Day 193: The Night that Disco Died

     Some say that Disco jumped the shark after the release of Saturday Night Fever in November of 1977.  Others would say that Disco didn't sign off for good until Disco DAI bid farewell to the genre with 24 hours of Donna Summer in the mid 80s.  But no matter who you are, you can certainly agree that the events of July 12, 1979 rendered a death blow to the genre.

     That night, the Chicago White Sox were playing a game at Comiskey Park against the Detroit Tigers.  Ever the showman,  Bill Veeck decided that this was the perfect time to cash in on the growing distaste with the disco genre.  And if you were going to stage an anti-disco rally, well there was simply nobody you could call who would be better suited to the job than Steve Dahl.  Steve Dahl was the 24-year-old Chicago DJ who had most recently worked at WDAI before they switched to an all-disco format.  This might be a good time to quickly detail the Two Rules of Radio: Number One, you WILL BE fired multiple times on your career. But don't fret, because Number Two, if you have any kind of a talent or following(preferably both), you'll be back on air in no time.

     Back to the story now. Needless to say, Dahl soon left Disco DAI, but he soon found a new home at WLUP. Meanwhile, Bill Veeck came up with a rather, um, novel idea for the promotion. Fans could come to the gates bearing nothing except 98 cents(to symbolize the station that Dahl was now with) and the disco record of their choice, and they would be granted admission to the ballpark. From that point, the plan was to play the first game of the doubleheader, then take all of the condemned disco records, put them in a huge crate in the middle of the field, call out Steve Dahl to say some words, and then blow the conflagration sky high. That was the plan, but (obviously) that plan did not pan out.

     First off, the White Sox were expecting the promotion to attract a few thousand extra fans to the game. Alas, word spread like wildfire, and eventually more than 50,000 people showed up at the gates(some unconfirmed eyewitness reports put the number at closer to 90,000). The sheer crush of people overwhelmed the gatekeepers, and so hordes of fans started streaming into the park unmolested. As the game was full already, all of the latecomers were standing around, making things quite crowded. Needless to say, many members of the crowd were under the influence of many substances, which always throws a wrench into the works. Also, all of the latecomers were holding disco records that had not been deposited.

     So, the first game finishes, the field is cleared, Steve Dahl rolls up in a Jeep, decked out in full military garb, and proceeds to rile up the already rowdy crowd to an even higher degree. Dahl then blows up the records, and all Hell breaks loose. The drunken latecomers want to be in on the destruction as well, so they take their disco records and rain them upon the field.  To further complicate things, what little security staff the Sox had on hand was down by the entrances attempting to keep even more people from coming into the already overstuffed ballpark.  So in the absence of any supervision, the fans hopped the fence and rushed the field.  By this point, chaos was winning the day as drunk, stoned, and disorderly fans were swarming Comiskey Park(including a 21-year-old actor named Michael Clarke Duncan).  At some point, the fans are beseeched to return to their seats in a vain attempt at restoring order-made by none other than the one and only Harry Caray(who was still 3 years away from moving to the Cubs).  Finally, the Police(no, not those guys) come in, close the entrance ramps to the stadium from the Dan Ryan, and clear the field.

     By this point, the combined forces of the explosion and the riot have completely destroyed the field, and the game is postponed.  The next day, the game is officially ruled a forfeit(as of 2013, it is still the most recent American League game to be forfeited).  34 years later, the game still goes down in history as one of the most infamous promotions of all time, and it all happened, right here in Chicago.

Day 180: Keep the Music playing-The story of Knuckles Way

     So as you may or may not remember from our post about House Music, one of the main progenitors of House Music was a Chicago DJ by the name of Frankie Knuckles.  But just who is Frankie Knuckles anyway, and how did he become the Godfather of House Music?  Frankie Knuckles was born in 1955 in New York City, and grew up in The Bronx.  Eventually he would start to study textile design in Manhattan, which is when he started to work as a DJ, playing tracks at a club called The Continental Baths with another DJ.

     In 1977, he got the opportunity to come play in Chicago when The Warehouse opened up its doors.  It was here where Knuckles received his most universal claim to fame.  In his time at The Warehouse, the venue became known for its unique styles of music, so much so that the music they played was referred to as House Music, as in short for The Warehouse.  Over time, that designation of House Music became inextricably related to the raw, drum machine edits that Knuckles himself was pumping out of The Warehouse's sound system every night.

     After leaving the Warehouse in 1983, Knuckles started a new club called The Power Plant.  4 years later, that club closed as well, and Knuckles went into freelance work.  For the past several decades, Knuckles has continued to work as a DJ, as well as releasing several records.  In 2005, he was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame for his contributions to the genre.  But in a move of more local interest, August of 2004 saw the city of Chicago designate a stretch of Jefferson Street that intersects the former location of The Warehouse as Honorary Frankie Knuckles Way.

