Can Lori Lightfoot really make Chicago a less violent place this Memorial Day?

Lori Lightfoot hasn’t even been mayor of Chicago for one full week, and she’s already promising what may be an overly ambitious goal – eliminating the urban violence that is a Chicago embarrassment every Memorial Day holiday weekend. 

New mayor hopes to put her mark on city's Memorial Day safety

Which sounds nice. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Lori Lightfoot could really make Chicago a nicer, less violent place to be. Of course, this opens her up to criticism from every single smart-aleck (many harsher than myself) who will now try to hang every single violent crime that takes place this weekend on Lightfoot herself.

SO WHAT IS it Lightfoot has in mind?

Basically, it’s a marketing campaign. “Our City, Our Safety,” it’s being called. What it means is that the mayor wants us to get off our fat behinds and DO something,

In the form of attending one of the many events being held in neighborhoods across the city. Which almost reminds me of that old English proverb that says, “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”

Does this make Lightfoot the equivalent of Chicago’s granny, spewing out sayings that basically mean we ought to make ourselves useful for a change instead of sitting around doing nothing?

Could events such as Mole de Mayo festival play a role in reducing … 

SERIOUSLY, THE CITY has a list of hundreds of events taking place from Friday through Monday. The theory being that if we’re doing something and perhaps even enjoying ourselves, we’re less likely to get ourselves involved in something stupid that will cause tempers to flare and lead to the potential for someone to pull out a weapon and use it.

… Memorial Day violence?

Is it our civic duty, then, to attend the Mole de Mayo festival in the Pilsen neighborhood, or any one of the many other events taking place in Chicago this weekend.

Maybe you’d rather check out the Lane Tech (as in high school) Carnival, or one of the many places that are doing film screenings (Lilo and Stitch will be showing Saturday at 6800 N. Western Ave., as an example).

What it basically sounds like is that Lightfoot wants to use what I’ve always considered to be one of Chicago’s biggest pluses to her advantage (the mass of activities taking place at any given time).

ANYBODY WHO’S SERIOUSLY bored in Chicago isn’t trying hard enough to find something interesting or enlightening to do.

Now I don’t know if I feel compelled to check out the Mole de Mayo festival in Pilsen, although I’ll admit I went last year and it was an interesting experience stuffing my face with a dish I consider my personal favorite.

Although I feel compelled to try to find something new to do to occupy my time this holiday weekend. And part of that time may well be in some sort of serious contemplation of those people who served in our nation’s military and wound up losing their lives as a result.

That’s enough bloodshed to have to think about, without having to contemplate the number of people killed or wounded (it could wind up being several dozen) in incidents that usually compete with each other in terms of just how insipid they are.

ALMOST AS THOUGH some people are eager to see a life lost in the most pathetic and wasteful manner possible. My own reporter-type days saw me write many a story about someone who happened to be sitting on their porch when they got struck by stray gunfire.

Various types of police will be in force this weekend. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

To try to cope with the incidents that are inevitable this weekend, the Chicago Police say they plan to have an extra 1,200 patrol officers on duty – with some 50 of them riding the Chicago Transit Authority buses and “L” trains to try to reduce the number of moments where someone merely trying to get themselves somewhere wind up being hurt or killed.

While a summer mobile patrol of about 100 officers will be working the parks and Lake Michigan shoreline. The last thing we need is someone killed during a quarrel breaking out at a traditional holiday “cookout” gone awry.

Which may sound like quite a force being put to the streets to deal with potential violence. The reality, though, is that it will only take one child getting caught in someone’s crossfire to taint the holiday weekend – no matter how much Lightfoot tries to reduce it.

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EXTRA: Are you sure foreigners are taking over everything in this nation?

I spent my Saturday afternoon in the Pilsen neighborhood, checking out the set-up along 18^th Street and the Mole de Mayo festival.

McDonald's on a street named for Cesar Chavez, or ...

It’s an event intended to give various restaurants a chance to show off their special recipes for that uniquely Mexican dish – mole. That mix of the cocoa bean and assorted spices mixed into a sauce served atop chicken, turkey or other meats.

... mariachis playing in between Giordano's and Subway? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

IT HAPPENS TO be a personal favorite of mine, and I was anxious to try unique variations on the dish (which my mother often served atop chicken with rice).

