EXTRA: Independence Day, Year 243

Not quite so festive in reality this year

16 shot, 2 fatally in Fourth of July gun violence across Chicago – Chicago Sun-Times
At least 5 killed, 30 wounded by gunfire so far in Chicago over Fourth of July weekend – Chicago Tribune
2 boys, 1 man stabbed outside Navy Pier after Fourth of July fireworks; 14 others injured in stampede following false reports of gunfire – Chicago Tribune
3 stabbed, 14 trampled at Navy Pier after Fourth of July fireworks – Chicago Sun-Times

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A few sample hedlines from the Chicago press on this day after Independence Day, just to give you a taste of how inane things were capable of becoming on this holiday where we celebrate our national existence. And if the threat from gunfire mixed in with explosives wasn't enough, there also was the absurdity at Navy Pier Thursday night.

And just in case you need the knowledge for future reference, there also was this report – Gunshots or Fireworks: Learn to Tell the Difference -- Patch

NOW WE BEGIN the next holiday countdown -- only 59 more days until we honor the workers in our nation.

Happy Labor Day!!!

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2020 starts already – Sanders does Chicago in campaigning for president

Bernie Sanders, the Congressman from Vermont who stirred the imaginations of certain people of the Democratic Party persuasion when he ran for president in 2016, kicked off his active campaigning for the party’s nomination in the 2020 election cycle.

SANDERS: Will it ever be Bernie's turn?

And in realizing that Chicago is a significant part of the process for any legitimate Democrat, he’s already been here – making an appearance Sunday night at Navy Pier hoping to stir up the passions of potential voters to take him more seriously than the other dozen-or-so people who have dreams of winning the White House.

ALTHOUGH IN MOST cases, it seems that what really motivates them is being able to have history record their names as the person who “took down” the presidency of Donald Trump.

Too many people are gambling on the fact that the majority that despises the notion of Trump will eagerly accept them as the replacement.

Creating the potential for infighting amongst Democrats that could very well put The Donald (or someone of his ilk, if all the rumors of Trump being willing to resign if he can avoid criminal prosecution are true) right back in the White House.

While I personally despise such a thought and see an overwhelming majority of people who’d like to Dump Trump, I can also see how political chaos could result in Democrats shooting down their own desires.

Do we want Hoosier (Buttigieg) or … 

I’M ALSO PONDERING the large number of Democrats who seem to think everybody else will get out of their way to let them be the one who takes on Trump.

It has far too much potential to create confusion that could cause many people to decide “the heck with it” and find something else to do on the Elections Day of 2020.

Think I’m kidding? Just look at the large number of candidates (14, who actually managed to make it on the ballot) for our recently-completed mayoral election.

We’re down to two now for the April 2 run-off, but there literally were 67 percent of people who cast votes who didn’t want either of the candidates who prevailed. Plus, there were 66 percent of registered voters who didn’t even bother to cast ballots.

… a Tejano (Castro) as nominee?

WHY DO I fear this could be the end result of the 2020 election cycle? A whole lot of people ultimately disappointed because they couldn’t get their act together and decide on a candidate most strong to defeat the Trumpster!

Particularly if it turns out that Sanders, who began his campaigning Saturday in his birthplace neighborhood in Brooklyn, then came to Chicago the next day to try to sway over our voter support, insists he thinks he’s entitled to the nomination.

Out of the belief that he put in his time in 2016, and it’s now his turn! When the reality may well be that 2016 was his turn and he lost to Hillary. Now maybe he should move aside and let more credible candidates make their pitch for voter support.

Now for those people who are thinking that it was establishment Democrats who somehow cheated Bernie of their support, I’d argue it was absurd to think they’d ever back someone who throughout his time in Congress has insisted on using the “Independent” label. Why should Dems be eager to back someone who doesn’t really want to be a part of the political party?

IF ANYTHING, I’D say the fact that Trump was able to so thoroughly undermine the Republican establishment in 2016 is more pathetic than anything that happened to the Hillary/Bernie brawl of that same year.

