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The woman was found in an apartment without a pulse but paramedics resuscitated her on the way to a hospital.

A woman was critically injured in a fire at an apartment building Thursday in north suburban Evanston.

Firefighters responded to the blaze about 1:10 p.m. in the 300 block of Dempster Street and found smoke and fire on the third floor, Evanston fire officials said in a statement.

Crews were able to contain the fire to the apartment in which it started thanks to the help of sprinklers, officials said.

A middle-aged woman was found unresponsive in the unit without a pulse, officials said. Paramedics resuscitated her on the way to a hospital. She is currently in the intensive care unit.

No other injuries were reported, officials said. The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

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Alejandro Morales’s death doesn’t just leave a hole in Chicago’s DIY music scene—it’s a loss to community activists, to affordable housing advocates, and to countless friendships.

In the the nearly two weeks since Chicago musician Alejandro Morales died at age 46 on Sunday, January 3, remembrances and testimonials have flooded social media.…Read More

As a whole, “Children’s theater has had a deservedly bad rap,” says Jacqueline Russell. That’s a jarring assessment from the cofounder and artistic director of Chicago Children’s Theatre, but Russell believes that past perceptions of plays for kids — “dumb, not sophisticated, and not speaking to children in the way they deserve to be spoken to” — weren’t far off the mark. “I find that if people think they’re ‘writing for kids,’ they might try to dumb it down,” she says.

Russell, who served as executive director of Lookingglass Theatre Company before launching CCT in 2005, has long believed young audiences are entitled to productions as smart and sophisticated as those aimed at their parents. Over a decade and a half, she’s delivered on that conviction. In 2017, thanks to its ambitious programming, CCT became the first children’s theater to receive a National Theatre Company Grant.

But of the 20 new works CCT has developed, only a few are originals. The children’s theater landscape nationwide is dominated by adaptations — often of fairy tales and fables, and also of more recent children’s literature. Russell saw in the COVID-19 shutdown an opportunity both to step away from adaptation and to give a group of artists, mostly people of color — free rein to try something new. A CCT initiative called the Springboard Project has 15 creators — including noted local playwrights Ike Holter, Nambi E. Kelley, and Isaac Gomez — developing original projects in 2021 for the virtual realm that could be expanded for the stage when in-person performance comes back.

“I didn’t give any limitations or my own ideas,” Russell says. “We pretty much knew we were canceling a season, and we wanted to keep artists working. If everything is up in the air, maybe this is the time to take some risks.”

The inaugural Springboard piece, Diamond’s Dream, debuts January 18 on CCT’s YouTube channel and will appear there indefinitely (and for free). Conceived by director Jerrell L. Henderson and scenic and costume designer Caitlin McLeod, who previously paired on CCT’s production of The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show in 2019, Diamond’s Dream uses puppetry to tell the story of a preteen boy riding the Red Line to the South Side amid the pandemic. On his trip, he encounters the spirit of a girl who died of the Spanish flu a century ago.

“I like stories that have bite to them, even if it’s speaking to a family audience,” says Henderson, who teaches performance studies at Chicago State University. “How do we talk to younger folks about mass death? That’s something we’re not able to shield children from.”

Henderson and McLeod met as graduate students at Northwestern, where they took a puppetry class together. They’re now frequent collaborators, most recently on Griffin Theatre’s Mlima’s Tale, which had its run cut short by the coronavirus shutdown in March but earned a Jeff Award nomination for best production of a play. For Diamond’s Dream, their crew consists predominantly of artists who are people of color.

McLeod’s main set for the filmed performance is a cutaway train car constructed primarily from cardboard, “with built-up details and drawn-in details, so it will have a very handmade quality,” she says. Setting a quasi-supernatural tale on the CTA was integral to the pair’s vision. “It was very important that we brought a world of magic into an urban area, so when the kids leave the theater, they can still imagine the magic happening in their personal worlds,” McLeod says.

As the boy’s journey veers into the paranormal, the creators introduce some high-concept themes, including puppet personifications of societal ills like ignorance and poverty. This is in line with future Springboard productions, which also tackle the issues of marginalized communities. One play will focus on characters with disabilities and special needs, and Gomez’s work centers on an eighth grader coming out as queer. “CCT really respects their artists and their ideas,” says McLeod, “and also respects their audiences to grasp the big ideas.” Speaking to children, that is, the way they deserve to be spoken to.

