Terms of Service

Gatsby Files is a website at gatsby-files.vercel.app that puts together Chicago date plans: a dinner, an event, or both, drawn from a curated catalog of restaurants and ticketed and civic events. You can browse, save, rate, keep notes, share a plan, and decide between options with a partner. It is run by Gatsby Files, the site operator, reachable at shawn14@gmail.com.

By using the site you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

The service is currently free and needs no account. We may change, pause, or stop any part of it at any time, including saved data features, without notice. We do our best to keep it up, and we make no promise that it will be available or error-free.

Every ticket, table, website, and map link on this site takes you to someone else: Ticketmaster, the restaurant’s own website, Google Maps, OpenTable, Tock, or Resy. A “Reserve” label appears only when we have a direct booking page for that restaurant, but availability, prices, deposits, and cancellation rules belong to that third party. A saved plan on Gatsby Files is not a booking, a ticket, or a reservation. Confirm with the venue before you go.

The catalog comes from Ticketmaster’s Discovery API, City of Chicago open data, published guides such as the Eater 38 and the Michelin Guide, Google Places details, and entries made by our editors. It is refreshed periodically, not live. Showtimes move, restaurants close, prices change, and weather is a forecast from the National Weather Service, not a promise.

We never invent an address, a coordinate, or a start time, and we hide restaurants we know have closed. Even so, we cannot guarantee that any listing is current, complete, or correct, and distances and travel times are estimates. Check the official source, linked from each listing, before relying on it.

Signing in uses your Google account. You are responsible for that account and for what happens under it here. A household code and a Decide together link work for anyone who has them, so share them only with the people you mean to. You can stop using the site at any time, and you can ask us to delete your data as described in the Privacy Policy.

Notes, ratings, names you type on a decision, and anything else you add are yours. You give us permission to store and process them so the site can work: ranking your plans, showing them back to you, and showing them to the people you share a link or household code with. Keep what you add lawful and civil, and do not post other people’s personal information. We may remove content or suspend access for abuse.

• Do not scrape the site or hammer its API. Creating decisions and voting are rate limited, and automated access needs our written permission.
• Do not try to get around sign-in, editor, or admin protections, or to forge a cookie or a link.
• Do not impersonate anyone, or use the site for anything unlawful.

A small group of editors add and correct restaurants and events and can mark a restaurant as a Great Pick. Those are editorial opinions. Rankings are produced by our own scoring over guide credentials, Google ratings and review volume, distance, weather, and your own saves and ratings. There are no sponsored placements in the catalog, and no restaurant or venue pays to appear or to rank higher.

The design, text, and code of Gatsby Files belong to the site operator or its licensors. Restaurant and venue names, descriptions, photos, and event details belong to their owners. Map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database License. Event data is provided through Ticketmaster and subject to its terms. Restaurant photos are shown only after an editor approves one and always link to their source. If you hold the rights to something shown here and want it removed, email us and we will take it down.

In plain language: the site is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including that it is accurate, fit for a particular purpose, or uninterrupted. To the fullest extent the law allows, Gatsby Files is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential losses, for lost plans or data, or for anything that happens at a restaurant, an event, or on a third-party site we link to. If we are found liable for anything connected to the site, our total liability is limited to one hundred US dollars (US$100). Nothing here limits liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

We may suspend or end your access if you break these terms. You may stop using the site whenever you like. The sections on your content, intellectual property, liability, and governing law survive.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Illinois, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute that cannot be settled between us will be heard in the state or federal courts located in Cook County, Illinois, and you agree to their jurisdiction.

When these terms change, the new version appears at this address with a new effective date. Using the site after that date means you accept the new terms.

shawn14@gmail.com