WIMBLEDON, England — Novak Djokovic tied Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal by claiming his 20th Grand Slam title Sunday, coming back to beat Matteo Berrettini 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-4, 6-3 in the Wimbledon final.
The No. 1-ranked Djokovic earned a third consecutive championship at the All England Club and sixth overall.
He adds that to nine titles at the Australian Open, three at the U.S. Open and two at the French Open to equal his two rivals for the most majors won by a man in tennis history.
The 34-year-old from Serbia is now the only man since Rod Laver in 1969 to win the first three major tournaments in a season. He can aim for a calendar-year Grand Slam — something last accomplished by a man when Laver did it 52 years ago — at the U.S. Open, which starts Aug. 30.
This was Djokovic’s 30th major final — among men, only Federer has played more, 31 — and the first for Berrettini, a 25-year-old from Italy who was seeded No. 7.
With Marija Cicak officiating, the first female chair umpire for a men’s final at a tournament that began in 1877, play began at Centre Court as the sun made a rare appearance during the fortnight, the sky visible in between the clouds.
The opening game featured signs of edginess from both, but especially Djokovic, whose pair of double-faults contributed to the half-dozen combined unforced errors, compared with zero winners for either. He faced a break point but steadied himself and held there and, as was the case with every set, it was Djokovic who took the lead by getting through on Berrettini’s speedy serve.
Berrettini came in with a tournament-high 101 aces and that’s where his game is built: free points off the serve and quick-strike forehands that earned him the nickname “Hammer.”
Those powerful strokes sent line judges contorting to get their head out of harm’s way. Djokovic occasionally took cover himself, crouching and raising his racket as if it were a shield to block back serves aimed at his body.
Not many opponents return serves at 137 mph and end up winning the point, but Djokovic did that at least twice. And the big groundstrokes that the 6-foot-5, barrel-chested Berrettini can drive past most other players kept coming back off Djokovic’s racket.
That’s what Djokovic does: He just forces foes to work so hard to win every point, let alone a game, a set, a match.
Indeed, this one could have been over much sooner: Djokovic took leads of 4-1 in the first set, 4-0 in the second and 3-1 in the third. But in the first, especially, he faltered in ways he rarely does, wasting a set point and getting broken when he served for it at 5-3.
In the ensuing tiebreaker, they were tied at 3-all, but Berrettini won three of the next four points with forehands, and closed it out with a 138 mph ace.
He strutted to the changeover and many in the full house of nearly 15,000 rose to celebrate along with him.
But Djokovic is nothing if not a fighter — he turned things around from two sets down in the French Open final last month — and he worked his way back into this one, which ended with Djokovic on his back on the court, basking in the crowd’s cheers.
On those long ago Sundays in Iowa, Edith Renfrow Smith’s mother Eva Pearl made Jell-O with black walnuts in it. Her older sister Helen would play the piano at their house on 1st Avenue, and the young men from Grinnell College would gather around. This was in the 1920s.
“They would come, sing songs — not all of them, the ones that liked to sing,” said Smith, 106. “There were 10 of them.”
Those details — the walnuts, that some guests sang, some didn’t, and exactly how many came nearly 100 years ago — are typical of the sharp, specific memories of Smith, who turns 107 on July 14.
She recalls how these visitors were not just any Grinnell undergraduates, but the 10 Black students given scholarships by Julius Rosenwald, the Chicago Sears executive who donated millions of dollars to promote Black education.
They frequented the Renfrow house on Sundays because it was one of the few Black homes in town, and their example inspired Smith to later attend Grinnell herself — Class of ’37, the first African American woman to graduate there.
That might sound impressive. But if one quality stands out when visiting Smith at her tidy apartment at the Bethany Retirement Community on North Ashland Avenue, it is that she is never overly impressed with herself or anybody else.
A picture in a family scrapbook shows Edith Renfrow Smith’s grandfather, George Craig (seated at left center), with her grandmother (his wife), Eliza Jane Craig, and their family. The Craigs were born into slavery.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
“When my nephew heard that I had met Amelia Earhart, he had a fit,” she recalled. “I said, ‘She’s just like everybody else.’ She came to Grinnell. Everybody who was famous came to Grinnell.”