But the part of the day that caught my attention was the ethnic and racial blend of people that turned out to what some people would want to believe is the ultimate Mexican neighborhood in Chicago.

Chato's for pasta, along with ...

Just as many white people of assorted ethnicities showed up and gave the mole a try. The fact that this one-time immigrant enclave that has been through so many ethnicities during Chicago’s history truly is going through gentrification.

... Memo's for hot dogs

For it seems there were so many mixtures of the old (being the Mexicans who have been a part of Pilsen since the 1950s) and the new (upper-scale individuals who like the idea of a city address not too terribly far from jobs downtown (it’s about a 15-minute ride from “the Loop” to the 18^th Street CTA ‘el’ train platform).

I’M STILL TRYING to figure out the most off-beat sight I saw – the stage on 18^th Street where I saw a female mariachi band perform, located in between Giordano’s and Subway franchise restaurants.

Or the McDonald's franchise located on Chicago's Cesar Chavez Street.

A faded Mexican mural on a barbecue joint

The conservative ideologues who would have you think that the foreigners, especially all those dreaded Mexicans, have “taken over” this country ought to see these sites. It would go a long way towards shutting them up – except that the ideologues usually don’t worry about having fact to back up their rhetorical trash.

I also couldn’t help but notice several restaurants in the neighborhood being operated – based on their names – by people of Mexican ethnic origins. But who are serving up most definitely un-Mexican foods.

Still sights w/in Pilsen ...

PASTA AND HOT DOGS, to be exact. Assimilation at work. Perhaps somebody figures that even Mexican-Americans are anxious for something else to eat, even though the ideologues might have inane thoughts about serving up burritos.

Now I know some people see these sights and they get scared. They’re afraid the white people are going to drive up the rents and make it too expensive for others to afford to live there.

Although there has to be a mid-ground we can reach between a neighborhood remaining an ethnic enclave and becoming the latest version of Lincoln Park – which itself was once a Puerto Rican neighborhood back in the days when Pilsen had an overflow of Czech immigrants and it made sense the neighborhood was named for one of the largest cities in what is now the Czech Republic.

... that I'm sure will manage to offend ...

It was pleasing to see so many interacting with good behavior.

I DIDN’T SEE any bad incidents, and in fact there wasn’t even a heavy police presence.

I saw two lone officers walking along 18^th Street, and they said it was a pleasant afternoon. Which is something I'm sure the ideologues will refuse to believe can occur in an ethnic enclave in Chicago. We are, after all, the "murder capital" of the country -- even though it's really St. Louis, with Baltimore and New Orleans close behind.

... the ideologue idiots amongst us

Not even the presence of $5 beers got people to misbehave. Perhaps it was the presence of all the food that kept people from acting up. Or at the very least, kept us all stuffed to the point where none of us would have felt compelled to start up any trouble.

Although I have to admit to one thing – despite not being displeased with anything I ate or drank, I still have to say; none of the moles compared to the way my mother use to make them.

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EXTRA: Could Taste of Chicago shutdown create moment in the sun for police-motivated protests?

It is one of those events that has taken on a certain aura in Chicago history – the Rev. Jesse Jackson managed to impose a boycott over the now-defunct ChicagoFest.

 

Will Saturday crowds be on the decline due to proposed shutdown?

It was back in the 1982 version when Jackson got black activists to picket the event held at Navy Pier, and several entertainers cancelled out of a sense of solidarity – including Stevie Wonder.

I CAN’T HELP but think that somebody thinks they can pull off a repeat a third of a century later with the Shutdown they’re hoping to accomplish on Saturday at the Taste of Chicago being held in Grant Park.

This event isn’t quite as adventurous, activists are merely calling for people not to go and stuff their faces with overpriced food for a four-hour time period in the afternoon. The rest of the five-day event that runs through Sunday night is fair game for people to attend.

But it seems all of the police violence being inflicted upon individuals of not quite a pure Caucasian persuasion has Chicago-area people feeling the need to do something.

And it’s not just the shooting death of Laquan McDonald that has them angered. This particular boycott, or call for one, was motivated by the activities of this week in which two separate cities saw moments when police killed black men and there was the incident where five Dallas police officers are now dead.

