The Chicago Indie Rock Fans Meetup Group, affectionately called “CIRF”, was formed in 2007. After two years, the retirement of our esteemed founders, and more than 100 Meetups, we’re still going strong! The Organizers, with Kim as our Fearless Leader, try to pick cutting edge live shows for your entertainment. We want YOU to be involved, stay active, and listen to some good music with us!

A Beginner’s Guide to CIRF:

• Come to CIRF Meetups! Make friends. We want to hang out with you.
  
• Make the Message Board work for you! Post often. Share your music knowledge with Organizers and other Members.
  
• Use monthly show request threads OR the 'Suggest a Meetup' button to let organizers know what you want to see with the group. Let us know how interested you are in attending the show. Is it a definite for you? Something you’d only go to if its a Meetup? A great band you just want to share, but aren’t able to go to the show? Hint: If there’s lots of interest, it usually becomes a Meetup.
  
• Start your own threads for shows of interest, extra tickets for sale, and other music-related stuff. This is a great way to meet others going to a show outside of an official Meetup.
  
• Participate in the “Top…” Song lists to see what others are listening to and share your favorites. Look for the first list starting January 1st, 2010.
  
• Are you a CIRF member who’s in a band? Use the message board to let us know when you’ll be having a show. There is a special thread dedicated to member bands. We can’t always make them Meetups, but we try to support our own!
  
• Respect your fellow CIRFers. When using the message board, respect other people’s musical tastes. Don’t write nasty comments about bands they like that you may not.
  
• Our Meetup signs are custom-designed by Assistant Organizer Adam. They are either solid electric blue or green, red and blue stripes. Both say Chicago Indie Rock Fans in white letters.
  
• CIRF likes groupies! Join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter (keyword: cirfmug). We also have a Last FM station (WCIRF) that features a library of music from live acts that have performed at past and future Meetups. Lastly, we also have a group on the Sixty-One. Thank our Tech Guru Craig next time you see him.
  
• You are responsible for purchasing your own ticket(s) in advance. Links to purchase tickets are always included in the event description. CIRF Organizers can’t be held responsible for having great taste and choosing shows that sell out.
  
• Please only RSVP ‘Yes’ if you’re going to be hanging out with the group. Otherwise Organizers wait around for no-shows and potentially miss parts of the set. Or we get stood up completely. That makes an Organizer feel sad and lonely.
  
• CIRF is not a singles group. But our members are hot! Please keep in mind when attending that our Meetups are about the music. If a relationship develops organically from meeting someone here, that's great, but that's not the main purpose of our group.
  
• What is this yellow box on the calendar that I can click on but there’s no RSVP? It’s a Note. Organizers add these for shows that we want you to know about or that members suggest that we just can’t make into a full-blown Meetup. It’s purely for informational purposes.
  
• CIRF does not charge members any fees like other Meetup groups (usually $1 per event attended). Why do other groups do this? Because Meetup charges the Head Organizer a yearly fee to use their website platform. If you like what we do, buy Kim a drink as a ‘Thank You’.
  
• Please let Kim know if there are any broken links on the site or if you notice a show has sold out.
  
• Keep in touch! Email any of the Organizers about whatever; we’re a friendly bunch. We all have very different musical tastes but if there’s a genre that you think is under-represented, let us know.