Lolla prolonged. Mayor Lightfoot took to the stage in Grant Park last night to confirm reports that Lollapalooza will stay in Chicago for another decade.
■ In the mayor’s words: “Four billion dollars in economic impact.”
■ The Illinois Hotel and Lodging Association CEO says the fest brings the city 400,000 visitors yearly.
Meanwhile, in the other Chicago … Gun violence left more than 40 people shot and five dead over the weekend.
■ Lightfoot’s ex-deputy mayor for public security—described to Streetsblog Chicago by one veteran reporter as “a pretty dumb guy”—says he carries a gun on the CTA.
■ The Daily Beast: As the National Rifle Association has stumbled, a new gun group is picking up slack for gun industry lobbying.
Wrong-way horror. A Rolling Meadows mom and five kids—four of them hers—are dead after a crash with a car headed the wrong way on I-90.
■ The other driver also died and only the kids’ father survived.
■ Wrong-way crashes have been on the rise in Illinois and nationwide (2021 link).
■ Oklahoma’s experimenting with new tech to alert drivers they’re headed the wrong way (July 19 link).
‘The bliss of sudden abundance.’ Wired editor Clive Thompson describes the euphoria he’s experienced since installing solar panels on his home: “I no longer walk around finger-wagging at my family members. Want to blast the AC? Crank away. It’s coming from the sun, and I can’t use all that electricity even if I try.”
■ The White House was set today to free more than $1 billion to help states deal with flooding and extreme heat.
■ Popular Information rounds up a list of “corporations versus the climate”—companies opposing the landmark legislative package on energy, health care and taxes.
■ More from Wired: The bill’s secret weapon is tax credits.
■ The Conversation: The U.S. has vastly underestimated the risk of contamination when old industrial sites get flooded.
Kids and monkeypox. If you think it’s a threat just to sexually active adults, think again: It’s spreading among children, who are particularly prone to contagious disease.
■ CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta calls for action: “We are making some of the same mistakes we made not even three years ago.”
Be nice to your neighbor. Especially if your neighbor buys lottery tickets from a Des Plaines gas station …
■ … which sold the winning ticket for a $1.337 billion Mega Millions jackpot.
‘They have chosen instead to give the person who attacked and vandalized UpRising exactly what he apparently wanted.’ The ACLU is going into legal battle against the village of Lake in the Hills, which has ordered an end to public events at a bakery that was targeted by a hate crime as it planned a family-friendly drag show.
■ The bakery’s owner on Facebook: “They … started victim-blaming me after we were attacked by a known domestic terrorist.”
R.I.P., Uhura. Star Trek’s original Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols—born Grace Dell Nichols in Robbins, Illinois—is dead at 89.
■ She almost quit the show after the first season—until Martin Luther King encouraged her to stay (2021 link).
■ Her costar, George Takei, is one of many posting eulogies: “My heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend.”
■ Groundbreaking Chicago labor journalist David Moberg is dead at 78.
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■ Former Public Art Chicago executive director—and veteran Chicago Architecture Center tour guide at the Thompson Center—Ed McDevitt writes (first in an email to Square and then in a more detailed blog post) of Google’s plan to buy the building from the State of Illinois: What will the state do with its collection of 150+ art objects in the building?
■ Iconic former Chicago TV and radio news anchor Ron Magers writes: “The Jean Dubuffet sculpture at the Thompson Center is actually titled Monument with Standing Beast. I’ve never figured which was which.” (2007 photo: Antonio Vernon.)
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Happy 50th, ’XRT. August marks a half-century since WXRT-FM began broadcasting rock music.
■ Flashback with eight hours of audio from a three-day broadcast celebration that began on this date in 1997—as ’XRT marked the format’s 25th anniversary.
Thanks. Harris Meyer made this edition better.