Chicago police warned of multiple armed robberies of food delivery drivers in McKinley Park on the Southwest Side, most recently late Monday night.
In each of the robberies, drivers arriving to the addresses to deliver food were approached by one to two people with guns who demanded money, food and phones, police said.
The robberies occurred at the following times and locations:
3700 block of South Wood Street around 11:40 p.m. Dec. 16
3700 block of South Wood Street around 4:30 p.m. Nov. 27
3500 block of South Hoyne Avenue around 2 a.m. Nov. 7
3700 block of South Paulina Street around 10:30 p.m. Oct. 22
3700 block of South Wolcott Avenue between 11:30 p.m. to 11:50 p.m. Oct. 21
The robbers have used a red Ford SUV, gray minivan and or gold Chevrolet Tahoe, police said.
Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Area 1 Detectives at 312-747-8384 or submit an anonymous tip at CPDTIP.com and use reference number P24-1-200.
Back in the 1950s, part of a bygone era when freshmen were ineligible to play and even well-established head coaches owned regular houses on regular streets in regular neighborhoods, college football still had something of an Indiana-Notre Dame rivalry.
And even if, in truth, it hardly was a rivalry at all — the Irish always beat the Hoosiers — at least the schools still played each other fairly regularly.
But the 1958 game, the sixth matchup of that decade, would be the last of its kind until 1991. And if you can believe it, there hasn’t been one since. It took the College Football Playoff to bring No. 10 Indiana and No. 7 Notre Dame together (7 p.m. Friday, Ch. 7, ESPN) for only the second time in 66 seasons.
Half that long ago — 33 years — coach Bill Mallory, quarterback Trent Green and the Hoosiers bused 199 miles up Highway 31 to take on coach Lou Holtz, quarterback Rick Mirer and the Irish and lost 49-27. Those teams would end up in the Copper and Sugar bowls, respectively, the concept of a 12-team major-college playoff beyond the imagination.
The Hoosiers have had only five winning seasons since then — one-fifth as many as the Irish — but this time can match the state heavyweights with a best-in-school-history 11-1 record. Also, this time they’re flying. Times have changed even at IU, which recently threw $72 million at much-buzzed-about coach Curt Cignetti to lock him in long-term.
It will be frigid at Notre Dame Stadium. Snow might fall on the first on-campus game in the playoff’s 11-year history. In a college football postseason that has more hype than any before it, it will be a rousing night no matter the weather nor the fact that — after 66 years of the Irish and Hoosiers being football strangers — a good many Indianans don’t know their Moose Krause from their George Taliaferro.
There are reasons to believe the game could set a tense, exciting tone for the playoff by coming down to a close finish. We can boil it down to a pair of them based on, broadly speaking, each team’s greatest offensive strength.
The Irish run the ball ruthlessly. Quarterback Riley Leonard punishes defenses with 5.8 yards per carry, and backs Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price come in at 7.1 and 7.3. As a trio, they average three rushing touchdowns per game. But there’s only one defense in all the land that has given up fewer than 1,000 yards on the ground this season, and guess whose it is? Indiana’s. Its average of 70.8 yards surrendered leads the nation by a country mile.
“You’ve got to be aggressive [and] establish a new line of scrimmage when you’re running the ball,” Irish coach Marcus Freeman said. “That’s a mindset and mentality we have to have.”
The Hoosiers throw the ball with extraordinary effectiveness. Quarterback Kurtis Rourke has completed better than 70% of passes and heads into the playoff ranked No. 1 nationally in efficiency rating (181.38). But guess whose defense ranks No. 1 in both completion rate allowed (48.7%) and efficiency (94.10)? Notre Dame’s.
It’s strength vs. strength both ways. Is there anything better?
Each team is partly defined by three terrible hours, too.
In just its second game, Notre Dame lost to Northern Illinois 16-14 in what endures as the upset of the season.
“I would be lying if I said I don’t think about that loss,” Freeman said.
Indiana took a 10-0 record to Ohio State and got drilled 38-15, with breakdowns and gaffes that were entirely uncharacteristic.
“I think our guys have learned from that and will be better in a hostile environment than we were on that particular day,” Cignetti said. “At the end of the day, it’s just football. The game’s going to be won or lost between the white lines.”
There’s no better place for the best two teams in any state to run into each other.
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pa. — UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione will return to New York City Thursday after waiving extradition in Pennsylvania.
Mangione could appear in front of a judge in New York City for arraignment on first degree murder and terrorism charges in just a matter of hours.