THAT’S A LOT of bloodshed, and I’m going to be curious to see just how many people actually bother to show up. Or perhaps I should say don’t bother to show up, since this is a call for a boycott.

I suppose that since I have no intention of going to Taste of Chicago on Saturday, I could be lame and claim I’m doing it in solidarity. Although the plans I have for the day have been in place for so long I have to say my absence has nothing to do with expressing my view about police violence.

This is an issue that is exploding across the nation. It is NOT a locally-based problem, which is part of the reason why I have had problems placing blame on Chicago political people – including Rahm Emanuel – for what happened to McDonald.

I don’t see that we have any worse a situation in Chicago than any other city does. I’d also argue that anybody who tries to dump blame on Chicago is merely trying to detract from the seriousness of the situation in their home city.

WE’LL SEE LATER Saturday if there’s any notable lack of people in Grant Park. I suspect there won’t be.

For Taste of Chicago is such a touristy event (I haven’t gone to it in years, and don’t think I’ve missed a thing as a result) that I suspect many of those feeling compelled to gnaw on giant turkey legs or wolf down pizza slices will be out-of-towners who didn’t see the “Taste of Chicago Shutdown” page on Facebook – which is how I learned of the attempt to express outrage.

For all I know, they may not have cared if they had been told. They want that turkey leg.

Personally, if I really feel compelled to have a cheezborger (yes, the Billy Goat Tavern is among the restaurants serving food this weekend), I can get one any day of the year. It’s not a weekend-only edible treat.

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Boricuans vs. punks? Let's hope not!

It will be interesting to see how the politicking plays out over an alderman’s desire to chase a music festival away from the public park that gives his community its name.

We’re talking about the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side that has become the heard of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community.

THE PARK PROPER is supposed to be the site of Riot Fest from Sept. 11-13, and it’s already possible to go on the Internet to get tickets to the punk music festival that has been held in Chicago in past years.

But the news reports on Thursday indicate that 26^th Ward Alderman Roberto Maldonado doesn’t like the fact that the festival that definitely won’t be attracting a Puerto Rican ethnic vibe to the neighborhood wants to use the public park again.

For the record, Maldonado isn’t bad-mouthing punks (as in music fans, not no-good hoodlums). He says the festival expanded itself to a larger portion of the park last year and that many of the ball fields used by the public wound up being damaged.

He also claims the organizers of Riot Fest did not fulfill their promises to repair any damage to the grounds that was caused by the music festival.

RIOT FEST OFFICIALS were quick to deny such claims, saying their event has the potential to create jobs and other financial opportunities for local businesses that are savvy enough to feed off the crowds that will come to Humboldt Park for the event.

They also say that Maldonado has supported their event in the past – to the point where the organizers actually made a $1,500 donation to the Citizens for Maldonado campaign fund in 2014 – which gave him the finances to enable him to win re-election earlier this year without having to endure a run-off election like many of his City Council colleagues had to.

The smart-aleck in me wants to say that Maldonado is quite a guy – he takes the political payoff, then refuses to provide the expected services in return.

Although I’m not really trying to imply any criminal intent on Maldonado’s part, or on the part of Riot Fest organizers. Perhaps the alderman is merely an example of an honest guy.

OR PERHAPS HE’S just peeved at the condition of the grounds, which the Chicago Sun-Times reported are worn in spots and some work is still being done to repair them.

Meaning it is likely the place could be in proper shape by the time the Chicago event (there also will be Riot Fest events in Denver and Toronto later this year) is scheduled to take place.

Unless this devolves into some sort of ethnic brawl. I wouldn’t be shocked if at least part of the motivation for any negative talk is neighborhood residents who enjoy the thought of the annual Fiesta Boricua that takes place there wondering where all these weird-looking, pink-haired people are coming from. Either that, or they're the types of people who think the Illinois State Fair will be a "hip" and "happenin'" type of place this year because Meat Loaf AND Styx will be performing there.

Or maybe somebody thinks they can get the Riot Fest organizers to shell out more of the cost of rehabilitating the park grounds – which in theory isn’t a bad idea. If a public park is to be used for a for-profit event, then perhaps the park ought to receive some sort of fix-up that enables improved use of the grounds in the future.