TRUMP: Could it be 'four more years'

It will be interesting the degree to which people want to re-fight the Bernie Sanders brawl of three years ago. Will they have a desire to move forward? Or get bogged down in the trash-talk that ultimately gave us “President Trump.”

Personally, I’m not sure who to think of supporting. The notion of the South Bend, Ind., mayor, Pete Buttigieg, and his revival of that city has some interest to me – although I also wonder if a mayor is just too low-ranking on the political experience totem pole to take seriously. Why not offer up Gary, Ind., mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson if we're looking for a Hoosier mayor? There’s also former San Antonio, Texas, mayor (and former HUD secretary Julian Castro); whose presence would probably most offend those Trumpites most motivated by their ethnic hang-ups.

Anyway, the process of “making up our mind” begins now. We’re going to have to figure out who we want and what is most important to us. Because if we don’t, it could easily be “four more years” of Donald Trump.

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Illinois gave us a low-key Bicentennial

Illinois officially turns 200 years old Monday, and there will be a celebration.

In fact, there have been activities taking place during the past year leading up to this day that are meant to make us fully aware of what a truly intriguing history our state has experienced during those two centuries of existence.

YET I WOULDN’T be the least bit shocked to learn that most of you weren’t the least bit aware of that – or of the activities that will take place at Navy Pier in the name of giving Illinois a proper birthday celebration Monday night.

For perhaps it is the result of the fact that Illinois isn’t exactly the most-unified of states. We’re certainly not Texas, with a strong self-awareness of who we are. Those of us from Illinois most often identify with the particular region of the state that we come from, rather than the notion of Illinois as a whole.

I suspect that has inhibited any true appreciation of Illinois’ existence through all those years. Too many of us probably wonder why any attention is being paid to the rest of Illinois, and not just our home region.

I’m sure I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. I’m not only Chicago-born, I’m specifically of the South Side (the South Chicago neighborhood, to be exact). I’m just as likely to think of a West Side neighborhood as alien turf as much as something in Southern Illinois.

Bicentennial celebration location historic in its own right

WHILE SOMEONE FROM central Illinois, I’m sure, thinks all of us are alien to his/her experience of what our state is all about.

Personally, I’m inclined to think the significance of Illinois’ existence is the way it has managed to incorporate all these different experiences into a single way of life. Almost as though what makes Illinois unique is that we have figured out a way to incorporate a bit of everybody into our state existence.

From an urban Chicago experience to parts of the state that aren’t too different from Appalachia – and to parts of central Illinois that actually give us those corn fields that too many people think are the entirety of the rural Midwest.

A long-gone part of what made Chicago and Illinois so significant

Then, there’s always the land of Forgottonia – as in the rural western part of the state that got that label as almost a joke of just how isolated it is from the rest of us.

THIS IS THE experience that will be in display Monday night at Navy Pier – where the program will try to give us a taste of bipartisanship (if such a thing can actually exist in Illinois these days). Both Gov. Bruce Rauner and Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker are expected to be on hand for the festivities.

Unless someone decides to have a political hissy bit and not show up – which always is a possibility.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon (which got its beginnings as just a band on the local music scene in Champaign) and bluesman Buddy Guy all will be amongst the performers.

We’ll even get acknowledgement of the musical “Hamilton” including Chicago as being amongst the places where it is being performed, and a historic program narrated by Bill Kurtis – whose deep voice is to a certain generation the sound of a quintessential Chicago newsman (unless you’re of the type who was watching Fahey Flynn) instead.

AND SATURDAY NIGHT Live, of sorts, will be included, what with George Wendt and Robert Smigel giving us a riff off their old “Superfans” sketches. Too bad that Mike Ditka himself couldn’t be on hand, what with him still recovering from a recent heart attack.

As for edibles, it should be noted there will be a 1,000-pound birthday cake from Eli’s – the place that many of us think is the ultimate for cheesecake.

Which could lead to questions about why we can’t have deep-dish pizzas – which some like to think is the ultimate local food item. Yet I can already see the problem with its’ inclusion.

We’d get into a serious quarrel over whether or not thin crust is truly more representative of Illinois, and whether it should be cut into slices or squares – a debate that likely will linger on to Illinois’ tricentennial some 100 years from now.

