Good morning, this is The Smoke Eater for April 3, 2021, and you'd better get your business straight.
Quick Hit
* A photoessay * A mash-up * Hot Dogs *
NOTE: It may have been evident from the last story, but I've had a difficult time assessing what to do with The Smoke Eater since its inception a year ago. I’d decided to create a more comprehensive and thoughtful daily feature than what I’d started at another outlet. Longtime readers may remember that product changed radically from its first to final issue as I grew as a journalist.
I'd like to do the same with The Smoke Eater -- evolve it over time as the industry, my career, and circumstances change -- but I'd also like to keep it unique, free, and fair.
Unfortunately, I still have (a lot of) have bills to pay. Getting up every morning at 3am to bang out news briefs, then push for wire services, glorified blogs, and the decaying husk of local news — often for below standard rates (if not for free) — on top of working a bar? It all kind of broke me. And that was before the pandemic.
This weekend I'm publishing something from my Patreon at the insistence of several friends and colleagues…and because last month I got an email from a reader wondering if I was dead.
TLDR: My Patreon is only $1 for tons of photos, photoessays, and random raw reportage.
I'm not sure what the future holds, but I do know that in whatever form it takes, The Smoker Eater will always be mobile friendly, totally free and supported entirely by its super awesome readers. If you want to be super awesome, tip me on Ko-Fi, find me on Venmo, or Paypal, or just subscribe to my Patreon.
April Fool’s Day at Wrigley Field
I started the day off with a long run before dawn.
By the time I got home at 7am, I was frantically refreshing my email in the hope of catching the White House press guidance and sign-up for Vice President Harris' visit to Chicago next week.
For freelancers, getting entry into big events can be cutthroat -- I’d already emailed the editors at the ZUMA wire and said I’d be on this one. They gave me the green light, but any number of things can fall into place and crush that opportunity.
Another more skilled ZUMA wire photographer with better gear and more professional, political, and/or social media clout could undercut me; ZUMA’s editors could “write-in” their name on the “calendar” over in California. The White House Press Office could deny me. The Secret Service could tell me to piss off. The mayor’s office could (do what it seems to do best and) bar local reporters and photographers from the event in order to avoid tough questions and/or unflattering photos. The whole event could be for network, mastheads, traveling press pool. The CDC and/or Chicago Department of Public Health could say the event was exclusively for the fully vaccinated.
This is what being a freelancer is like.
I was reading stories about farm land acquisitions over the last 10 years. For an extra challenge, I decided to battle all the old ladies for a washing machine at the laundromat. The droning thump of the dryers struggling through the morning monotony seemed like a metaphor for something, but juggling a dozen different gigs and chores and suddenly remembering the need to eat breakfast hadn’t left me in a position to figure it out.
The dryers were competing with Univision on the Spanish-speaking side of the laundromat.
“Something something ‘Opening Day!’ Something something ‘Chicago Cubs’ ‘Wrigley Field!’”
Chicago’s mayor had decided to open up Wrigley Field to fans for Opening Day. The mayor had already given a green light to open up fledgling bars and restaurants with vague and haphazard restrictions that put the onus squarely on each business. In a call with bar owners earlier in the week, the mayor’s office essentially told hundreds of bars and restaurants across the city to simply figure it out for themselves.
COVID-19 positivity rates are steadily rising as the total number of tests falls. Public health officials were already grumbling about families gathering for Passover and Easter, cautioning against taking a vacation regardless of their vaccination status. Vaccination rates in Chicago are high, but not as high as they could be in the most at-risk communities. The mayor has blamed all of this on “bad” people who are engaging in things like pub crawls and indoor dining.
(The mayor inked a contract with ZocDoc, sketchy medical appointment software that requires users to input a hell of a lot of medical history in the hope of landing a vaccine appointment at the mass vaccination sites. She’s blamed the lack of vaccinations in low-income neighborhoods on the South and West side on an irrational fear of state-based vaccination programs despite historical medical fuckery in Black communities, and not on the fact that you need a fucking internet connection to schedule an appointment at grocery stores and pharmacies that are rare in the South and West side food deserts, or for the United Center mass vaccination site.)
The Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times were reporting the mayor would throw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field. Attendance would be limited to 10,000, and Cubs fans would be required to wear masks.
Without a doubt, the mayor was creating an idiotic shitshow in Chicago’s Disneyland for drunks, and I wanted a seat. Even if it was in the nosebleeds.
A colleague told me that the mayor was set to throw out the first-pitch around 2pm, but I still wondered if this was worth putting on actual pants.
“I sort of think that her walking in might be a photo op (along with her inside etc.),” they said. “But those are pretty much the only photos I can see. Which I suppose could be useful if Lightfoot does decide to shut shit down [again], but I don't think she will. Even though we're at 500 cases today.“
“It's not the Cubs fault if they shut shit down,” I joked, “It's the irresponsible people! Fuck it, I ain't got shit else to do.”
Because most of my life is spent constantly preparing for whatever 10-ton beast(s) lay just beyond the horizon, my gear was ready to go. I just needed to put on pants.
With the “L” continuing to be an unnecessarily gross clusterfuck, and the CTA’s less than shocking apathy, I took a crosstown bus over to Wrigley. An elderly woman approached me as I was setting up my camera gear on the empty seat next to me.
“Are you a reporter,” she asked with sweetness.
“A photojournalist, yeah,” I replied, showing her the badge around my neck. “It’s an international photo news wire. I take photos, I send them to these guys, and sometimes newspapers buy them.”
“Oh that’s very nice!”
“When it pays.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Time’s just ain’t gettin’ any better for anyone these days.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, maybe for some people, but not you and me. I lived here all my life. You know, 30 years ago, I lived right over there,” she pointed. “Right by the stadium on Clark st. I could hear the baseball games from my window.”
