Summer in our sanctuary city is now on simmer, dialing down to an autumn of what’s next.
So what’s next?
Hmmm.
The latest video of a neighbor being beaten and robbed at gunpoint or a Chicago store ransacked by mobs of masked gangs?
Or, sadly, new busloads of exhausted homeless and this/close to hopeless migrants dumped at Chicago police stations?
Or, tragically, the forever parade of the city’s homeless pitching tents in the city’s green spaces and concrete bunkers?
Or a new anomaly: the lone tent pitched directly across the street from Streeterville’s posh Ritz-Carlton hotel’s private residences.
“It was certainly a first in front of the Ritz: a good-sized, sort of fancy tent astride two large industrial carts, all topped with a large Chicago Fire [soccer] tarp,” said a nearby resident who is elderly and asked not to be identified.
“It was illegally blocking the use of a public way and up against the fence of Schulman Park on Pearson Street, ostensibly across from the hotel in order to use the bathroom facilities.
“I was walking my shelter dog when I called to the inside of the tent, and a woman I didn’t see said she was nine months pregnant. Then, a well-groomed man appearing to be in his 30s showed up, accused my dog of pooping on his tent, swore at me in a salacious manner and told me to get lost when I told him the tent placement was illegal. So I called the police, who were there in minutes.”
No police report was filed, but the tent was gone the next day.
“It’s not unusual these days for people staking out mat space on nearby Michigan Avenue to ask for money, but no tents are erected,” said another source, who lives at the Ritz. “But the tent erected across from the Ritz hotel was a stunner.”
Sure sounds like chutzpah to me.
Bye in the sky!
It’s no secret that the now-shuttered Signature Room with the Skyline View at the top of the old Hancock building has long been the scene of romantic celebrations amidst a boffo city view.
It’s also where former Chicago top cop Garry “The Bronx Bulldog” McCarthy, who is now head of the Willow Creek police department, got down on his knee and popped the question to his now-wife, Chicago attorney Kristin Barnette, affectionately known to him as “The Viking.”
“When Kristin proposes, one complies,” he jokingly told Sneed in 2014, adding: “Look, she saved me when I was having a heart attack, and she takes good care of me. I have finally met my match.” The couple have a son. Blessings.
Dateline: Debategate
There was a lot of “shade” and “incoming” tossed at the “nothing-burger” shouting match known as the Republican presidential debates on Fox Thursday night, but here’s a deck chair that didn’t get tossed out the window.
It’s a safe bet the “No Labels Party,” which plans to launch a third-party candidate if absolutely convinced MAGA man Donald Trump would win the 2024 presidential election if it didn’t, was watching the podium kerfuffle.
And a top source tells Sneed it’s a sure bet GOP podium combatant Nikki Haley is on the party’s watch list…as well as having one eye open to the possibility of anti-Trump podium pundit Chris Christie.
Fame in a small time frame
Not long ago, Cassidy Hutchinson, 26, the nation’s most powerful whistleblower, stemming from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the nation’s Capitol, once described herself on the Internet as “a first-generation college student” when she graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in political science in 2019.
Hutchinson might have served as a summer political intern to several Republican heavyweights while in college and then oh-so-briefly as an employee of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs after graduation.
But here’s the stunner: The young Republican became chief-of-staff to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows approximately FIVE months before Trump’s 2020 election loss!
Sneedlings
Heads up! The Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina church and school, is drumming up a rally for support of the Illinois Invests in Kids scholarship tax-credit program, which includes a five-year tax credit for eligible students who attend non-public schools. “The program will die soon for kids in poor communities because the Chicago Teachers Union argues it takes away money from public schools,” he said. …. Saturday birthdays: Fran Drescher, 66; Johnny Mathis, 88, and Kieran Culkin, 41. Sunday birthdays: Julie Andrews, 88; former President Jimmy Carter, 99, and Randy Quaid, 73.
