Today In The Culture, May 9, 2022: Where Will the Tribune Go? | RIP Mike Hagerty | Boeing Bow Blow To Chicago Arts

Billy Corgan’s new neon sign/Photo: Ray Pride

DESIGN

Who Bought The Vintage Orange Garden Neon Sign? Billy Corgan’s Wife

“The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan used to joke to his wife, Chloe Mendel, that if she ever wanted to buy him a present, it should be the neon sign reading ‘Chop Suey’ in bold letters outside Orange Garden restaurant on a bustling stretch of Irving Park Road,” reports the Trib. “‘It was like, “Of course you would ask for something I could never deliver,”‘ Mendel said. But then, suddenly, she could.” Corgan texted via Mendel, “When I lived on Irving Park Road, during the early halcyon days of the Pumpkins circa 1988, I walked past this iconic sign 1,000 times. And I would always take a moment to stop and admire its beauty and connection to a lost and gilded age.” (Purportedly the oldest electric sign in the city, it had not been illuminated for many years.)

Final Landmark Recommendation For Paseo Boricua Gateway Flags

The landmarks commission approved a final landmark recommendation for the Paseo Boricua Gateway Flags on Division at Western in Humboldt Park. A Department of Planning and Development staff report endorsed the designation as a measure recognizing the cultural contributions of Chicago’s Puerto Rican community, the DPD announced in a tweet.

Remnants From Last Days At The Thompson Center

Governor Pritzker’s Chief of Staff Anne Caprara posted photos of a range of leftovers from the last days of the office in the Thompson Center. “Next Friday is the last day an IL Gov’s Office will occupy the 16th floor of the James R Thompson Center. In honor of that I will be using this thread to amplify the things we will miss on behalf of the generations of state employees who occupied these walls. First entry… this,” followed Caprara’s picture of a microwave and a toaster, above which hangs a sign: “Do not turn on the microwave and toaster at the same time. It will blow a fuse.” Also featured: gnomes and gnarled office plants. “I call this the Death Plant. No idea where it came from and no previous administration has been willing to admit to acquiring it.”

Alderman Condemns Bally’s Casino “Switcheroo” At Medinah Temple

Alderman Brendan Reilly condemns an eleventh-hour “switcheroo” to Medinah Temple as the site for the temporary casino, reports the Sun-Times. “We’re already struggling with a major crime problem in this area of River North. To layer this on top… you’re giving the police department an assignment they don’t have the resources to handle… The reason why we have a liquor moratorium is exactly why Medinah Temple is not a great site for a casino. It’s a super-intense use.”

WGN News: “The change in temporary location happened seemingly under the radar in March. The day the change occurred, a donation of $6,000 from Albert Friedman was accepted by Lightfoot’s campaign. Friedman’s company currently owns the Medinah Temple. The city of Chicago has rules in place to prevent companies from using campaign contributions for kickbacks, but there is a loophole.” Bally’s chairman Soohyung Kim “said the city began urging him a few days ago to put a temporary casino in Medinah Temple, 600 North Wabash…. He said he prefers that the temporary casino go just north of the Tribune plant, at 700 West Chicago. The city, however, has said it wants to speed up plans to replace the Chicago Avenue bridge over the Chicago River and believes that would complicate his original plan for a temporary casino.”

Gambling Allowed At O’Hare And Midway

“The law that gave Chicago a casino also gave the developer the chance to install slots at O’Hare and Midway airports,” reports the Tribune. Bally’s Chairman Soohyung Kim said “he is very interested in putting slot machines at the Chicago airports, calling it an ‘intriguing idea’ that could serve as both a marketing tool and potential boost to the revenue stream. ‘I think it has to be done right, in conjunction with the other concessionaires at the airport… We can put a portion of our machine count in the airport. I think that will actually sort of help announce Bally’s presence.'” State law allows “the city’s casino developer to install some of its slot machine allotment at the two airports, so long as the total number of ‘gaming positions’ at all locations does not exceed 4,000. Airport slots are also required to be located in a ‘secured area’ that is past airport security and only accessible to people 21 and older.” Promotion is important to the deal: “Bally’s originally planned something more typical of a casino, but ‘the city said, “No, no. If you’re going to get this license you’re going to have to build something that attracts tourists”… ‘They’re very focused on, actually, the razzmatazz.'”