“Is that right?”
“Everything’s changed now. None of it looks like it used to. It makes me sad. My rent used to be $400 a month for a nice 1 bedroom. It just got too expensive. Now I live on the other side of the city, where you saw me get on the bus.”
Her eyes glossed over and faded back. It didn’t take an telepath to see the frown growing from behind her pink cloth mask.
“What’s the biggest change,” I asked. “What’s the one thing that you look at and just can’t believe it, or don’t like?”
“Everything,” she looked up and said through dough eyes and a chuckle. “That damn hotel.” She gestured with her head as the bus pulled up.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I called out to her as we stepped off the bus. “You be safe, OK?”
“Go Cubs, go!” she shouted, squinting her eyes.
There was a disorienting roar coming from the stadium and it took me a moment to place the noise.
It was the crowd. It was a large crowd, a stadium crowd. The kind of crowd you’d hear at any sporting event, be it “Ooos,” “Ahhs,” cheers or jeers. It’d been over a year since I’d heard that sound and it felt alien.
My phone buzzed, and I looked at the message from my colleague: “Mayor Lori Lightfoot gets a big round of boos from fans here at Wrigley Field,” read a tweet from Russel Dorsey, the Sun-Times reporter on the Cubs beat.
“Check for mayor spin on boos,” I scribbled in my notebook.
The mayor’s supporters might argue she’s the most progressive mayor in history, and see no problem in her administration governing via a hybrid of fecklessness and libertarian-focused corporatism. They’re quick to pick fights on social media with reporters who don’t have the time or fucks necessary to give credence to their bullshit. Detractors say she’s trying to avoid public scrutiny by openly attacking local reporters when she holds a rare press conference, and runs to the New York Times to whitewash any looming scandals, or beg for cash from people gullible enough to sink money into whatever dubiously legal scheme is being concocted by the new Chicago Machine this week (or from those already in on it). Meanwhile, the mayor keeps fueling her feud with teachers, stalling any policing reforms in the city council (even her own) as murder rates and car jackings skyrocket. There’s a completely botched rollout of vaccinations, and (of course) good old fashioned corruption indictments of public officials. And, if that wasn’t enough, police shot and killed a 13 year-old at 2am for allegedly brandishing a firearm, and then had the gall to claim #CrimeIsDown.
The Tribune’s Paul Sullivan called this booing of the mayor, “traditional.” It’s not at all inaccurate, but it is a bit disingenuous. A Chicago mayor usually doesn’t piss off every major voting demographic, from cops on the right, to activists on the left (and the runaway subrubanites who swap their red MAGA hats for a blue Cubs cap), but I digress.
Masks were unclipped from the ears of eager fans as they approached the stadium gates only to be stopped by a deluge of new security procedures. Gate attendants grumbled about the mask mandate as a few fans fumbled with the e-tickets on their phones. Police roamed around Wrigley on foot, bikes, horseback, and in cars. Block Club’s Colin Boyle even tweeted a photo showing a CPD officer with what looks like an M4 with a holosight attachment.
I didn’t have a ticket, nor did I have any interest in going inside. I kept my credentials around my chest after noticing a few officers recognize me from my protest coverage over the summer. At one point I was on a knee shooting photos of fans walking through the entry gates when a K-9 unit approached me from behind.
My Beast Mastery skills must have kicked in because the dog began sniffing my ear.
“Hey guys,” I said, pulling my face from the viewfinder and extending a limp hand, palm down.
“What’s up man,” the officer said.
“Same ol'. Just workin’.”
“Yep,” the officer nodded, tugging on his partner’s leash. “Come on.”
The game had only just started, but there wasn’t much time before my next gig. I decided to shoot the iconic stuff that has a better chance of selling instead of the more creative and stylistic stuff that I have fun doing.
That’s how I met Diane Real. She saw me shooting people walking across Clark away from Wrigley and waved a baseball at me. Diane was 53 and lived in Chicago her whole life, she hadn’t been to a Cubs game since she was in high school.
“Something always came up before,” she explained from behind layers of masks and scarfs as a frigid wind blew wisps of hair. “But a year without baseball? It’s Opening Day!”
Diane had caught two balls the players were throwing out before the game started. She and her partner ultimately decided to leave the game early because it was so damn cold and windy.
“Maybe we’ll warm up with hot dogs and beer,” she laughed. Layers of blue and red Cubs gear jostled and shook independently as she reeled back.
I asked her to pose with the balls, breaking one of my own photo rules, because the sight of her with those balls and the Wrigley sign was rather endearing.
Local reportage cast the game as a return to normalcy. People still wolfed down overpriced pub grub and shitty beer, the Nisei Lounge’s banned list still includes Illinois Nazis and last year’s “silly ass” hats, and the Cubs still lost. WGN had a four minute spot featuring Mr. Woo Woo. The Tribune’s 1700-word, six-author piece noted the COVID safety measures, like “pod seating” and masks, alleviated some fears, but the online concession system crashed and left fans and vendors wishing they could just use cash.
When I woke up this morning, I started reading everything else: The Sun-Times had a puff piece about yesterday’s successful relaunch of the Marquee Sports Network (a 24-hour cable channel launched in February of 2020 by the owners of the Cubs, the super rich and pro-Trump Ricketts family), and another story about how Opening Day felt hollow under COVID. Wrigley was capped at 20%, a figure Sullivan joked was a sellout at 10,343, but The Washington Nationals postponed Opening Day after several players tested positive -- a move Barry Svrluga framed as a begrudging sense of duty.
One More Thing...
OK, here's a cute critter video: IT'S TOPI!
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