The 26-year-old did not speak to reporters as he arrived at a Pennsylvania courthouse for his extradition hearing. NYPD detectives were on hand to ensure Mangione is transported back to New York City for his arraignment. Mangione is being brought back to New York without returning to prison in Pennsylvania.
Mangione is expected to be taken straight to central booking at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where he will be photographed before the arraignment, which is expected to happen late Thursday or early Friday, law enforcement sources told CBS News New York.
Mangione is then expected to be held at Rikers Island, where he will be in isolation and protective custody because of his high-profile status, sources said.
Mangione expected to face federal charge as well, sources say
Two sources familiar with the matter told CBS News he is also expected to be charged with a federal crime in the case.
“The federal government’s reported decision to pile on top of an already overcharged first-degree murder and state terror case is highly unusual and raises serious constitutional and statutory double jeopardy concerns. We are ready to fight these charges in whatever court they are brought,” Manhattan prosecutor-turned-defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement Thursday morning.
“As alleged, this defendant brazenly shot Mr. Thompson point blank on a Manhattan sidewalk. The Manhattan D.A.’s Office, working with our partners at the NYPD, is dedicated to securing justice for this heinous murder with charges of murder in the first degree. The state case will proceed in parallel with any federal case,” the Manhattan DA’s office said in a statement.
The New York Times was first to report the expected federal charge.
What is an extradition hearing?
Extradition is the process by which one state (or nation) surrenders an individual who has been accused, or convicted, of a criminal offense outside of that state’s territory to the state where the offense occurred so the individual can face justice in that state, after the state requests it.
An extradition hearing is the legal proceeding in which evidence is reviewed to determine if there is probable cause to grant the extradition request.
By waiving the hearing, that review of evidence is waived, meaning they can proceed with necessary steps to face trial where a person has been accused.
What if Mangione contested extradition?
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday she had a plan — and a warrant — in place if Mangione did not waive extradition.
“When that happens, I will send that warrant to the governor. He has told me he will sign it immediately and the extradition will proceed,” Hochul said. “He may waive that, there is word he may waive and come back on his own. But I’m ready to bring him back here and make sure that justice is served to someone who had the audacity to gun down any New Yorker, I don’t care what their title is, with that brazen move on our streets, must result in severe consequences.”
“The benefit is he gets his New York case to start. We already know that Pennsylvania has said they are not going to move forward with their case until the New York case is completed, and so this means that once he’s here, he can actually be arraigned and the case can begin with respect to his New York charges,” explained New York Law School professor Anna Cominsky.
Mangione’s life behind bars
While Mangione was being held in Pennsylvania, he received dozens of emails and pieces of mail following his arrest last week at a McDonald’s in Altoona, CBS News New York has learned.
He also had three visitors — his attorneys — including Friedman Agnifilo, who, before she became his attorney, said in an interview his best defense would be to plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
Mangione faces murder, terrorism charges
Mangione was indicted Tuesday on 11 charges, including first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism, in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4 in Midtown Manhattan.
“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock, attention and intimidation,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, adding the killing was “intended to evoke terror.”
Among the evidence revealed in the indictment were the words “deny” and “depose” written on shell casings found at the scene, and “delay” written on one of the bullets. These are viewed as a reference to a phrase used by insurance industry critics — the “three Ds of insurance.”
Authorities have also recovered a document roughly two to three pages in length in which Mangione allegedly expressed frustration with the health care industry.
Pat Milton and
Robert Legare
contributed to this report.
Ali Bauman
Ali Bauman joined CBS News New York as a general assignment reporter in 2016. Ali is a proud millennial who embraces social media for storytelling to bring news to a new generation of viewers.
It’s 6 PM on the Monday before Thanksgiving and Nick Zettel is standing at his desk. He sports blue glasses and a fading denim jacket with four Chicago star pins as he welcomes the residents tuning into the monthly, virtual zoning meeting. The chief of staff to Alderperson Daniel La Spata spends the first few minutes of the call describing the First Ward’s zoning process for new attendees. Zettel has overseen the ward’s zoning process since La Spata was first elected in May 2019. He’s an urban planner, a past Chicago United for Equity fellow, and a Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance member who teaches zoning at DePaul University.
I first met Zettel when I was an urban planning graduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago. Zettel, an alumnus, came to speak to my class. I got to know him more as a constituent and First Ward resident, and when I went to work as a zoning administrator in the 33rd Ward running a similar, albeit slightly different, community zoning process, he was on a very short list of people to call for questions and advice.