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Navy Pier losing its carnival-like atmosphere to become a luxury hotel

I enjoy Chicago, take a certain amount of pride in being able to say I was born here and have lived the bulk of my life here. I also think this city is a wonderful place that everybody in the world ought to come to enjoy at least once in their lifetime.
 

The carnival-like atmosphere at Navy Pier could become a part of the past. Image provided by Chicago Postcard Museum

Yet I have to confess to always feeling a little tinge of embarrassment whenever I read something reminding me that Navy Pier is the Number One tourist attraction not only for Chicago, but for the state of Illinois.

IT JUST SEEMS a little silly, to me, that people who have taken the time and effort to make the journey to Chicago wind up wasting their time checking out the pier, or at least what has become of the pier in the past three decades.

The giant Ferris wheel gave the place a carnival-like atmosphere. And I realize the historic implication of a Ferris wheel in Chicago being reminiscent of the worlds’ fairs that were held in our city.

But if you think about it, you can ride a Ferris wheel anywhere. Admittedly, you won’t get a great view of Lake Michigan at the top of a wheel at some rural county carnival. But a wheel is a wheel.

Even more silly, to me, was that Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant located at the pier. Created to feed off the popularity of the 1994 film “Forrest Gump, it also is something that seems so absurd. With all the quality dining one could find in Chicago, people would be expected to choose a brand that has 43 locations across the United States, along with Mexico, Great Britain, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

Navy Pier a long ways from when it was purely a boat-docking facility

IT COMES ACROSS as being a real-life take on the gag from that episode of “The Simpsons” where the family goes to Japan and winds up eating at the “Americatown” restaurant, where mom Marge gets excited about seeing the Japanese take on the club sandwich!

In short, Navy Pier isn’t a place I go to very often (and not just because I’m a cheap grouch!). So I have to admit to feeling a jolt of excitement when I learned this week of the City Council contemplating an overhaul of the place that was erected a century ago as a pier for those ships sailing into Chicago off Lake Michigan.

Which makes the pier’s incarnation of recent years seem so ridiculously absurd. I doubt that those sailors who arrived in Chicago at the pier some 90 years ago, or those people who came to the pier to fish a half-century ago, ever would have envisioned a place that had lots of shops where one could buy various incarnations of a “I (heart) Chicago” coffee mug.

The council’s zoning committee gave its approval this week to a plan calling for a seven-story hotel to be built on the pier, along with amenities such as a winter ice-skating rink, a sloped-roof welcome pavilion (which likely would continue to have all those gift shops selling tacky trinkets) and some short-term boat docking facilities.

The days of academia are long-gone from the pier. Photograph provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia

IT IS, AFTER all, a pier. Which means boats. The people who conceived of the need for a pier sticking out one mile into Lake Michigan didn’t do so because they wanted a unique site for a carnival ride.

Although I also realize that ships transporting goods don’t arrive at Navy Pier anymore. What little shipping still arrives in Chicago sails into the piers down around Lake Calumet.

So I realize that the pier has to evolve, or else become pointless and rot away. Which is the fate it nearly suffered by the late 1970s.

I can remember the days just before the remodeling of the 1990s when the structure was largely vacant and it was obvious that the facility had a very practical purpose for briefly storing goods brought in from ships.

I CAN REMEMBER making the walk to the pier offices at the far east end of the facility, having to go through all the vacant space and feeling like it was such a waste. The ghosts of college students past from the pier’s UI-Chicago days and those from the days when World War I-era draft dodgers were incarcerated there were all over the place.

Plus, I’m also old enough to remember the “Chicagofest” festivities held at the pier that then-Mayor Jane Byrne always liked to think were the biggest part of her legacy to the city. Closing my eyes could bring to mind memories of seeing Muddy Waters perform there, along with the Turtles (remember “Happy Together?!?”).

Losing some of the sillier touristy aspects of what has become Navy Pier will be a plus – particularly if it provides a facility that can enhance Chicago as a whole.

That used to be a long walk, particularly when made on a cold December day. Photograph provided by Chuckman Chicago Nostalgia

Although I suspect I still won’t become a Navy Pier regular, because I think that whatever hotel winds up being built at the site will be one I won’t stay at because it will wind up far beyond my own income level.