Day 189: An old-style peristyle.

     In 1917, Edward Bennett(Daniel Burnham's partner in writing the Plan of Chicago and the eventual designer of the Buckingham Fountain) designed a peristyle that was located on the corner of Michigan and Randolph(right across the street from the library, as well as right next to the downtown terminus for the Illinois Central Railroad).  This was designed in the style of the Ancient Roman tradition of building a fence-like enclosure of columns to surround a garden or some other additional element to their homes.  However, the Chicago peristyle was constructed using concrete, which turned out to be a major drawback.  Concrete can be quite susceptible to the elements, and therefore putting a concrete object on the lakefront will damage said object over time because of the lakefront weather.  A combination of the deterioration of the peristyle and the need to build a new parking garage underneath Grant Park led to the razing of the peristyle in 1953.

     Fast forward 50 years, and construction is underway for Millennium Park.  In addition to covering up a the scar of the train yards with parkland and a train station, several different installations were needed to occupy the park.  It was at this point that O'Donnell, Wicklund, Pigozzi and Peterson Architects, Inc. stepped in and designed an almost-exact replica of the 1917 peristyle.  Dedicated in 2002, this structure pays tribute to the donors who helped make the park possible via inscriptions at the base of the columns.  Additionally, this time the structure was made out of limestone, so this means that the Millennium Monument(along with The Bean and Crown Fountain) will be around to greet many more generations of visitors to Chicago.

Day 187: A Midsummer(and Chicago) Classic

     In 1933, the World's Fair came to Chicago.  Yes, the city hosted another one after 1893, and yes, there will be an entry about that forthcoming.  But back to the matter at hand.  With the attention that a World's Fair garnered, Arch Ward (the sports editor for the Chicago Tribune) had an idea.  What if all of the best players from baseball could come together on one night for one game, and see which league would come out on top.  And with that, the MLB All-Star Game was born as a concept.  Not just that, but the very first one was held right here in town at Comiskey Park, which proved to be a victory for the American League.  The game returned to Comiskey Park in 1950, after stopping by the home field of the Cubs in 1947.  Wrigley had it in 1962 again, Sox Park got it in '83, and Wrigley got it again in 1990(it was during a rain delay at this game that a local college student by the name of Thomas Lennon saw an episode of Rescue 911 playing on the televisions.  Years later, he would take this germ of an idea and evolve it into the popular satire Reno 911).  In 2003, the game saw its 70th Anniversary, and the game came back to Chicago to celebrate, this time making a stop in the newly-renamed U.S. Cellular Field.  As of now, that is the most recent All-Star Game to have been played in Chicago, though who knows what the future may hold.

Day 186: Comiskey's Palace

     By 1910, the Chicago White Sox had been in their current ballpark(which stood on the site of a field that had been erected for festivities surrounding the 1893 World's Fair) for 17 years, and the small size(only 15,000 seats) was starting to constrict them.  So, owner Charlie Comiskey purchased the site of an old garbage dump located on 35th and Shields to function as the team's new ballpark.  Upon its opening, the 32,000 seat stadium was for a time known as the "Baseball Palace of the World".  The park had been designed with the input of one of the Sox' most prolific and well-known pitchers, making the field very hostile to hitters(a tale borne out in the fact that no player ever hit 100 home runs or more in the entire lifetime of the park).

     The park hosted the World Series three years in a row between 1917 and 1919.  First in 1917, the Sox defeated the New York Giants four games to two.  In 1918, the Cubs came down and borrowed the park, since it's seating capacity at the time was larger than Wrigley Field's was.  The next year, the White Sox played the Cincinnati Reds in the 1919 Series.  The Sox proceeded to drop the Series 5 games to 3(it was a 9-game set that year), which ushered in the Black Sox scandal that dominated much of the off season.  The fallout of that scandal left the White Sox decimated, and neither they nor their park were much of a factor in baseball again until the 1930s.

     But once that time came, the park shot to prominence once again by hosting the very first All-Star Game, the brainchild of a writer with the Chicago Tribune.  The field wound up getting lights in 1939, and by 1950 the All-Star Game came back.  This time, the biggest highlight was Ted Williams hitting a wall and ending his season.  The field saw the World Series for the final time in 1959.  Ten years later, the stadium saw the addition of a stop on the newly-constructed Red Line.  In 1979, the stadium witnessed a public execution(as well as a riot) when Steve Dahl marched in and declared Disco to be dead.

     By the late 80s, the ownership of the White Sox wanted a bigger stadium.  Under threat of the White Sox moving to Florida, the Illinois legislature(headed up by Jim Thompson[who is no relation to Big Bill Thompson]) voted to give money to build a new park(after they stopped time in its tracks).  In 1989, construction began on a new stadium across the street, which opened in 1991.  The stadium was demolished that same year, though the site of home plate and the foul lines are emblazoned on the parking lot of U.S. Cellular Field.  One final note: in 2005, the team started out their victory parade by taking a spin around the block, paying tribute to the former site of the park, and all of its important contributions to sports history.