Zoning is a key tool that urban planners have at their disposal to administer how land is used. Different categories govern the kind of use (residential, business, commercial, manufacturing) and intensity of the use. “Density” is a measure of that intensity, signifying the number of units in a building. A single-family home is less dense than a three-flat or a West Loop skyscraper with a few hundred apartments. Together, use and density determine what can be built and what kinds of businesses can operate on a given piece of land. Land is treated as a commodity, meaning that how it’s used, what can be built on it, and what surrounds it impact its price. While the urban planning background that La Spata, Zettel, and a number of First Ward staffers possess is helpful, they would argue that it’s not a particular skill set but, rather, a set of values like a commitment to small-d democracy that is important to ward-level zoning processes. They try to advance policy via zoning decisions, educate constituents about what is and is not in their ability to control, incorporate feedback from residents about how to reach more people, and reflect annually (and over the course of an entire term) about the cases they encountered.
Alders enjoy a great deal of power over land use and development in their wards, often called aldermanic privilege or prerogative. You won’t find it in the city’s zoning code or mentioned on a zoning-change application. The Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards decides whether to advance zoning proposals to the full City Council, which has final approval, but generally an alderperson’s opinion has sway over a proposal’s fate (will it be deferred into parliamentary limbo or emerge from the committee with a “pass” or “do not pass” recommendation?). When longtime Alderperson Walter Burnett, recently installed as the committee’s chair and representing the 27th Ward—which often leads in zoning-change requests citywide—was asked about his leadership approach, he responded, “I want the people to have a voice. I don’t know every nook and cranny of every neighborhood. And when I say the people, I mean the alderman.”
One of the first big storms of Burnett’s tenure has been a test case for recent reforms aimed at eroding prerogative and moving long-deferred developments containing affordable housing units to the full City Council or even administrative approval. Somewhat ironically, the “inclusionary application” in question is a two-building Sterling Bay project near the infamous Lincoln Yards site that includes up to 124 affordable units. Thanks to Burnett’s maneuvering at the December 11 City Council meeting, which followed a Kafkaesque December 9 committee meeting the project remains alive (and may even advance) in spite of local Alderperson Scott Waguespack’s opposition.
“Development and capital are like water, in a way. You can just let it run completely over a community—eroding it entirely—or you can channel it and guide it in productive ways.”
Moving west from Lincoln Yards, La Spata’s First Ward includes parts of Logan Square and West Town. Over the past quarter century, swaths of these community areas have seen residential and commercial tenants displaced by rising rents and new developments, historic preservation efforts, demolitions and deconversions, and efforts to deter those displacement-inducing practices. There are also community members (and neighborhood groups), renters, condo associations, and homeowners who felt both listened to and ignored. What’s undeniable is that parts of Logan Square and West Town have been gentrified, many of its previous inhabitants have been displaced, the cost of land is through the roof, and there’s a dearth of affordable housing.
La Spata defeated incumbent alderperson Proco “Joe” Moreno in February 2019 and was inaugurated that May. “No one comes into office in a vacuum,” La Spata tells me. It’s a Friday morning in early October, and the alderperson, Zettel, and I are seated at a long table in the center of their office. “There is always some kind of a zoning process that existed before you got there, so there needs to be a respect for what was there, even as you build around it,” La Spata says. In the first days of his term, developers inundated the office with zoning change requests. Zettel recalls somewhere between 30 and 50 cases on his desk (more than many wards see in a year). A staffer in another ward office told Zettel the development community was “testing” them—burying them in paper and bad proposals.
Among First Ward residents, there was a genuine desire to rebuild trust given what Zettel describes as an “everything goes” approach to zoning under Moreno. Some neighborhood groups requested La Spata reconsider several zoning changes Moreno had given a green light to, while another group of residents approached La Spata and demanded the office declare a six-month moratorium on zoning changes altogether. La Spata opted against a moratorium given the volume of cases they saw. Instead, Zettel interviewed zoning staff in several offices including the Second, 32nd, and 35th Wards about “tips of the trade” like identifying “demolition upzones,” a type of speculative zoning proposal where an existing multiunit building is replaced with one that has the same or fewer units leased at higher rents or sold as condominiums.
Zettel realized the ward couldn’t “push the goals of building more affordable housing with a one-size-fits-all community process.” Instead, he began to advocate internally for a process that was more responsive than rigid. The ward adopted step-by-step procedures that most new zoning-change inquiries follow, such as a required intake form, but La Spata reserves the right to handle proposals differently. For example, the office will always recommend proposals for 100 percent income-limited housing.