NOW I’M NOT a Riot Fest type of guy – I’ll be the first to admit to not having a clue as to whom most of the musical acts are who performed at last year’s event.

I would just hope that any potential for cultural disputes could be held to a minimum – the last thing anybody needs is a Boricuan vs. Punks type of skirmish. We don’t need to be that stupid.

Besides, I have to admit to respecting an event that includes Lucha Libre (as in Mexican-style) wrestling as part of the spectacle, and also uses its website to, “promise never to book Justin Bieber or make a Harlem Shake video.”

That would be the ultimate crime against culture.

  -30-

Happy Holidaze. Go do something real!

There won't be this Holiday bustle around Daley Plaza come Wednesday. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

If it’s Wednesday the 25th and you’re actually reading this, I have but one thing to say. Get a Life!!!!!!

This is quite possibly the holiday of holidays. You ought to be out in the real world doing something enjoyable. The last thing you should be doing is logging yourself onto a computer (or any other kind of device) and paying any attention to the digital world.
 

THIS IS THE most analog of all holidays. Do something with others. Enjoy yourself. All the nonsense you think you’re going to read today will still be there on Thursday.

And as for many of those Twitter tweets and Facebook postings? Your life will probably be better off without them.

That’s why I’m not posting fresh commentary for Wednesday. It will return on the 26^th. It would probably take something along the lines of a Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel brawl to inspire me to write on this holiday.

Actually, even that could probably wait until the Day after Christmas.

AS FOR THOSE of you who don’t celebrate Christmas (particularly those of you whose festive moods were satisfied a couple of weeks ago with Hanukkah), I also think you should find some relaxation in the real world.
 

Even if you live up to that stereotype of going to a movie theater, then hit a Chinese restaurant. That sounds like a fun afternoon to me!

On a final note, I’ll leave you with some holiday-related videos from our childhood – particularly those who have fond memories of the late Ray Rayner. As for those of you younger types who are going to mock the idea of black-and-white “cartoons,” I have but two things to say.
 

 

Take whatever device you use to access content and “Stuff it!’ And, “Kid, you don’t have a clue what you missed without the great Ray to kick off your morning every day before going to school.

  -30-

EDITOR'S NOTE: A trio of favorite holiday-related tunes (none of which involve barking dogs are the late Celia Cruz' take on "Jingle Bells," Chuck Berry's "Merry Christmas, Baby" and the future Catwoman's sultry tones on "Santa Baby." Enjoy!

 

Will Chicagoans care for shorter Taste?

It is no secret to people who read this weblog that I don’t think much of the Taste of Chicago.

The annual food fest has always struck me as grubby people sweating it out in a Chicago summer eating overpriced, greasy foods.

THE SIGHT OF someone chomping on a turkey leg bigger than their head while walking through Grant Park has become such a Chicago cliché, as well as a distasteful sight!

So in theory, I ought to be pleased that city officials on Wednesday indicated that they will scale the annual food fest back. It will now be a five-day long event, half the length that it has run in recent years.

Yet a part of me wonders if city officials are symbolically shooting themselves in the foot by cutting back on the event that has become one of Chicago’s primary public events.

Scaling it back could wind up having the effect of making it appear to be cheaper and lower-key – which would take away from the unique character that makes some people (if not myself) WANT to go to it every single year.

IT STRIKES ME as similar to the service cuts that have hit mass transit in recent years. Lesser hours and fewer routes have the effect of making it more difficult for people to use buses and trains (the el and subways) to get where they want to go.

Which further reduces the willingness of people to use the Chicago Transit Authority to get where they want to go. Which causes ridership figures to go down.

Which then makes Chicago Transit Board officials convinced that the only way to maintain the system without losing money is to cut it back even further.

How many years until the Taste of Chicago gets reduced to a couple of booths near Buckingham Fountain?

In short, an endless cycle of cuts that ultimately fail to maintain the system’s ability to fund itself.

I’M WONDERING IF that is what we’re going to see in coming years with the Taste of Chicago – a steadily-shrinking event that city officials will pretend still maintains the aura of its glory days of the 1980s and early 1990s.