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Even for a 126-year-old house, the Queen Anne at 1104 Michigan Avenue in Evanston, which is listed with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago for $1.95 million, has been through a lot. Nineteenth-century milliner C. Marion Hotchkin and his wife, Emma Palmer Hotchkin, reportedly were the first to take up residence in the 6,000-square-foot manse. Furniture company heir John M. Smyth and his wife, Ethel Walsh Smyth, have called it home, too — and so did Kevin Costner’s character in the 2002 supernatural thriller Dragonfly.

Three years before that, though, the Evanston landmark caught fire. No one was hurt, but the home itself suffered significant damage. “Firefighters doused the flames and then struggled for 10 hours to keep the fire from reigniting as they hauled antiques from the home, put tarps in place to protect what they could not remove, and tried to prevent thousands of gallons of water from pooling on expensive hardwood floors,” the Tribune reported at the time. The third floor saw the worst of the flames, though there was water and smoke damage throughout. Over the course of the next 16 months, the owners painstakingly restored the Victorian. “Everything has been beautifully preserved and updated in the home,” says listing broker Sally Mabadi.

The house, which earned a preservation award in 2005, features a heated sunroom off a dining room with a coffered ceiling, and a mahogany-paneled family room. Look closely at that paneling and you’ll spot a hinge: A secret door hides the original cast-iron safe. The primary suite — one of six bedrooms, with another three in a separate coach house — takes up half the second floor. It includes a bathroom with a fireplace and freestanding tub, a window-filled exercise room, and a large main room with a reading alcove tucked into the house’s turret. You can find such useful crannies all over the house: There’s an office nook off the kitchen where ice used to get delivered, and a small round room at the top of the tower. “It’s just the coolest,” says Mabadi. “I don’t even know how you make windows that curve.”

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Links Hall and Chicago Shakespeare host two virtual interactive shows on isolation and connection.

Even before the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, the desire to get away from this current hellscape was strong in many of us. Cooped up, fed up, scared, confused, and angry, I’ve been veering between doomscrolling and fantasizing about a Yeatsian bucolic escape.…Read More

On Thursday afternoon, Chicago Bears owner George McCaskey appeared on the Waddle and Silvy Show and discussed a variety of topics. Fo the most part, George doubled-down on the ridiculous message that was put out at yesterday’s press conference. George’s attempt at damage control may have actually caused more of it. However, he did reveal […]

Chicago Bears: Anthony Miller’s job in jeopardy? – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More

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City officials were investigating possible COVID-19 violations after a fire at Gibson’s Bar & Steakhouse forced patrons to evacuate the famed Gold Coast restaurant Wednesday night.

The fire started about 9 p.m. in a second-floor fireplace and was quickly extinguished, leaving damage only to the walls and ceiling, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

A tweet from the fire department said no one was injured and that patrons were evacuated safely.

Spokesmen for the police and fire departments would not clarify whether the Gold Coast restaurant was seating outdoor or indoor diners. Statewide Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions and the local stay-at-home order — recently extended to Jan. 22 — ban indoor seating.

The Business Affairs and Consumer Protection is investigating any possible coronavirus restriction violations, according to agency spokesman Isaac Reichman.

However, the agency had already investigated Gibson’s less than a week before the fire and found them in compliance with COVID-19 regulations, Reichman said in an email.

He noted that, while indoor dining is prohibited, indoor tables are allowed if they were within 8 feet of a wall that is 50% open to the outdoors.

Gibson’s spokesperson Liz Lombardo Stark said the restaurant is “fully compliant with current seating regulations” and that they’ve passed several routine city inspections over the course of the pandemic.

“We are confident that any further inspection will produce the same results,” Lombardo Stark said.

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Chicago sports fans have a connection with their teams’ announcers that’s built on a kindred spirit of “We’re in this together.”

But over the years, our local announcers have become national voices. With Marquee Sports Network hiring Jon Sciambi last week, the Cubs, White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks all have a TV announcer working for a national network, too. (The Bears only have local preseason broadcasts because of the NFL’s TV deals.)