Before he was an alderperson, La Spata says he often felt that unless someone belonged to an established community group’s development committee “your opinion didn’t matter” or “you only got a peek behind the curtain at the tail end of the zoning process.” That alienating feeling informed the ward’s “First Look” zoning meetings. He wanted First Ward residents to weigh in early on rough drafts of proposals. “We’re bringing you in so your perspective can inform this. It doesn’t matter whether you live next door, a mile away, or if you’re part of a particular zoning group, your opinion on this matters,” La Spata says. He’s fond of meetings where “the developer puts together an A-B test of a zoning change, not just ‘should it be nothing or should it be this?’”
Ahead of meetings, First Ward staff distribute flyers to the 100 closest buildings to the proposed site. At meetings, applicants present their proposals while Zettel moderates and asks questions of the development team that residents have sent to the ward office ahead of time or that virtual attendees put in the chat. Zettel might explain an obscure zoning term an applicant’s attorney used, clarify that ward offices don’t issue demolition or building permits (the Department of Buildings does), or remind attendees that the office can’t express a preference between rental versus condominium units. Zettel also shares a feedback form with two broad questions: “What do you like about this proposal?” and “What would you change about this proposal?” If feedback responses are low, they’ll distribute flyers again.
Several weeks after the First Look meetings, Zettel forwards the collected comments to one of 13 community groups for evaluation. Zettel then compiles everything and discusses each case with La Spata, who decides whether to hold additional meetings or make a recommendation.
The process has had room to evolve over time, and the pair credit ward residents for innovations like suggesting the distribution of flyers to the impacted area before meetings, keeping zoning meetings virtual, and simulcasting and archiving meetings via Facebook Live. These changes, La Spata says, aim to make the process more democratic and less exclusionary. A Boston University research study of 97 Massachusetts cities and towns found in-person zoning meetings were dominated by older men opposed to new housing. The First Ward meeting I attended in September had roughly ten people on the call, and the video of that meeting has been viewed more than 700 times. The recording of a November 25 meeting had almost 500 views.
“There’s a certain privilege in being able to be thoughtful and considerate about how zoning is happening, “ La Spata says. “I firmly recognize there are communities across Chicago that would love to have the level of development interest that the First Ward does. I try to keep that in the back of my mind while also recognizing that development and capital are like water, in a way. You can just let it run completely over a community— eroding it entirely—or you can channel it and guide it in productive ways.”
One of the ways they try to guide it is through policy goals, like encouraging the construction of granny flats and coach houses and expanding areas in the ward where they’re permitted, preserving affordable housing, reducing parking, and encouraging development near transit. Zettel also produces an annual State of the Ward report that shares data, case studies, and zoning trends in the ward and citywide.
The Milshire Hotel, a single-room occupancy building at 2525 N. Milwaukee, has sat vacant for years after a real-estate developer purchased the property in 2014. For decades, the Milshire provided affordable housing for low-income residents of Logan Square. Credit: Eric Allix Rogers, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 / Flickr
You can build a majority of alderpeople with an interest in “community” input on zoning matters. The First Ward’s approach to zoning is just one of a handful used by alders. The level of accessibility, engagement, and community involvement in the process varies from ward to ward. Almost a decade ago, Alderperson Carlos Ramirez-Rosa’s 35th Ward developed the Community-Driven Zoning and Development (CDZD) process, which has received attention from organizations like Local Progress and Democracy Beyond Elections. It’s also in use in Alderperson Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez’s 33rd Ward (where I worked for a year and a half) and has recently been adopted by Alderperson Julia Ramirez’s 12th Ward. In addition to community input, the CDZD approach gives community organizations a substantial role in the process and offers specific guidelines to which both zoning-change applicants and community zoning meetings must adhere—like placing large, detailed zoning notice signs at the property in multiple languages and providing translations at meetings.
Alderperson Matt Martin’s 47th Ward, which sees some of the highest rates of development and zoning requests in the city, provides applications to neighborhood groups and chambers of commerce for review and requires applicants to contact occupants of adjacent buildings (not just property owners). Applicants must also meet with the 25-person Zoning Advisory Council, composed of ward renters and homeowners who provide nonbinding feedback.
