Dinner done, it's time for drinks, music, nightlife - and the guy on the bike knows exactly where to pedal.

"Stanley's is a terrific bar," he says. "Stanley's is like mayhem, basically. Donnie Kruse is one of the owners, and he's kind of the mayor of Chicago. A lot of ballplayers go over there. It's kind of like a sports bar and they have live-band karaoke on [Sunday nights]. It's a really loose, fun crowd. They have a little restaurant in back and serve great food."

From there?

"You can go down toward Halsted and see all the blues clubs and jazz clubs. I like to go to the Green Mill. We shot that in High Fidelity. It's this great old jazz club. It's in a really old building that is just fantastic. They say Al Capone drank there. You feel like you can see how the whole place must have been bustling in the '20s or something. Then the neighborhood decayed, and now it is coming back up. It's been around for so long, you can sort of feel the history. The acoustics aren't great, but the room feels so great. It has a big, long, old bar, and it's a great place to hang out."

As the night descends, the air fills with big bass and deep voices: Chicago blues. The clubs are lined up along Rush Street and beyond - all within biking distance of one another, all great, says Cusack.

"Kingston Mines is a tiny little blues place, the best place to hear the blues," he says. "The Checkerboard Lounge on the deep South Side [now closed], that's pretty intense. You can hear the best blues in the world in these cramped little places. They have small, tiny little stages and the best blues players in the world."

He is cycling back in time now, remembering the legends he's seen.