Sciambi will continue to call the MLB playoffs and college basketball for ESPN, in addition to some regular-season baseball games. Sox voice Jason Benetti calls college basketball and football for ESPN. New Bulls play-by-play voice Adam Amin calls MLB, NFL and college basketball for Fox. Blackhawks analyst Eddie Olczyk is a longtime hockey – and horse racing – voice for NBC.

They aren’t just our guys; they’re everyone’s guys.

What’s the significance? Only that Chicago is in a new golden age of sports broadcasting.

That isn’t to say national announcers are better announcers. But working for ESPN or Fox does come with a certain cachet, and our announcers aren’t exactly buried on their network’s depth chart.

Olczyk is NBC’s top hockey analyst, and his Blackhawks partner, Pat Foley, would tell you he’s the best sports analyst of them all. Benetti will call any game ESPN gives him, and they give him plenty. Amin just completed his first season on Fox’s No. 3 NFL crew. Sciambi has been the voice of “Sunday Night Baseball” on ESPN Radio.

It’s hard to argue with the networks’ thinking. Olczyk, 54, is the gold standard of analysts, providing quick, concise, in-depth analysis that only the trained eye can provide. He can explain the genesis of a goal before the team is done celebrating, no easy task in a game that fast. He also has a great sense of humor, and it’s evident he and Foley enjoy each other’s company on the broadcast.

Benetti, 37, is great in the Sox’ booth, but baseball might not even be his best sport to call. He’s fantastic on basketball, and when Amin had a couple of conflicts recently with his Bulls schedule, Benetti filled in and the broadcast didn’t miss a beat. It feels like he could fill in for anyone and do well. After all, it takes someone special to navigate a broadcast with Bill Walton beside you.

But the Sox are his priority, and his pairing with Steve Stone, still one of the best analysts on TV, has drawn national acclaim. Fangraphs recently released the results of its fan voting for MLB TV booths, and Benetti-Stone ranked No. 2, behind the Mets’ crew of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. (For the record, the Cubs’ now-defunct Len Kasper-Jim Deshaies booth ranked fourth.)

Amin, 34, is new to the scene but not the town. He grew up in the western suburbs and has been a lifelong Bulls fan. He has hit the ground running with a strong, exciting call, and he has meshed well with Stacey King, a fine analyst in his own right. A competitive team certainly has helped the broadcast, but Amin has been doing this long enough that he’ll be prepared for the inevitable stinker.

In the minds of viewers, Amin, Benetti and Olczyk are helped by their local ties. Benetti grew up in Homewood and went to Homewood-Flossmoor. Olczyk is a Chicago native, went to Brother Rice and was the Hawks’ first-round pick in the 1984 draft. Like Amin, they were fans of their teams before becoming their broadcasters.

But Chicago fans should know that fandom isn’t a prerequisite for a good broadcaster. Sciambi, 50, will remind them. Even though he’s from New York, he has called enough Cubs games and knows enough Cubs alumni to understand the culture. He’s entertaining and smart, and viewers should have a smooth transition to him from Kasper. Sciambi will form a fine partnership with the popular Deshaies.

The last time Chicago sports TV had this strong of a cast was in the 1990s. Harry Caray and Stone called the Cubs; “Hawk” and “Wimpy” (Ken Harrelson and Tom Paciorek) called the Sox; Wayne Larrivee, Tom Dore and Johnny “Red” Kerr called the Bulls (Larrivee on WGN, Dore on cable); and Foley and Dale Tallon called the Hawks.

Chicago doesn’t have many celebrities, so we look to our athletes and announcers. Those guys might as well have been the Rat Pack. They overflowed with personality, and they could call a great game, too. It didn’t hurt that the Sox were competitive in the ’90s, that the Bulls owned the decade in the NBA and that the Hawks regularly made the playoffs. The Cubs regularly lost, but that didn’t seem to hurt them on superstation WGN.

Now we have a new group of stars. Obviously, Foley and Olczyk have been at this awhile. They came together in 2008. But Benetti joined Stone in 2016, Amin is in his first season with King and Sciambi hasn’t even called a game yet.

It’s the beginning of a new era in Chicago sports broadcasting, and it’s going to be a good one.

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