Some, like Fourth Ward alderperson Lamont Robinson and 21st Ward alderperson Ronnie Mosley, direct an applicant to schedule a meeting with the alder and bring relevant materials required by the city’s zoning-change application form. Far-northwest-side alderperson Jim Gardiner and west-side alderperson Christopher Taliaferro use their websites’ “development” pages to highlight completed developments, not their process for prospective ones. Others, both those with ward websites and those whose web presence consists mostly of social media and newsletters, provide little direction or instruction, making it difficult to discern how potential zoning changes are handled. (If you want to learn more about your alder’s zoning process, your ward office might be the best place to start.)
The barriers to building more housing—particularly affordable housing—in the First Ward, Zettel says, are tied to real estate and finance. Even before construction costs and interest rates skyrocketed over the past few years, the city’s inclusive zoning ordinance and existing federal affordable housing programs weren’t meeting Chicago’s affordable housing needs. Zettel points to a recently approved zoning change at 1342 W. Ohio as an example of what a ward office can do to promote affordability in this environment. The proposal first came to the ward as a single-family home, but through community conversations and a new ordinance to reduce parking and increase density near transit, it evolved into a new spin on the vernacular West Town six-flat, which earlier zoning code overhauls had made illegal. It’s not technically income-limited, he says, but it will be relatively affordable. “Do I think those units will be more affordable than a three-flat condo or a single-family home over time? You better believe it.”
That won’t happen in every case though. Developers frequently decline to add additional units to or remove parking spaces from their projects, Zettel says. In areas where land costs are high, it can be quite lucrative for a developer (and their financers) to build fewer units or even single-family homes by seeking exceptions to the zoning code or using a lot’s existing zoning. Putting “circuit breakers” in the zoning code, Zettel says—like banning single-family homes near transit—could deter that outcome.
While a growing number of progressive aldermanic offices are building and refining participatory zoning processes, Chicago remains 50 frankensteined limbs with conflicting approaches. These conflicts can be complex, messy, surreal, and personal. They play out on our blocks, lead to fights on Next Door, and concern the fate of shuttered institutions where we learned, laughed, loved, lived, and prayed. It can be difficult to accept that speculative market forces control the future of the places we have been shaped by, feel we own, or once did own. If we can’t control the future of these places, or the market that does, we expect that someone—our leaders and our city—must.
During his early days in the ward office, Zettel says he’d lose sleep over what a ward office could do in the face of frustrating structural forces like speculation and global capitalism. Over time, he accepted that it’s just not possible to make an impact at that scale. “Regardless of whether you like it, that’s what we’re working with. That’s the regime,” he says. He found peace thinking about where an impact can be made. “We can do the things that ward offices are best set up to do: inform and educate our residents, shape what we can, make sure there’s a seat at the table for everyone, try and figure out who are we missing, and bring this forward in the best possible way.”
More in NEWS & CITY LIFE
The news you should know in the city you love.
City and state officials are pitching data centers as the economic driver of the future—but at what cost?
A Jeremy Allen White lookalike contest revs the engines for Chicagoans.
Sharon Waller, the water district’s first water engineer, plans to make a splash.
The neighborhoods with the most bloodshed need adequate medical services.
This crisis has shattered so many families, including mine. If more people support survivors, we could begin to solve the problem.
The November school board election attracted high turnout and diverse perspectives.
Illinois hunters harvested hearly eight percent more deer during the firearm deer season than during firearm season last year.
Relatively good hunting weather likely helped, but I also wonder if the rise of rifle use may have helped with the spike.
Here is the word from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources:
SPRINGFIELD – Hunters in Illinois took a preliminary total of 82,496 deer during the seven-day 2024 Illinois firearm deer season that concluded Dec. 8. Comparatively, hunters harvested 76,494 deer during the 2023 firearm season.
The preliminary harvest for the second segment of the 2024 firearm season Dec. 5-8 was 27,835 compared with 22,883 deer harvested during the second part of the 2023 season.
The preliminary harvest for the first segment of this year’s firearm season Nov. 22-24 was 54,661 deer.
Pantone is drunk on dumb bitch juice if it thinks some color called “Mocha Mousse” is the vibe entering 2025. No color is more now than that Gak green. You know the one: it’s like if Slimer squeaked out a nice, oozy shart or the Toxic Avenger had visible body odor. The color percolated in the zeitgeist all year, like when the nail polish brand Essie dropped Main Character Moment as part of its spring 2024 collection. Then in May, Charli XCX had a wall painted the shade in Brooklyn to tease her forthcoming album brat,and within a month that rancid fart color was everywhere. Pitchfork Music Festival even used it as part of this year’s tripped-out, uncanny valley branding before announcing its time in Chicago was over. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: it was the year of radioactive green.
