If you think about it, a wonder ‘the Bean’ doesn’t get tagged more often

It got more than its share of national news attention – somebody tagged “the Bean.”

Somebody felt compelled to 'leave their mark'. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

As in that gigantic bean-like structure in Millennium Park covered in highly-polished steel plates that reflect everything just like a mirror. Seven people now face assorted levels of criminal charges for graffiti that was applied to the structure – which officially is known as “Cloud Gate.”

YET EXPECTING TO find anybody who actually uses that moniker for the structure is rare. You’d probably have to find some clown of a tourist who also wants to eat at a Lou Malnati’s pizza joint – then fold over his slice of pizza pie just like they do in “Noo Nawk.”

So somebody thought they’d get their kicks by using white paint to tag the sculpture with the legend “35^th Crew.”

As though they want everybody to know THEY were the ones who dared to deface the sculpture that has become one of Chicago’s primary tourist attractions. Mostly people who just can’t believe that anybody could think a gigantic lima bean (or is it a pinto bean) could have artistic aspirations.

Of course, they didn’t really want people to know it was them. They just wanted to be able to snicker every time they walked by it at how brave and daring they were in tagging the sculpture – and how stupid the rest of us were in not knowing it was them!

BUT NEWS REPORTS indicate that off-duty security guards managed to see some of the vandals as they were leaving Millennium Park – and were able to identify them by the articles of clothing they were wearing at the time.

Which led to two people now facing felony charges of criminal damage to property and also a misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass to state land. As in they were Millennium Park in the early hours of the day at a time when decent people ought to be at home and in bed – or at the very least cuddled up next to a loved one.

Instead of like these clowns, who apparently had up to five accomplices now face misdemeanor charges AND may find their own list of charges added on to as prosecutors wish to turn this into the equivalent of a ‘crime of the century’ – someone having the nerve to deface the very face of Chicago itself.

This part of the park left undefaced

Perhaps Judge David Navarro summed it up best when, while setting bond for the accused, said, “I take offense at these offenses.”

OF COURSE, THE vandalism wasn’t limited strictly to ‘Cloud Gate.’ The nearby Cancer Survivor Wall, which is meant to be a tribute to former Chicago “first lady” Maggie Daley, along with several area benches and walls in Millennium Park, also were hit with the “35^th Crew” label.

Which most likely will now go to extremes to avoid ever being detected doing anything. They probably now won’t want people to ever discover exactly who, or what, they are.

Because in all likelihood, any public disclosure of their identity would merely result in guilt, by association.

As in being connected to what may quite possibly be the stupidest act of public vandalism ever in Chicago history. One that actually required municipal maintenance crews to have to spend the days leading up to Independence Day polishing up ‘Cloud Gate’ to make it all shiny and reflective once again.

SO THAT, FROM a distance, looking at the sculpture enables one to see the skies and the clouds (hence the name).

My own reflection in the surface of 'the Bean'

I just wonder now how long will it be before somebody else feels compelled to try to vandalize the sculpture. Some people truly have nothing better to do with their time.

Think about it, the sculpture has been in place for just over a decade. It’s almost a wonder the ninnies of our society aren’t trying to tag ‘the gate’ on a regular basis.

That is, unless one counts the thousands of touristy twerps who feel compelled to leave their grimy fingerprints all over the sculpture every time they decide to check it out up close-and-personal.

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How un-American can we get; spraying cemetery swastikas for Memorial Day

I feel sorry for those cemetery work crews in Glen Carbon – an Illinois-based suburb of St. Louis – who had to spend their Saturday sweating it out in the summer-time heat scrubbing swastikas that were spray-painted on head stones at a local cemetery.

Who in 'right' mind wants to bring this back?

For officials with the Sunset Hill Cemetery found headstones vandalized Saturday morning, and they wanted to be sure the mess was cleaned up prior to Monday.

THE LAST THING that anybody wanted was the symbol of Nazi-era Germany defacing the grave markers – particularly those of people who might have served in the military back in the World War II era.

On the day we pay tribute to those soldiers, sailors, air corps and marines who fought in the many wars our nation has taken part in, it is sad that we have some nincompoop out there who thinks it’s funny to deface graves with the symbol of the “enemy” whom we fought against.

Either that, or perhaps we have an idiot who thinks we fought a war against the “wrong” enemy! Believe it or not, there are those with enough screws loose that their vision of what “America” is all about would have had us aligned with the Axis Powers of old.

And the odd thing is, many of them have enough of a militaristic attitude that would have them believe such a viewpoint is what this country ought to be about.

SOMETHING I’D THINK the people who actually fought in that particular war would find particularly repulsive. But then again, the surviving veterans of World War II are such that they’ve reached their 90s in age – if they’re even still alive.

Meaning many of us don’t have a direct memory of what that conflict was about. Which is why we get those endless studies showing young people of today don’t comprehend Hitler or the Holocaust. Maybe they think such stories are more examples of “fake news,” because, after all, nobody could have been that delusional or vicious in their behavior.

So yes, I’m bothered by the stories that came out of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the vandalized cemetery – although it also seems some houses near the cemetery also got tagged with the swastika. Which almost reminds me of that old “All in the Family” episode where someone tagged the front door of Archie Bunker’s bungalow with a swastika – and he tried to cover it up with a U.S. flag, only to be found out because he hung the flag on the door backwards!

