Woo! Protests! Woo!

     The latest day of discord in the streets of Chicago over the shooting death of Laquan McDonald took a sharp turn into the surreal at City Hall today when the Coalition for a New Chicago was holding a press conference in front of the Mayor's office. The Coalition's goal is to gather support for a bill that would allow for Mayor Emanuel to be subjected to a recall vote. While the conference was going on, a man wearing a Cubs uniform jumped in front of the microphone to add his two cents:

     Hold on a second, that guy looks awfully familiar. Could it be?

     Holy Mackerel! It's Ronnie Woo Woo! According to Mary Ann Ahern of NBC5, Mr. Wickers(his actual surname) said in part that "[the] Mayor should go" No word yet on whether or not any Woos! were uttered during the statement.

Walking in the Sky: Surreal Chicago Week Day 5

     Back on November 2 (which was the night before the Red Bull Air Force made their appearance in Chicago), Discovery Channel broadcast a two hour television special talking about Nik Wallenda's attempt to add Chicago to his list of daredevil walks (if this sounds slightly familiar, that's because I've mentioned it before). In the days leading up to the walk, the hype train reached incredible speeds, and several articles were put out (like this one) that elaborated on some of the details of the walk. Since the actual walk only took up the last half hour of the show, they needed to throw in quite a bit of filler, so they started out the show by talking to such assorted personalities as his family, his parents, and even Pastor Joel Osteen. Yeah, Joel Osteen(you just can't make this stuff up[though to be fair, Wallenda did mention his faith several times, but it still seems like they were reaching a bit]). Then the time came for his walk. I'll elaborate more in a second, but to start off with, let's take in the walk looking straight down from Wallenda's perspective.


     Feel dizzy yet?  Here's what happened. First Wallenda crossed between one of the Marina City towers and the Leo Burnett building, going over the Chicago River in the process, and walking 451 feet across the river. After that, he took an elevator down to the ground, walked back to the other side of the river, then walked between the two Marina City towers, blindfolded. Yeah, you read that right, his plan was to walk 581 feet off the ground completely blind. They don't call him a daredevil for nothing.  After he safely made it across on his second walk, everybody let out a big sigh of relief, and Nik Wallenda was able to put yet another feather into his daredevil cap.

The Golden Throat is NOT toast: Surreal Chicago Week Day 4

     You've seen him amongst the throngs at Wrigley to take in a Cubs game(perhaps in the Bleachers). You've seen him at the Toast to Harry Caray. You've seen him at the Cubs Convention. Hell, I've even seen him walking down Clark Street at 11:00 on a Saturday night. But wherever he goes, he's always wearing a well-worn Cubs uniform with two words on back. "Woo Woo".


     Ronald Wickers first started attending Cubs games in the late 1940s. By the end of the 1950s, he had started his own unique cheer. By the 80s, he was firmly entrenched in the annals of Cubs Lore. In 1983, Bill Veeck asserted that "The best way to appreciate Ronnie is when he's about 100 feet away and not in your ear. All throughout the glory years of the 60s(even the heartbreak of '69), and the Bleacher Bum era of the '70s, Ronnie was there.  when some of his family members died in the 1980s, he all of a sudden found himself homeless without a stable job.  Between 1984 and 1990, he even attended Cubs games off of the grace of fellow fans.  In the 1987 season there was a period where he stopped showing up at Cubs games, and some loyal fans began to worry that he had died.  Eventually Ronnie contacted a local news organization to confirm that he was still very much among the living.


     Since 1990, Wickers' life has taken a minor upswing.  He has found several sources of income, be they washing windows in the Wrigleyville neighborhood, selling Streetwise magazines, and even working a job set up for him by a friend.  In 2001, he sailed to new heights when he sang "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" at Wrigley, joining such luminaries as Bill Murray, William Petersen, and (cough)Mike Ditka.  Ronnie is still a persistent presence at all things Cubs to this day, retaining his position as the city's Biggest Cubs Fan.

Meteors, Skydivers, and Cans: Surreal Chicago Week Day 3

     Back on November 3, there was a strange sight flying over Chicago.  Some people thought they saw a meteor.  Others thought they saw a fireball descending from the night sky.  Here's a video, maybe you can see it for yourself:

     As you can see, the apocalypse is not upon us(so stop the mad dash to the doomsday shelters).  In fact, what it was that night were 3 members of the Red Bull Air Force doing a jump.  The Red Bull Air Force is a team of skydivers who tours the country doing different performances and showing off their death-defying leaps.  They were in Chicago to do a promotion for the Red Bull Art of Can exhibit that ran in Millennium Park earlier this month.  From the 7th through the 16th, the public was welcomed to a special indoor facility on the Chase Promenade where they could see different works of art by various artists.  The catch?  All the art had to be constructed out of empty cans of Red Bull.  Even with the somewhat interesting materials requirement, there were still several very ambitious and interesting pieces that came out of the exhibition, such as a deer head, a swing set, a jeep, and a cobra, all made out of cans of Red Bull.  Both the exhibition and the skydive went well, and certainly made Red Bull's contribution to the city this month very surreal.

Spider Dan: Surreal Chicago Week Day 2

     The 1980s in Chicago. A time of Chicagofest, big hair, NO DISCO, Da Bears(and their Superfans), and many other things. One of the more surreal Chicago events from that decade came in 1981. First, on Memorial Day, a gentleman by the name of Dan Goodwin scaled the Sears Tower using (among other things) suction cups in an effort to call attention to the challenges of rescuing people from high-rise fires(a peril he knew firsthand from watching the infamous MGM Grand fire a year earlier in Las Vegas). His climb took seven hours, and aside from a few attempts by the Fire Department to stop him, he reached the top of the tower and unfurled the flag to honor his father.