Since 1999, the Pantone Color Institute has picked a color of the year, supposedly less as a trend forecast and more as a response to what the world “needs.” Earlier this month, it announced 2025’s color is a blushy brown. (For 2024, it picked something called “Peach Fuzz,” which is a soft orange like a bellini mixed with rosé and might be the official gang color of wine moms.) On its website, Pantone describes Mocha Mousse as embodying “relaxed elegance.” The company’s executive director, Leatrice Eiseman, told TIME it’s “genderless” and “authentic”—a color that addresses a need for “harmony.”
But there’s nothing neutral about so-called “neutrals” like Pantone’s creamy mahogany; they’re defined by what the dominant social order considers least offensive. Mocha Mousse is basically a sadd color—one of the limited drab (aka “serious”) tones permitted by 17th-century Puritans—that’s been rebranded with luxury language. By emphasizing all the things the color sidesteps—things such as gender and artifice—Pantone reveals its desire to soothe the anxieties of people who fit neatly into a techno-fascist system of authentication that leaves everyone else vulnerable. Radioactive green is everything Mocha Mousse is not.
There’s nothing timeless or elegant about this green. It’s a symptom of chaotic 90s revivalism—a color embedded deep in the childhood nostalgia of anyone born between the late 1970s and early 2000s. One of Nickelodeon’s flagship shows was the sketch comedy/game show You Can’t Do That on Television, which it acquired in 1981 and regularly featured “sliming”—unleashing a deluge of green goo on someone as an act of humiliation and celebration in equal measure. Dripping neon ooze became synonymous with the brand and leaked into other Nickelodeon shows, like Double Dare. Using countercultural aesthetics like gross-out humor and rock ’n’ roll, the network reached its cultural zenith in the 90s. The antiauthoritian stamp of the underground is in the visuals, soundtracks, and plotlines of shows such as The Adventures of Pete & Pete, The Ren & Stimpy Show,and Rocko’s Modern Life. Even if you weren’t a kid who had cable at that time, there was a sense of disgusting deliciousness and free-spirited abandon that you associated with that green.
The color was for unlikely heroes. It made you stronger, braver, cooler, and street smarter, like the ooze that made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it was used to market the decade’s greatest sugar waters. In 1987, Coca-Cola’s Hi-C rebranded its Citrus Cooler as Ecto Cooler to capitalize on the success of the Ghostbustersfranchise. The drink had a tangy, unplaceable flavor and something to do with the character Slimer; as a child, I quietly thought of it as his urine because that seemed a more plausible (and funnier) explanation for the taste than anything resembling fruit.
In 1997, Coca-Cola tried to compete with Pepsi’s Mountain Dew by launching another citrus-inspired hit of glucose: Surge. To give it extra zing, the soda used maltodextrin—then popular amongst bodybuilders—and it was marketed as loud and energetic. In one commercial, teen boys clamor like a frenzied pack of zombies across an obstacle course in the middle of an urban street made of abandoned couches to, as the voice-over says, “Feed the rush.” In another, they slip and collide their way down a hallway slicked with soap and water in a competition for the blessed beverage. The same year Surge launched, Gregg Araki released Nowhere, the final and arguably best-known installment of his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy—three 90s movies that focused on teen alienation and underground culture. Nowhere’s poster was the same radioactive green.
Charli XCX is no stranger to Araki (she’s appearing in his next film), and Billboard cites the title cards of his 2007 film Smiley Face as part of the inspiration for brat’s cover. She told Vogue Singapore: “I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong. I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture—why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad?”
That other cultural behemoths, like Essie and Pitchfork Music Festival, were already off to the races with neon green shows Charli didn’t set the trend; she was on trend. But Charli did give the trend language that amplified its reach: It’s for brats. Chaos agents. People whose existences call attention to something others find uncomfortable. Like Mocha Mousse, neon green is not gendered. In fact, green has emerged as the color of choice among parents who are foregoing gender reveals. It’s also abundant in nature, which is what Pantone emphasized when it picked a similar, albeit more subdued green for its Color of the Year in 2017. But it’s that extra hint of neon—that bonus squirt of mellow yellow—that makes the green we’ve been seeing everywhere feel plastic or alien, and that’s precisely why people like it.