Day 185: The Scourge of Black Metropolis

Author's Note: The inspiration for this entry comes from an article that ran in the Chicago Tribune a few days ago.  For more on Two-Gun Pete, check it out.

     In the mid-1940s. the 5th District on Chicago's South Side was home to roughly 200,000 people and was the crime capital of the city, leading all other districts in robberies, rapes, and murders.  The area was rightly known as the "bucket of blood".  In the middle of all this lawlessness(and at times fighting a seemingly one-man war against it) stood a hard-boiled cop by the name of Sylvester Washington.

     Of course, today he might be more well-known by his nickname of Two Gun Pete, the deadliest police officer to ever walk the streets of Chicago.  According to his own claims, he gunned down 12 criminals between 1934 and 1951 and made 20,000 arrests during that same time period.  Once the city council saw all of the crime that was befalling primarily Black areas of the city, they requested that several black policemen start to step up their enforcement in those areas.  What nobody could have predicted was that they had just set an officer upon Black Metropolis(the place that we know of today as Bronzeville) who was "the meanest, cruelest person that I have ever seen in my entire life" (as his third wife said of him).  This reputation of being a cold, uncaring man preceded him.  So much so, that all he had to do to clear out a street was announce his presence, whereupon the street would be a ghost town in seconds, the prostitutes would hide out, and any wrongdoers would willingly walk unescorted to the local police station.

     Of course, any cop with a legend of Washington's level must have had some pretty distinctive sidearms, right?  Of course he did.  Washington wore two pearl-handled .357 Magnums on a belt, with the handles positioned perfectly for the quick draw.  He began carrying them after his first take down of a perp, where he almost emptied out his gun in the fracas.  As the years wore on, Washington's legend and celebrity grew.  When the Brooklyn Dodgers played the Cubs with their second baseman Jackie Robinson, Washington was there to patrol and keep the peace.  Finally, Washington's actions caught up with him in 1951, when a grand jury asked him the intuitive question of how a cop making $3,600 a year could afford a $40,000 house.  In October of the same year, Washington retired from the force.  He died in 1971, but at least one of his guns live on in the possession of the daughter of one of Washington's friends.

     Overall, the legacy of Two-Gun Pete is best captured by legendary music producer Quincy Jones:  "Every weekend we watched a legendary black cop named Two-Gun Pete who carried two pearl-handled revolvers shoot black kids in the back in broad daylight, right in front of a Walgreen's drugstore — the kids dropped like potato sacks," Jones wrote in his autobiography. "We fantasized about making Two-Gun Pete pay."

Day 182: The Iceman Cometh-Snowpocalypse 2011.

     On January 31, 2011, the city of Chicago was in full-blown crisis mode, poring over weather reports, radar, and consuming forecasts like an addict.  All of this was in response to a massive storm that was coming across the country and had already dumped large amounts of snow in localities throughout the country.  In response to this, the city started to mobilize its fleet of trucks, so as to avoid a similar disaster to what happened in 1979 when Mike Bilandic claimed that the weather was under control(a claim which ended up costing him his job).  The next day, the preparations continued in earnest, with many businesses and institutions opting to close(including the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, and the rest of the Museum Campus[which meant that if people wanted to see the remains of Bushman or the other stuffed animals, or even grab a hot dog outside, they were plum out of luck{though they could see the Sundial, Copernicus statue, Kosciuszko statue, Man with Fish, and Kelpies just fine}])  Along with that, the decision was made by the school district to close down all schools for the first time since the 1999 blizzard came to town.

     By 4:30 PM on February 1, the storm had reached Chicago and attained blizzard status.  The wind gusts were approaching and exceeding 35 miles per hour, and weather spotters were beginning to diagnose white-out conditions on the North Side of town.  Later on that day, Lake Shore Drive was shut down, albeit slightly too late for some motorists, as many people were stuck in their cars for up to 12 hours waiting for assistance to arrive.  There were some places up on the North Side where the placement of the high-rises in relation to the Lake made the streets into quasi-wind tunnels, restricting movement to a snail's pace when walking against the wind.

     Beyond that, there were several other affects that the storm had.  Several of the colleges and universities throughout the city closed their doors on February 2, and the storm also did damage to Wrigley Field(home of the Cubs) and the switching mechanisms on some of the Red Line tracks.  The storm also forced the cancellation of mail delivery the next day, as well as the cancellation of Amtrak trains leaving the city and over 1,300 flights out of O'Hare and Midway.  When the snow finally cleared, the city had experienced its third highest snow-fall total ever, but suffered no lasting damage from the Great Blizzard of 2011.