Shaking Renfrow’s hand, it is impossible not to reflect that you are shaking hands with a woman whose grandparents were born in slavery. She remembers them, too.
“My grandfather came from Virginia. His father was a white owner. My grandmother was born in South Carolina. Her father was a Frenchman, and her mother was a slave, but she wasn’t all slave. They wouldn’t put a dark slave in the house. Both of them were part white, so consequently, you know they already mixed with whites. It made no difference. You could look white; you were slaves.”
Edith Renfrow was born in 1914 in Grinnell, where her father Lee was a chef at the Monroe Hotel. Her earliest memories involve the end of World War I.
“The only thing I remember is the song, ‘Over There,'” she said. That, and a neighbor who lost both legs in the war. And the parades she wouldn’t watch.
“The cemetery was past our house; they buried a number of the soldiers in the cemetery,” she said. “I always hid in the closet because I was afraid of the trombone.”
A picture of Edith Renfrow Smith’s childhood home in Grinnell, Iowa, in a family photo album.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Around that time, she pulled a prank on her grandfather.
“My grandpa was in his 80s,” she said. “My grandfather was George or Joseph.” Not that she is uncertain; he went by both names.
“And my grandmother was Eliza Jane,” she continued, giving a musical lilt to the name of a woman who had come to Iowa in a covered wagon. “She was named after her mother” — an enslaved woman made mistress to that Frenchman, a planter in South Carolina. A woman who saw her writ of freedom burned before her eyes after her owner’s death. But not before she managed to send their three young children to live in freedom with Quakers in Ohio. She never saw them again.
The prank was at Halloween and involved her younger brother Paul — Smith is the fifth of six children — rattling a wooden spool on a piece of string against her grandparents’ bedroom window.
“We put a spool on a piece of cord, like you tied up packages in. My grandfather was older. He was in his bedroom, and my brother and I sneaked up, and pulled the spool right down the window. It made a racket.”
Smith went to college, majoring in psychology. All six Renfrow children went to college. It was expected.
“I had to quit school and go to work,” her mother told the NAACP magazine The Crisis in 1937. “My children are getting what I longed for and missed: a thorough education.”
Smith was the only Black student at Grinnell of either gender during the four years she attended. After graduation, she went to Chicago looking for work.
“They sent 12 students from Grinnell to see about getting a job,” she said. “In ’37, there were no jobs. Every one of us got a job, I got a job at the YWCA, which was at 4559 South Park; $75 a month. It was a good place, I took dictation from Professor Thurmond.”
She later worked for the University of Chicago and as a secretary to Oscar DePriest. If you expect reverence for DePriest, Chicago’s first Black alderman and first African American to serve in Congress from a district north of the Mason-Dixon line, guess again.
“He was an old man,” she said, pressed for details. “He was old. His wife was an alcoholic. They were both old. We thought they were Methuselah.”
Age was not a concern with her husband, Henry Smith.
“I was a year older than he,” she said, laughing. “I robbed the cradle. He was a milkman for the Borden Milk Company.”
Edith Renfrow Smith recounts her family’s history at her retirement home in Ravenswood. She was a Chicago Public School teacher for 22 years.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
They married in 1940 and had two daughters, Virginia and Alice.
The family settled in Hyde Park and became friends with the Hancocks. Wayman Hancock was a meat inspector, and his sons played with her daughter Virginia.
“Those kids were in and out of our house,” she recalled. “She used to live at Mrs. Hancock’s house because Mrs. Hancock had plums, and she loved plums. Herb and my oldest daughter were babies together. They were just big enough to look out the window. He became a musician when he went to Hyde Park High School.”
“Mrs. Smith lived across the street from us,” remembered Herbie Hancock, the jazz great. “She and my mother were the best of friends. Mrs. Smith deeply respected etiquette and manners, whenever I visited the Smith family, I knew I had to be on my best behavior. Our whole family had a deep respect and love for the Smith family and of course including their two daughters Virginia and Alice, who were dear friends of mine.”