Having a fake or foreign quality speaks to anyone trying to celebrate a cyborg or outsider existence—whether that’s one conferred by choice, force, or some combination of the two. For example, the U.S. should be mortified to be a country where it’s easier to kill an insurance company CEO than it is to access care for a debilitating spinal condition. And yet it’s us, the people who have to fight regularly with the architects of this system or forgo health coverage altogether—which is to say, most Americans—who are regularly embarrassed. We know a hero when we see one: he’s a guy named Luigi, and he wears a radioactive green hat and shirt when he goes adventuring with his brother Mario. Why can an insurance company delay, deny, or depose lifesaving care to policyholders, but when a policyholder says “delay, deny, depose” to an insurance company it results in jail time? Why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? This country slimes too many of us in humiliating ways every single day, so the slime color has gotten popular in a celebratory way. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times: it is slime time.
We’re encouraged by plans announced this week by Advocate Health Care to build a $300 million hospital on the old U.S. Steel South Works site in the South Chicago neighborhood.
Advocate officials said the 52-bed hospital is part of a $1 billion investment that also includes expanding outpatient care facilities.
That’s just the kind of thing the South Side needs.
“Over the next 10 years, we hope to change the trajectory of health outcomes on the South Side,” Advocate Trinity Hospital President Michelle Blakely said. “We are striving to create health and wellness opportunities in a community that has been underserved.”
Another plus: The hospital will occupy 23 acres of the 400-acre former South Works site, sharing the massive parcel with the planned new Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park.
The new Adocate will be built north of 81st Street, west of the Lake Shore Drive/U.S. 41 extension.
“We’re going to build a new model of care that is designed to prevent and better manage those common conditions that contribute to those shorter life expectancies,” Advocate Health Care President Dia Nichols said. “A new model that keeps people out of the hospital, that meets them upstream before they become patients in the hospital.”
We do wish the South Side, particularly the Southeast Side, were gaining an additional hospital out of the deal. Once the new facility is completed, the health care provider plans to demolish 205-bed Advocate Trinity Hospital at 93rd Street and Oglesby Avenue and replace it with green space.
Trinity has been a medical institution on the Southeast Side for more than a 100 years. With the kind of money Advocate seeks to throw around now, the leave-behind should be some kind of health care facility that can continue to serve the Calumet Heights and South Chicago communities, rather than simply a park.
Also, the hospital at South Works will feature 36 surgery beds, four ICU beds, eight observation beds, a four-bed dialysis unit and an emergency room with 16 bays.
Why build a smaller hospital? Blakely said the current Trinity averages only around 71 patients at any given time.
“Hospital beds are highly underutilized on the South Side. Only 50% of hospital beds on the South Side are being used,” Blakely said. “That is why we’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars in outpatient care, community health and wellness services.”
The city and the South Side deserve an improved health care network. Here’s hoping Advocate delivers.
With so many personnel changes at City Hall, there seems to be a grueling game of musical chairs underway that has created instability and will likely result in serious setbacks down the road.
Some officials needed to go, including Mayor Brandon Johnson’s longtime communications director Ronnie Reese, who was shown the door amid sexual harassment allegations and complaints that he created a toxic workplace.
Then there are the staffers who step down by choice, as Brandie Knazze says she will do at the end of the month when she hangs up her hat as the commissioner for the Department of Family and Support Services.
Institutional knowledge and expertise are hard to come by. That’s why the ouster of valued city staffers sometimes looks plain bad. That’s the case in Raed Mansour’s departure.
Mansour’s days apparently were numbered the minute he dared to disagree with Dr. Horace Smith, a longtime member of the Chicago Board of Health and Johnson ally.
After Mansour pushed back on Smith’s questioning of the necessity of an air monitoring program in late October, Mansour was pushed out, according to emails shown to Sun-Times reporter Brett Chase.
Mansour, the city’s top official investigating air pollution and extreme heat, was respected by community members who were looking forward to installing 140 air pollution sensors across the city.
The sensors, which detect fine particle pollution and nitrogen dioxide, could be key in identifying how air pollution can significantly fluctuate in low-income communities of color.
But because Mansour was forced out, the project has been put on hold. There are plans to move forward with the initiative, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Olusimbo Ige told Chase. The question is when. The longer the delay, the longer Black and Brown communities will suffer the consequences of environmental injustice.
Mansour’s resignation was an unnecessary blunder that has produced more mistrust. Parting ways with people who are dedicated to improving Chicago because of a minor beef won’t clear the air but will only further muddy the administration’s reputation and the future of many city residents.
The generational impact and enormous and lasting magnitude of World War II is such that nearly eight decades after VJ Day, there are still “new” stories to be told in the movies, stories that went largely unnoticed at the time and only in recent years have received their due.