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Park District brings question to my mind – “Are they kidding?” about Payton

In theory, I want to give the Chicago Park District a pat on the back for taking a hard line stance with regards to the family of Chicago Bears great Walter Payton, who want to put a statue of “Sweetness” outside the stadium where the Bears play.

That stadium, of course, is Soldier Field, and it has been owned by the Chicago Park District for decades. It was originally built to be a public facility for sporting events to be witnessed by the masses of Chicago.

IT ALSO WAS to serve along with Navy Pier as a memorial to the military personnel of this nation – Soldier Field and Navy Pier. Now if we could only find something in this city to name for the Air Force and the Marines, we’d have the perfect set.

But it is because of that tradition that the building that seats more than 60,000 people for Bears games eight Sundays each year is a military memorial that the Park District is refusing to allow the Payton statue.

They told the Chicago Tribune that putting up the statue would diminish the memory of the soldiers, even though I’m sure the masses who tailgate outside Bears games probably think more of Payton than any soldier.

It is a nice ideal. I’d like to think that the Park District is sincere in saying such a thing.

BUT I AM one of those people who thinks that the 2001 renovation of Soldier Field killed off any semblance of the building being a war memorial – even though the renovated stadium’s advocates will claim that people can now check out the columns that pay tribute to soldiers.

In fact, any time people mock the Yankee Stadium renovation of the mid-1970s as somehow ruining the historic character of that building, I’d argue that the Soldier Field renovation was worse.

It literally got the building knocked off the National Register of Historic Places, because the changes to put in all those seats that sort of hover over the field (as though it is better to be sky-high than many rows back) obliterated the feel of what made Soldier Field architecturally unique.

So the idea that anyone seriously believes it is a war memorial any longer is absurd, although it probably maintains more character than Navy Pier, which has been turned into a commercial shopping center for the tourist-minded among us.

IN SHORT, CHICAGO has in recent years dumped on what was supposed to be its significant memorials to the military.

So the idea that anyone is now trying to use the military and its supposed presence as an excuse to avoid making some change is absurd.

Particularly since I can envision this rejection managing to offend many Chicago Bears fans who see how so many other new stadiums include among their decorative elements all kinds of statues paying tribute to the top ballplayers in those particular franchise’s histories.

Even in Chicago, just about every other building used for professional sports has these statues – with the best known being that one of Michael Jordan dunking a bronze basketball outside the United Center – and across the street from the Chicago Stadium where his Hall of Fame-quality pro basketball career began.

HECK, EVEN HARRY Caray gets a statue (the one that intoxicated Chicago Cubs fans like to load up with cans of Budweiser) outside Wrigley Field just for slurring his way through 17 years worth of Cubs baseball broadcasts (he really was on top of his game with the St. Louis Cardinals and the White Sox).

So I’m sure there are people who are going to be critical of the Park District and accuse them of disrespecting the memory of Payton, a Hall of Fame football player in his own right.

It turns out that Payton’s widow, Connie, wants this memorial to her late husband (who hasn’t played for the Bears in two decades and has been deceased for 10 years now, time flies too fast).

She’s willing to arrange to have the statue made and to donate it, provided they promise to erect it in a place where it will be seen (and not just become the receptacle for bird droppings).

EVEN THE BEARS themselves (who, let’s be honest, often show a knack for boneheaded public relations moves) are on board, saying they will try to talk some sense into the heads of their landlords to allow for the statue to be erected somewhere.

So I’m wondering how the Park District will wind up backing away from their “military memorial” stance while trying to pretend they didn’t change a thing. For the reality is that modern-day governments build these stadiums (or – in the case of the Chicago Park District – renovate them to the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars), but then give the teams total control over how they are used.

In some cases, they even let the teams have the bulk of the revenues that are earned (parking, concessions) from staging private athletic events in what ostensibly are public buildings.

Just so long as nobody gets the “bright” idea of trying to pay tribute to the memory of the definitely un-immortal Bobby Douglas. For that one, I would be willing to buy the “soldier memorial” excuse.

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