Alice Frances Smith remembers Hancock teaching her to play “Chopsticks” on the piano. And her mother had an impact on the musician’s life.
“He went to Grinnell because I went to Grinnell,” Edith Renfrow Smith said.
“She was the first person to suggest Grinnell College to me,” Hancock agreed.
Not that Smith puts on airs over the association — she mentioned Hancock two hours into our conversation. She also met Duke Ellington.
“They’re just people,” said Smith. While she did once venture to Mister Kelly’s on Rush Street to hear Hancock play, that didn’t mean she let her daughters hang around nightclubs.
“I was one of those kids kept in the house,” said Alice Smith. “We lived on 45th Street. All my friends went down to see the reviews. I never went to any of these things, never went to Motown reviews. My mother made sure I was never roaming the streets.”
She wasn’t allowed to go to the Bud Billiken Parade either; I thought I detected a trace of resentment.
“I don’t care,” said Alice Smith. “It was good. It kept me out of trouble.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
Not that there was much money for shows.
“Back then all of us were as poor as Job’s turkey,” said Edith Renfrow Smith, using a phrase popular 150 years ago.
Her sister Helen became a civil rights advocate, but Smith was never involved in the struggle. It just wasn’t her business. Not that she didn’t notice how her light-skinned husband could rent a motel room that would suddenly become unavailable when the clerk saw her, far darker, waiting in the car. Or how the salesgirls at Marshall Field’s refused to wait on her. It simply did not matter.
“I don’t want to go there anyway,” she said, defiantly. “They don’t have anything I want. One of the things my mother taught me, ‘There is no one better than you.’ I don’t care if it’s the president of the United States. I don’t care if they have more clothes. I don’t care if they’re prettier. She told us every day: ‘Nobody’s better than you.'”
“If somebody gave her a slight, she didn’t notice,” Alice Smith elaborated. “It just didn’t bother her.”
If you meet someone as extraordinary as Edith Renfrow Smith, you simply do not edit for space. So I hope readers will forgive me if I carry her story over to Wednesday. And rest assured, I have not gotten to the surprising part yet, and I don’t mean the part where Muhammad Ali shows up.
As incredible as Smith’s life was in the 20th century, the 21st held something truly unexpected, particularly for a woman in her second century. Having been educated by Grinnell College in the 1930s, she returned the favor and began to teach her alma mater a thing or two.
“She became relevant, visible to the campus,” said Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, the Louise R. Noun Chair in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at Grinnell. “Her name was in the air.”
An 18-year-old woman was pronounced dead after her body was pulled from the Chicago River Sunday morning near Goose Island on the North Side.
Emergency crews were called to the scene of a person in the water about 10:15 a.m. near the 1100 block of North Cherry Avenue, according to Chicago police and fire officials.
The incident was then determined to be a body recovery, handled by Chicago police, fire officials said.
A CPD Marine Unit pulled an unresponsive 18-year-old woman from the river, police said.
She was pronounced dead at 11:22 a.m., according to police. Area Five and Area Three detectives are investigating the incident.
This is a developing story. Check back for details.
Virgin Galactic is flying Richard Branson and crew to space today, July 11th, as part of the historic VSS Unity test space flight. The billionaire announced the test flight earlier this week, and that he would be among the crew, placing Branson ahead of billionaire Jeff Bezos and his own test flight on July 20th for Blue Origin.
The early morning flight was originally scheduled for launch at 8:00 am CT, but early morning preparations were delayed by weather. The new launch time is set for 9:30 am CT.
The Unity 22 test flight will include three additional crew members and two pilots. Flying with Branson are Beth Moses, Sirisha Bandla, and Colin Bennett, all Virgin Galactic employees. Unity 22 pilots are Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci.
Virgin Galactic is hosting a livestream event that you can watch at: http://virgingalactic.com. Hosting the livestream panel will be Chris Hadfield, Stephen Colbert, Khalid, and Kellie Gerardi.
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Lifting off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the entirety of the Unity 22 spaceflight will be around ninety minutes. However, the actual flight test in space will only last around twenty seconds.
