Good afternoon. Here’s the latest news you need to know in Chicago. It’s about a 5-minute read that will brief you on today’s biggest stories.
This afternoon will be mostly sunny with a high near 73 degrees. Tonight will be mostly clear with a low around 57. Tomorrow will be sunny with a high near 83.
Top story
Power shot? Pritzker injects COVID-19 vaccine lottery talk into mix as daily inoculation rate plummets
COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of contracting a severe case of the respiratory disease, and they could soon boost the chance — a tiny bit, at least — of a massive cash windfall for Illinois residents.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker today hinted the state could soon launch a vaccine lottery program as an incentive to get more people to roll up their sleeves.
A little more than half of Illinois adults are fully immunized, and two-thirds have gotten at least one dose, but the state has averaged only 41,234 shots administered per day over the past week — the lowest daily vax rate seen since the end of January, when supply was desperately scarce.
Pritzker’s office has already offered up free Six Flags tickets and shooting clays to try to get more shots into arms, and he’ll soon sign a law passed by the Illinois General Assembly that allows bars to dole out a free drink to people with proof of vaccination.
Mitchell Armentrout has the full story here.
More news you need
- Mayor Lori Lightfoot was accused yesterday of making a failed, eleventh-hour bid to reduce the threshold for City Council approval of a new ward map. The move would have made it easier to redraw the wards of her most outspoken critics.
- A bill that would ban local jails from detaining people facing deportation is headed to Gov. Pritzker’s desk. It would further restrict immigration detention across the state.
- Officials broke ground today on AIDS Garden Chicago, an area south of Belmont Harbor designed for “reflection, education, honor and pride,” Ald. Tom Tunney said. The site is near a part of the lakefront that has, for decades, been a safe space for the LGBTQ community.
- The state Senate yesterday passed a bill that would create a partially elected Chicago school board in 2025 — and the city’s first-ever fully elected board in 2027. But critics of the latest proposal remain, including Lightfoot.
- A payday years in the making arrived yesterday for three Little Village men who spent nearly a decade fighting their former employer for lost wages. They were paid a combined $324,846 in back wages and damages by the owner of a carwash they worked for until its 2015 closing.
- With just over a month to the return of an in-person Lollapalooza, the festival announced the day-by-day lineup for the July 29-Aug. 1 extravaganza. Single-day tickets, $130 apiece, went on sale at noon.
A bright one
Frida Kahlo retrospective a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’
When word comes of a big art exhibition traveling to the Chicago area, most people probably expect it to be shown at one of the big, widely recognized institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago or Chicago Cultural Center.
But when a major Frida Kahlo exhibition opens June 5, it will go on view more than 25 miles west of Chicago’s downtown in a somewhat smaller, suburban venue — the College of DuPage’s recently renamed Cleve Carney Museum of Art in Glen Ellyn.
Frida Kahlo in 1950.
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
“Frida Kahlo: Timeless” will feature 26 of the superstar Mexican painter’s drawings and paintings — more than 10% of her entire output of only about 200 works. They are all on loan from the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City, which has the largest holding of her work in the world.
It will be the most substantial presentation of Kahlo’s works in Chicago since 1978, when a group was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Cleve Carney officials say it might be another half-century or more before another such show comes again.
Read Kyle MacMillan’s full story here.
From the press box
Glenbrook North grad and former basketball star Jon Scheyer is expected to be the successor to legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski when he retires at the end of the 2021-22 season. Scheyer, currently the Blue Devils’ associate head coach, won Sun-Times Player of the Year and Mr. Basketball in 2006 as a local high school senior (watch one of his games here) then played four years under Coach K at Duke.
Dwindling access to athletes is one of sportswriting’s biggest issues, but Naomi Osaka’s mental health struggle deserves compassion, Rick Morrissey writes: “This isn’t a media thing. It’s a people thing. It’s a human thing.”
Your daily question ☕
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Reply to this email (please include your first name and where you live) and we might feature your answer in the next Afternoon Edition.
Yesterday, we asked you: What’s one way you saw your neighbors help each other during the pandemic? Here’s what some of you said…
“My neighbors in Rogers Park picked up my prescriptions, brought me masks and Lysol, returned my library books because I was hesitant to go out.” — Ayani Good
“Local restaurants in Bucktown, Wicker Park & West Town brought the community together to donate money for meals to those in need. There was a crew that bought out local tamale vendors in the morning, keeping them paid and warm. They distributed the tamales to homeless, keeping them fed.” — Starr Spencer
“I bought a big pool last summer! With pools and beaches closed, I saved our summer. They said it was the best summer they had!” — Annie Lopez
“I started daily radiation treatments for breast cancer on the first day of the statewide shutdown. My neighbors made sure I had hand sanitizer, Lysol Wipes, etc. when there was none to be found in the stores. People I had never met left their only supplies on my porch and asked for nothing in return. People are still good!” — Anna Casey
“Sharing baked goods, exchanging magazines, and checking on each other every other day.” — JoAnn Hartford
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