DINING & DRINKING

Chef Beverly Kim On Shedding Insecurity 

“Charlie Trotter’s was one of my toughest jobs,” Parachute chef Beverly Kim tells Mike Thomas at Chicago magazine. “It was like if Harvard were a kitchen; you were part of this elite club. And there were additional stressors besides the extra-long hours. I had to do a food plate for Charlie every single day at one o’clock sharp, and each day it had to be different… I did it for months, because you didn’t stop until he told you to stop, and many curveballs were thrown. Like, you couldn’t find where he was, or the pastry chef said, ‘You can’t use that fruit.’ So you were constantly navigating how to get it to him. That was part of the culture there, but I just didn’t buy it after a while. It didn’t motivate me. It made me more insecure instead of building me up.”

Greater Chicago Food Depository Expands In Face Of “Staggering” Need

Reports the Sun-Times: “’We doubled the size of our output to make sure that our neighbors had the food that they needed to get by,’ said Kate Maehr, the executive director and CEO of the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which houses and distributes food from its 278,000-square-foot South Side facility to some 700 soup kitchens, food pantries and other facilities across Cook County… The need for food remains ‘staggering’… To help in the battle against hunger, the food pantry announced plans this week to build a new 36,700-square-foot facility, including a commercial kitchen, at the current Archer Heights location.” The facility “will allow the agency to prepare and distribute about 10,000 meals a day—compared with 600 currently.”

Starbucks Accused Of Over 200 Violations Of National Labor Relations Act

“The regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in Buffalo, N.Y., issued a complaint accusing Starbucks of twenty-nine unfair labor practice charges that included over 200 violations of the National Labor Relations Act,” reports CNBC. “The complaint stems from claims made by Starbucks Workers United against the company in Buffalo, where the union organizing effort began in August… The NLRB accuses Starbucks of interfering with, restraining and coercing employees seeking to unionize in various ways… The complaint also notes high-ranking Starbucks officials made ‘unprecedented and repeated’ visits to Buffalo and held mandatory anti-union meetings, noting that leaders, including CEO Howard Schultz, had promised an increase in benefits if workers refrained from organizing.” Dave Jamieson of Huffington Post: “In their complaint against Starbucks, labor board officials say they want either Howard Schultz or executive Rossann Williams to read the notice telling workers what their rights are that Starbucks has been violating.” The New York Times: “Starbucks [will be] raising pay and expanding training at corporate-owned locations in the U.S.—but the changes won’t apply to recently unionized stores, or to stores that may be in the process of unionizing.”

FILM & TELEVISION

Prolific TV Actor And Second City Alum Mike Hagerty Was Sixty-Seven

“Actor and Second City alum Mike Hagerty… was set to film the upcoming season of HBO’s ‘Somebody Somewhere’ in the Chicago area this spring,” writes Mitch Dudek at the Sun-Times. Hagerty was “a Chicago kid who became a Second City improv star before embarking on a long career in film and television… [He was] the son of a Chicago cop who attended St. Cajetan grade school and Marist High School, starred alongside Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell in ‘Overboard’ and had roles on… ‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld.'”

MEDIA

The Twenty-Fourth Global Toast To Harry Caray

Toastmasters Ryne Sandberg and Ryan Dempster will lead fans in raising a Budweiser toasting Harry Caray to honor the twenty-fourth anniversary of his passing. “We will be donating 100% of all Budweiser and Bud Light sales from all Harry Caray’s locations on Toast Day to the World Central Kitchen to help provide fresh meals to displaced Ukrainians. Harry himself grew up as an orphan and throughout his life raised money to support children in need.” The event is at Harry Caray’s Tavern Navy Pier on Thursday, May 12 at 5:30pm. The Score will live broadcast 2pm-6pm. More here.

What Alden Global Capital Gets From Shuttering Freedom Center

Bally’s must buy out the paper’s lease, pay for it to relocate or build a new printing facility, reports Crain’s. “The casino operator is expected to demolish the newspaper’s printing facility to make way for the riverside development.”

Where Will The Tribune Go With No Freedom Center?

“It was kicked out of historic home Trib Tower for Illinois Center, then Alden yanked it out of IC to stick it in leftover space at the Freedom Center printing plant,” notes writer Lynn Becker, pointing to the Crain’s report. “With Bally’s taking over FC, will the mighty Chicago Tribune now be exiled to Indiana?” Crain’s elaborates: “The casino operator is expected to demolish the newspaper’s printing facility to make way for the riverside development… Exactly what comes next for the newspaper’s facility, which houses both its newsroom and its printing operations, has not been determined. Bally’s plans to buy the site along the river from Texas-based Nexstar Media Group, and its proposal points to a pending demolition.”

