of "thank you", so we know he agreed with my assessment of her hotness.  Though we've debated this, we think this may have been the girl with the best boobs as well.  Not the largest, but the best. 

Downers Grove (18, 18) - The only thing that I remember about Downers Grove was that it had the exact same floor plan as an earlier Hooters from the same day, and I spent a lot of time experiencing radical déjà vu.

Aurora (19, 19) - Aurora was where I had my first slice of cheesecake and experienced some pretty profound relief that the marathon Hooters day was finally over.  We left Aurora at about 9 pm.

Florence (20, 20) - This was the first of two stops that we made in Kentucky, both just across the border from Cincinnati, Ohio during our Cubs/Reds trip with Mr. and Mrs. Andy.  This particular Hooters will go down in history as the place where we were when I FINALLY heard the allegedly true story of an event that happened on an old couch that is in our front porch that I refuse to sit on.  Or touch.

Newport (21, 21) - This Hooters location is built on a barge floating in the river just a little ways from the Cincinnati Reds ballpark.  The bathroom was terrifying.

Kiener Plaza (22, 22) - Kiener Plaza is the Hooters location in St. Louis closest to Busch Stadium.  We ate dinner here with Nacho, Denacho, and another friend before watching the Cubs play the Cardinals.

Springfield (23, 23) - We stopped in Springfield on the way home from St. Louis with Nacho and Denacho.

Bloomington (24, 24) - Our last two stops on this journey were scheduled to coincide with our trip to U of I for the opera.  This meant that we had two months of Hooters detox.  We still weren't very excited about eating there.  Our waitress, Meg, commented that she had never seen anybody with passports as close to completed as ours.

Champaign (25, 25) -  We wrapped up the project in Champaign, Duke's home away from home.  We each had a soda and watched a quarter of the Illini/Ohio State football game.  The manager seemed rather unimpressed that this was our last stop.  He was more interested in the fact that Meg had been our waitress at the previous stop, as he was a former manager in Bloomington and it seemed like he was a big fan of Meg.

So to summarize, our Hooters experience spanned six states, two countries, and eight months, though 40% of the locations were visited on Labor Day weekend alone.  We didn't go to several locations that would have been easy to hit - we were half an hour from Des Moines in August, and Madison is fairly close to our house as well.  We didn't go to any of the Indianapolis locations, and only one in St. Louis.  Our Hooter Guests were Marc (once), my dad, Wags and Pipes (twice), Duke's coworker Jeff (twice), the Andys (twice), my coworkers Bald Mike and Not Bald Mike (twice), and Nacho and DeNacho (thrice).

I did not keep track of what Duke ate, but I sampled numerous things on the Hooters menu, straying often from my usual order of a Buffalo Chicken Sandwich with Medium sauce.  I had two or three different salads, tried their boneless wings and the shrimp, tried a variety of their new sauces, had the Philly Steak sandwich once, and tried two different types of cheesecake.  Approximately 1,042 pickles died and were deep-fried and served with ranch dressing for this experiment.

I expected to get sick of the food at Hooters, but not quite to the level that I have.  Even Duke has noticed it, how unappetizing wing sauce smells to us now.  When we order something other than wings, it tastes like wings.  Even the beer kind of tastes like wings.  We leave Hooters and we feel like we are sweating wing sauce.  It's something that may take me months to get over, and I don't mean that as an insult to the establishment.  The human body is not designed to spend this much time inside the walls of one restaurant, any restaurant.

Our passports were shipped off to the Hooters mother ship last night, via trackable delivery service and adhering to all rules and regulations of the game.  This means that we are now entered in a drawing for $25,000 and we are each guaranteed to receive a Hooters Wing Party at our home location, which is Rockford.  Our wing parties have to be scheduled on a Monday through Thursday evening, and we plan to have them separately.

Wish us luck for the big cash prize.  Duke has really boring plans for his share of the money.  I'm thinking about spending mine on a big pair of fake boobs.  I'm not sure where that idea came from, but yeah.  Boobs.