Mondays with Mike: Lolla and NASCAR

The good news is Lollapalooza, the mega-music festival that brings hundreds of thousands of fans to Chicago over four days, is over.

The bad news is that the City just signed a deal to hold Lolla for the next 10 years. (And, next year, we’ll also have a NASCAR race downtown that will shut down Grant Park for two weeks. Between that and Lolla, the park will be largely off limits to the public for a month over the summer next year.)

You may remember that eight years ago I blogged about my annoyancewith Lollapalooza.  Well, I’m eight years crankier. Each year there’s a different uniform of sorts, with the general trend of young women wearing less and less every year. Glitter is the constant. And Lollapalemmings still travel in packs and they still are oblivious to their surroundings, regularly blocking sidewalks and crosswalks. Helicopters and ambulance sirens are nearly constant.

But it brings in money and fills the hotels and yada, yada, yada. It also takes a huge swath of public parkland out of commission for weeks between preparation and cleanup. And selling access to a public facility that taxpayers have paid for to a private entity, in principle, is hard to swallow. On balance, though, I’m willing to live with it. We’re pretty close to Grant Park so we feel the inconvenience more than people who live in other parts of the city. If it’s good for the city, OK I guess.

Ugh.

There’s another aspect to it that’s a function of our times: During any big gathering now we cross our fingers that there will not be some kind of mass shooting. Of course, so does the City of Chicago. And that was plenty evident on Sunday at the Hilton Towers on Michigan Avenue, across from Grant Park. Beth swims there and I use the gym, and we went Sunday afternoon, the last day of Lolla. After my workout, a sauna and a shower, I got dressed and came out into the lobby to meet Beth and Luna and walk home together.

As I turned to drop my locker key off at the desk, I was greeted by a jolting image. A Chicago police officer was at the desk. Which wasn’t itself a big deal. The big deal was that in addition to his service revolver, an assault-style rifle was clipped to bullet-proof body armor. The thing was terrifying just to look at.

A second officer, similarly equipped, joined him. They chatted with the desk attendants and then headed outside to a terrace that is attached to the health club.

The club and terrace are on the eighth floor, so it affords a wide view. My guess is that officers were perched on buildings up and down Michigan Avenue—and probably at hi-rise condos at the end of the park, too.

I’m elated to say there was no incident–other than probably a fair number of ODs that likely necessitated all those ambulances and sirens.

But, Mike, Mike, Mike: For the last time, make plans now to be out of Chicago for the next Lolla.