That is, until the day when it just fades away altogether. As it is, the Taste of Chicago for 2012 will be held in mid-July, which means the Independence Day holiday will already be complete when it takes place.

The idea of a million people showing up at the Taste of Chicago on July 3, then sticking around to see the lakefront fireworks display for the holiday, had become something that was a part of the Chicago character to celebrate U.S. independence.

Now, it’s a thing of the past – just as much as the Chicago Sting, the Daily News and Goldblatt’s department stores. How long until the “Taste” as a whole joins the list?

  -30-

City blues festival not what it once was

There are times I think I got spoiled by the first time I ever went to the Chicago Blues Festival.

I remember it was the Friday night in 1985. Which was a unique night because the blues festival tried to recreate the bill from an evening at the Montreux Jazz Festival from a couple of years before.

J.B. HUTTO HAD since passed away. But the rest of the evening’s performers were all on stage for that Friday night in Chicago (June 7, 1985, and yeah, I had to look it up).

That is how I can say I saw John Hammond, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Koko Taylor, all in one night right after each other.

Any one of those performers are substantial enough that being able to say I saw them at the festival would have been a star-studded night. But to see them, along with Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson and Sugar Blue?

Any night when Sugar Blue’s harp playing is the weak link in the program is evidence of a particularly strong night.

IT MAY WELL be the biggest concert experience I have ever attended in my life (I generally prefer the thought of listening to music in a small club, rather than anything resembling a stadium setting). It definitely is bigger than what has become of our city’s blues festival in recent years.

And my night sitting in Grant Park was a freebie. I didn’t have to pay a dime to get in. I still remember a conversation I had with a young woman from out-of-town who couldn’t get over the fact that Chicago was capable of staging such an event of big names (by blues standards, everything is relative) without extorting us for every penny we have.

Now I am the first to admit that I comprehend the city’s financial constraints. I realize that other aspects of business that the city tends to has a higher priority than putting on a Top Quality lineup of entertainment.

But it just seems like the blues festival isn’t what it once was. I couldn’t help but notice the reports about how one of the side stages at this year’s blues festival was sponsored by Mississippi state officials.

WHICH MAY MAKE sense in terms of authenticity. After all, the blues is a music that originated in the delta and wound up in all those clubs because of the Great Migration of black people from the south to the South Side, where the musicians here followed the lead of Les Paul and put electricity to their instruments – creating a unique sound from the country blues native to places like Tupelo.

It almost makes me wonder if the fate of the blues fest is to become a joint affair. Perhaps it will be passed back and forth between the two states, hosted in alternate years in Millenium Park and requiring us to travel down south in other years.

Which is why I’m all the more likely to cherish that night when I got to hear Koko and Stevie Ray one right after the other – Taylor belting out songs with that gravelly, powerful voice she had and Vaughan showing just how well he could play the guitar.

How well?

BOPPING ABOUT THE Internet, I have discovered that one of my fellow festival goers from that night managed to make a recording of Vaughan’s portion of the evening, and a bootleg album of that performance can be found if one is persistent enough in their Internet search.

Find it yourself! I don’t want to be encouraging bootleg purchases.

Now why am I reminiscing about an evening I had 26 years ago this week?

Part of it is because I didn’t go to the blues festival this year. So anything I would write about the performances or their significance would be second-hand or based off the work of someone else – which some people would take an absolutist attitude toward and use to try to denounce me.

AT LEAST THAT’S the lesson I got from the Chicago Sun-Times last week when they dismissed their television critic (and long-time featurey, fluff writer) Paige Wiser for only watching part of a show, and trying to look up information about what was in the rest of the program that she missed in order to fill out her review.

As though there would have been no problem whatsoever had she confined her review to the part of the show she saw. I doubt that! I wonder if this is a newspaper cost-cutting measure being disguised as an ethical lapse.

So to avoid any similar convoluted accusations against myself, my admission is that even though I enjoy listening to jazz and blues music, I didn’t catch any of this year’s festival.

Although based on the bills I saw for the weekend, I don’t think any of them came close to comparing that night back in ’85 – a year that in my mind was more special for that night than for the eventual championship the Chicago Bears brought to the city come autumn.

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