Such is the case with writer-director Tyler Perry’s “The Six Triple Eight,” which pays tribute to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Women’s Army Corp unit of color to serve overseas in World War II. About as far removed as he could be from the “Madea” shtick, Perry delivers a rousing and well-filmed story that doesn’t shy away from cornball aspects but soars on the wings of the inspirational true-life stories that wrote this important chapter in American history.
Based on a 2019 article in History magazine by Kevin M. Hymel, “The Six Triple Eight” faces a bit of storytelling challenge at its very core, as this is the story of the hundreds of brave and determined women who … sorted mail. Hardly the stuff of action-movie heroics, but in the scene-setting buildup, Perry does a fine job of outlining the vital nature of this task.
In 1945, front-line troops and their loved ones back home were going months and months without receiving mail, due to a backlog of some 17 million pieces of correspondence. With traditional supply lines exhausted to the breaking point with more urgent concerns, it’s left to the Six Triple Eight to train for and perform the seemingly impossible task of processing rows of warehouses and hangars filled with mail within six months.
Thanks to Perry’s sure-handed and straightforward direction and the performances by a first-rate cast led by Kerry Washington and Ebony Obsidian, with a number of star-power supporting performances helping to bear the load, “The Six Triple Eight” will remind you of “Hidden Figures,” another powerful film about Black women who had to overcome institutional racism and sexism as they performed an invaluable service that was vital to the course of 20th century American history. (Rather fittingly, “The Six Triple Eight” was filmed largely at Tyler Perry Studios — which was built on a former Army base outside Atlanta — with other scenes shot in England.)
Ebony Obsidian plays a teenage U.S. soldier sent to England to help tackle the backlog of mail.
After a harrowing and moving World War II battle sequence filmed in dark and blood-stained visuals, we shift to a series of scenes in Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, in 1942, where 17-year-old Lena Derriecott, a real-life figure played beautifully by Ebony Obsidian, is happily involved in a friendship-verging-on-romance with the jaunty and handsome Abram (Gregg Sulkin), a white Jewish boy, despite the disapproving looks and comments of the locals. You can tell by Abram’s unbridled enthusiasm about becoming a combat pilot that he won’t be returning home — and sure enough, he’s shot down and killed not long after being shipped overseas.
A heartbroken Lena joins the Army “to fight Hitler,” but she’s sent to a training base in Georgia where we meet a number of stock characters who will be Lena’s comrades in the 6888th Battalion, which is led by Kerry Washington’s Maj. Charity Adams (also a true-life figure). Washington rattles the screen with her forceful performance as Maj. Adams, a formidable figure who expresses herself with passionate eloquence as she butts heads with the likes of Dean Norris’ Gen. Halt, a bloviating racist who does everything he can to ensure the Triple Eight fails once the battalion arrives in Birmingham, England, in February 1945 and is tasked with sorting through those warehouses filled to the ceiling with sacks of mail.
Writer-director Perry can’t resist some hokey tropes, e.g., Lena’s Noble Dead Boyfriend appearing from time to time to offer words of encouragement when she’s feeling overwhelmed by the challenge at hand. There’s also quite a bit of stunt casting, though I kind of loved seeing Oprah Winfrey as iconic civil rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, Sam Waterston as Franklin Roosevelt and a nearly unrecognizable Susan Sarandon playing Eleanor Roosevelt.
“The Six Triple Eight” also manages to make those mail-sorting sequences interesting and cinematic, especially in a scene where the hiss-worthy Gen. Hart inspects the operation and Maj. Adams explains some of the ingenious methods the battalion has devised to determine the origins and destinations of the often tattered letters — and then essentially tells the general what he can do with himself when he threatens to shut down the whole thing.
“The Six Triple Eight” is a Frank Capra-esque feel-good story about heroes who are no longer forgotten.
As the Bears look to snap an eight-game losing streak, the Lions will arrive at Soldier Field on Sunday looking to regain control of the NFC in their bid for a Super Bowl appearance.
The Bears will hold a walk-thru Thursday morning at Halas Hall, followed by offensive coordinator media availability and open locker room.
One question for their defense is whether it can contain Lions quarterback Jared Goff better than it did in the Bears’ 23-20 loss in Detroit last month.
Goff, who often has struggled against the Bears, completed 21 of 34 passes for 220 yards and two touchdowns for a 100.2 passer rating.
That game was the final one for former coach Matt Eberflus, who was fired the next day, but the Bears have looked even worse since. In their next two games, they lost to the 49ers and Vikings by a combined score of 68-25.
Check back on the Sun-Times’ Bears homepage throughout the day for more updates.