     Six months later Dan came back for Veterans Day. After having just climbed 56 stories in Dallas 4 days earlier, this time he had his sights set on the 100 story John Hancock Center. He started out, this time in a wetsuit made to resemble a Spider Man outfit. As he went, he swung across the building on a rope in order to elude firefighters who were trying to catch him with a window-washing machine. The firefighters then switched to using fire hoses in an attempt to blow him off the side of the building, while at the same time using axes to break the windows of the Hancock in order to deprive Goodwin of handholds. In addition to all of that, they also stuck poles through the windows to dislodge him. Finally, Mayor Jane Byrne stepped in to stop the madness and allowed Spider Dan to finish his climb unimpeded. Of course he was arrested at the top of the building, but he raised awareness anyway.

     Over the intervening 33 years, Goodwin has climbed several more buildings, including the CN Tower, the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and even a building in Chile this past March, but Chicagoans will remember him as the man who took on the 2 tallest buildings in the city-and lived to tell the tale.

George Streeter-The Man, The Myth, The Squatting: Surreal Chicago Week Day 1

     War Veteran. Squatter. Captain. Gun-runner. Pioneer. Criminal. Land owner. Scoundrel. Liar. All of these words(and many others) could be used to describe George 'Cap' Streeter, an eccentric Chicagoan from the late 19th Century who inadvertently played a large part in helping create the Chicago we all know today.

     According to his own self-aggrandizing legend, the whole thing started in 1886 when he ran his boat (named the Reutan) aground off the shore of Lake Michigan. Finding that the boat was impossible to extricate from he sandbar, Streeter just left it there. At this time, the Lake was still a popular dumping ground for all sorts of waste produced by the city(a practice that had started in the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire).  This, combined with the natural accumulation of silt, meant that eventually Streeter's boat was connected to the mainland of the city. By this time Streeter had organized the "United States District of Lake Michigan" around his wreck, refusing to recognize any outside authority, and inviting other squatters to join him. In 1889, he moved to another ship that had run aground in the dump, naming it the Castle. This touched off a period where Streeter and his fellow squatters would periodically fight off interlopers, be they dismayed wealthy land owners and industrialists in a court of law, or constables with gunfire and pots of boiling water(he beat the rap on the gunfire on account of the fact that buckshot wasn't considered to be a deadly weapon).

     By 1892, the land that made up Streeter's squatter village was valued at approximately $300,000(which is equal to roughly $7.9 Million today). The following year, the District had accumulated quite the underworld element, attracting prostitutes, the homeless, and other 'undesirables'(somewhat reminiscent of another infamous red-light district). That same year, Streeter took advantage of the Colombian Exposition to make some more money.  He re-floated the Reutan(the original boat he ran aground in 1886) and used it to ferry folks back and forth from his District to Jackson Park(the site of the fair). In the aftermath of the fair, there were many subsequent attempts to remove him, all of which were fought off either in the courts or in person. Streeter maintained his right to the District until his death in 1921(even though he moved to East Chicago 3 years earlier).  Despite all the bad blood he'd had with the city through his life, the mayor of Chicago(who at that time was the infamous Big Bill Thompson) allegedly attended his funeral.

     The actual facts of Streeter's life are a bit different. While he did serve in the Civil War, he wasn't a captain. He had acquired his boat in an attempt to take up a gun-running operation to Latin America. Coming upon the lakefront, he saw an opportunity to make a quick(and illegal)buck. He obtained permission from a landowner to dock his boat on the shoreline, and from there plotted to have the shoreline filled in so as to obfuscate the land titles, letting him "claim" land that was owned by(amongst others)the estate of William Ogden(Chicago's first mayor), Potter Palmer, and the Chicago Title and Trust Company. He then sold plots of land to other squatters, even going so far as to keep detailed records of collected property taxes. Eventually, Streeter claimed to own 186 acres of land right off of the lake. In reality, much of that landfill had actually been created for the building of Lake Shore Drive. To reassure skittish investors(as well as pressure landowners into paying him off) Streeter would periodically stage 'invasions' where he would lead a band of squatters onto his land with shanties. They would set up shop, the landowners would quickly send their goons after them, and then Streeter would complain that his rights were being infringed by the big, bad landowners. This process repeated itself until Streeter was convicted of manslaughter in 1902. After being sent to prison, Streeter eventually died at the age of 84 in 1921 from pneumonia.

     While many of the facts of Streeter's life rest on the fence of him either being a folk hero or just a low-rent thug, what cannot be argued is his impact on the city. After all the squatters were evicted from Streeter's 'District', the developers moved in and started building. The building never stopped, and today the site of the John Hancock Center and the surrounding neighborhood is known as Streeterville.

City of the Surreal

     This is Chicago.  We're known the world over as the Second City, City of Big Shoulders, Skyscraper Capital of the World, a town of legendary corruption, as well as many other monikers.  But among all those things, we've also had some pretty weird stuff go down in the past 177 years.  Some of it I've written about(Al Capone's Vault, fisticuffs at Wrigley, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Disco Demolition Night) but some of it we haven't.  Over the next 7 days, I'll be taking you on a tour of some of Chicago's more surreal stories, events, and people. These stories range in setting from the 1880s to just 2 weeks ago, and other times in between.  But whenever they took place, they are all surreal in one way or another.  Stay tuned for the first entry later today, as well as entries throughout the week.  Cheers!