Marcus Gilmer Returns To Chicago Media

“Marcus Gilmer, former digital editor of the Sun-Times, is returning to Chicago after nine years to join Crain’s Chicago Business as associate managing editor for digital content creation,” reports Robert Feder.

ARTS & CULTURE

Boeing Bow Blow To Chicago Arts

Tanya Palmer, the assistant dean and executive artistic director of Northwestern’s School of Communication says in a release that “Boeing’s move out of Chicago is a real loss for the arts community. During its time here, the company invested deeply in the local visual and performing arts scene and made an important impact on the lives of individual artists, arts institutions and on the rich cultural life of our city. At this time of ongoing uncertainty across the arts industry brought on by the global pandemic, we need more investment in art and artists, not less. During Boeing’s time in Chicago, local theaters, museums and education programs benefited from the aerospace giant’s philanthropy efforts. It’s uncertain how much, if any, the company will remain active in Chicago’s arts scene.”

The Roe Beat

Veteran Supreme Court observer, NPR’s Nina Totenberg tells ABC’s “This Week” that the leak of the incendiary Alito draft that would strike down Roe vs. Wade came from a conservative clerk. “The leading theory is a conservative clerk, who was afraid that one of the conservatives might be persuaded by Chief Justice Roberts to join a much more moderate opinion.” Totenberg added “that it’s ‘very unlikely’ the identity of the leaker will ever be discovered.”

Eight-foot metal gates now surround the Supreme Court to prevent protest or assembly. ABC News: “The protests outside the court’s marble front steps have been largely peaceful, prompting some to question why the new security barrier—reminiscent of the unscalable fencing placed around the U.S. Capitol after the violence of Jan. 6, 2021—is necessary.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell confidently tells USA Today (paywall) that a national abortion ban is “possible.” Summarizes the New York Post: “If the leaked opinion became the final opinion, legislative bodies—not only at the state level but at the federal level—certainly could legislate in that area. And if this were the final decision, that was the point that it should be resolved one way or another in the legislative process. So yeah, it’s possible.”

The Washington Post has a lengthy report, “A 49-year crusade: Inside the movement to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Protests over the weekend were held in front of the home of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Republican pundit Bill Kristol tweeted that this is out of bounds: “Please don’t protest at people’s homes. Please don’t intrude on people attending their houses of worship. Organize politically, be civil civically.” Novelist A. R. Moxon replied: “They’re threatening our loved ones and us with enslavement and death. Ask them to stop that and then we’ll talk about your preferred tactics.” (Commenters replied with examples of the assassination of abortion providers at their churches and in their homes, such as Dr. George Tiller, summarized at the Topeka Capital-Journal.)

The offices of a Madison, Wisconsin anti-abortion group were reportedly graffitied and hit with a Molotov cocktail. The president of the lobbying organization said, “What you’re going to see here is a direct threat against us. Imagine if somebody had been in the office when this happened. They would have been hurt.”

Prosecutors Tracking Digital Traces For Pregnancy-Related Charges

“Digital evidence—including a women’s online search history about abortion—has already been used by U.S. prosecutors trying to bring pregnancy-related charges against women,” reports Reuters. “In a post-Roe world, these kinds of digital traces could become even more salient…Be it location data, social media posts or search histories—online records will carry greater risk if women lose their constitutional right to an abortion… ‘The apps you use, your internet search history and so on – information about you is being collected by third parties all the time,’ said Corynne McSherry, legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation… ‘And if you build it, they will come.'”

Motherboard reports on the apparently widespread practice: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought location data tracking tens of millions of people from a Peter Thiel-backed spy firm; use cases included ‘hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones,’ activity in schools and houses of worship, and monitoring the Navajo Nation… The documents also show that although the CDC used COVID-19 as a reason to buy access to the data more quickly, it intended to use it for more general CDC purposes…. The documents reveal the expansive plan the CDC had last year to use location data from a highly controversial data broker. SafeGraph, the company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data, includes Peter Thiel and the former head of Saudi intelligence among its investors.”(After the Motherboard report, “Data broker SafeGraph… stopped selling location data of people who visit Planned Parenthood and family planning centers… Came after we found you could buy location data of people traveling to Planned Parenthood for $160.”)

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