Happening in real-life now as it happened on TV then

Some 1,300 military veterans are buried in that particular cemetery, and officials plan a noon-hour ceremony on Monday to pay tribute to those individuals.

SO IT WOULD seem that somebody was hoping to make a visual statement – one about what they think would “Make America Great Again” perhaps? And if you think I’m exaggerating such a viewpoint, consider the anonymous rants to be found on the Internet.

I literally found one person who thinks that such vandalism is to be expected because of the disrespect being shown by, “governments taking down and destroying monuments and history.”

As though not considering someone like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee to be heroic is the same thing. The actual comparison would be someone lighting crosses ablaze at the remains of old “colored” cemeteries.

On the positive side, police in Edwardsville actually came up with security camera video that captured grainy images of the suspected vandal in the area at the alleged time of the incident.

THERE EVEN HAS been an arrest. Although just what kinds of criminal charges that individual will face remains to be determined. I’m pretty sure, though, that there will be some people willing to make a martyr out of the individual – whose idea of a political “statement” involved running around in the dark with an aerosol spray can of black paint.

Don't see where swastika fits in

Personally, I’d rather remember on this Memorial Day the individuals who fought against such ideals that these nitwits are superficially supporting.

It’s like some people want to keep refighting the old wars – and they’re counting on our apathy as a society to permit them to have a chance at victory.

Without it, our “American” ideals (which are nowhere as narrow as they want to make them out to be) are what will continue to prevail!

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Bullets or rocks; they both can be scary

There is a portion of Interstate 57 just across the county line from Cook that always manages to put a chill in my spine.



Would you climb high above the industrial Southeast Side of Chicago to fling rocks down upon the Skyway? If you would, you're nuts! Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.



It is the place where Stuenkel Road passes over the Interstate. There’s nothing unique about the road itself, it is just a country road with nothing around it (unless you get excited by the nearby Governors State University campus). Completely rural and uneventful a place.

EXCEPT, …

I still recall an incident from my police-reporter and court-reporter days just over two decades ago when a crime occurred at that site.

Local kids who were bored and had nothing better to do thought it would be fun to go to the overpass and fling rocks down upon the cars driving at 55 miles per hour (most likely faster) on the interstate.

Their idea of fun, and what some people at the time tried to dismiss as a stupid prank, became a crime when one kid threw a chunk of concrete that hit the hood of a truck, then bounced into the windshield.

AS I RECALL it, the shattered glass managed to decapitate the driver. He died there at Stuenkel Road, and it is a miracle in my mind that his vehicle didn’t manage to take out a few other drivers.

I couldn’t help but recall this moment (which I covered as a police reporter and later as the trial of the teen-aged twits took place in Will County court) when I heard the reports about the incident along the Chicago Skyway that caused Chicago police to shut down traffic and even had them asking Indiana state troopers to help with cutting off traffic in the Hoosier state).

The incident got reported as gunfire coming from a bridge that passes over the Skyway route, with motorists endangered. Hence, police were anxious to keep as many automobiles as possible off of the toll road until they could gain control of the incident.

The area Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper had the headline 6 cars shot on Skyway on the front page of their Thursday editions.

BUT, …

That same newspaper used its website on Thursday to publish the headline Skyway was shut down by rock throwers. Along with a brief story about how a three-mile portion of the Chicago Skyway was affected by people with nothing better to do than fling rocks at passing cars.

Chicago police told the newspaper that their initial call of “shots fired” were later determined to be rocks flung that hit about a half-dozen cars. All the TV-types who got all worked up Wednesday night about gunfire seemed to slink away and say next to nothing when it turned out to be rocks. Even though personally, the latter can be even more deadly.

All of which means some things don’t change. Despite the passage of a couple of decades, it seems some people think it is amusing to fling objects at automobiles, which truly is something I don’t comprehend the point of.

I USED TO have an aunt and uncle who, along with two cousins, lived in the East Side neighborhood (within walking distance of Calumet Park) where we could see the Skyway above us, just a few blocks to the south.

Walking around the neighborhood there invariably involves taking a stroll underneath the road. It is a part of the non-effete nature of the working-class neighborhood. Yes, I realize the neighborhood is a bit rough (which is why those particular relatives now live in the area around Valparaiso, Ind.).

Yet I obviously don’t see the point of the activity of the people who did this (police as of Thursday afternoon didn’t have anyone in custody. Whether they know who they’re looking for is a different question).

It is one of those things that I must admit, whenever I find myself driving along I-57 and passing Stuenkel Road, I find myself thinking about that truck driver and wondering what could have become of his life – had some area kids not been bored.

I ALSO WONDER how this incident will turn out. Because I recall in the Will County case, the judge ultimately found them guilty of a lesser charge so that they would only have to serve a couple of years in prison – even though their victim died.

That was a move that never sat right by me. Personally, I’d like to think that if there really is a “Chicago Way” of doing things (use your best Sean Connery accent imitation when reading that line), that it would involve cracking down as harshly as possible on anyone who ever gets arrested for this incident.

Maybe nobody died Wednesday. But some forms of “fun” need to be cracked down upon to make sure other people learn how stupid they are. Although I must confess that there is a part of me who thinks the ultimate (and appropriate) punishment for these people might have been if they had fallen from their perch above Chicago with a perfect perspective of the Illinois-Indiana state line.

Because that’s quite a climb above ground. At the very least, the fall might have knocked some sense into them!

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