I’m a tiny bit obsessed with space. I’m told it’s an acceptable obsession because I take what I learn and share it with others. If I’m not writing about space, among other things, I’m busy doing science with one of the many student orgs I volunteer with or, advocating to bring more STEM programs to underrepresented students. I miss working in a lab, so invite me out to see yours!
The MLB Draft kicks off 6 PM CST on MLB Network and ESPN. Only 29 picks of the 1st round (plus 7 comp picks) will be conducted on the broadcast. The remaining 19 rounds will be Monday (rounds 2-10 at 12 pm CST on MLB.Com) and Tuesday (rounds 11-20 11 am CST on MLB.Com).
The Cubs will select 21st tonight. According to previews and mock drafts I’ve seen this is right around the point in the draft where the predictability drops off. I’ve heard the Cubs have heavily scouted several prep prospects, including speedy two-sport star OF Will Taylor (a Clemson WR commit), Huntingburg, Indiana IF Colson Montgomery (a LHB with developing power who is also heavily linked to White Sox at 22). Taylor and Montgomery have late helium which may push them out of the Cubs reach.
The top name more likely to be available is Anthony Solometo. He is the top prep lefty in the draft. I’m also a fan of RHP Andrew Painter, but I haven’t seen him linked to the Cubs, and he is probably gone before they choose anyway.
As usual the Cubs are linked to catchers as well. Harry Ford is the top name, a tremendous athlete and plus runner who some teams want to move to center field, but like Taylor and Montgomery, he is more likely to go in the teens at this point. Mack is unpolished behind the plate but has the size, quickness and arm strength to stick, along with a track record of performing offensively on the showcase circuit.
College prospects I’ve seen linked to the Cubs include Eastern Illinois IF Trey Sweeney (who I really like), College World Series hero RHP Will Bednar of Mississippi State, and UC Santa Barbara RHP Michael McGreevy. Sweeney hasn’t faced top competition but he did what you want him to do against lesser competition: he annihilated them. His setup has a lot of movement, but his swing is quick and he’s developing some power. Bednar surprised a lot of folks as a starter this year, after being a reliever previously. He works at 92-95 with a good slider and solid changeup. I don’t see a ton of projection remaining, but I’ve been fooled before. McGreevy currently profiles a lot like previous Cubs pitching selections as a 4 pitch guy with good control who repeats his delivery and holds his stuff deep into games. What McGreevy has going for him that some previous Cubs choices didn’t is he is young for his class (20), and has a 6’4″ frame he hasn’t completely filled out, so there may be more velo to come (91-93, T95).
Jordan Nwogu (.169/.285/.305) is beginning to sort things out at the plate. Since his season bottomed out at a .125 average on June 19th, he has gone 12-for-54 (.222) with 3 HRs and a respectable 6 BB/13 K. It obviously isn’t a huge breakout, but his timing has improved, and when Nwogu does get a hold of one… watch out. There may not be another hitter in the system with more raw power, and the ball jumps off his bat, even he doesn’t get lift on it. I’m reminded a bit of the issues David Bote had when he was in the low Minors. The Cubs have also been playing him in CF more and more, which boosts his stock.
Luis A. Rodriguez: 1.2 IP, H, 0 R, 0 BB, 4 K (S, 1, 0.00)
Ezequiel Pagan: 2-3, 2B, 2 R, SB (2) (.438)
Cam Balego: 2-3, 2B, R, RBI (.750)
Rafael Morel: 1-3, 3B, R, RBI (.120)
Yovanny Cuevas: 1-2, 2B, R (.286)
Levi Jordan: 1-3, RBI (.200)
Injuries, Updates, and Trends
Ezequiel Pagan has a hit in each of his last 10 starts (he came in as a defensive replacement one game and did not get a plate appearance so it isn’t an official hitting streak. He does have a streak of 6 consecutive 2-hit games in which he’s raised his average from .308 to .438.
In three rehab games 3B/C Cam Balego is 6-for-8 with 4 doubles and a walk.
1971. Fifty years ago. For the legendary rock band Thee Doors, it was a year of success and tragedy.
Their sixth studio album, L.A. Woman, was released in April.It certified as double platinum in the United States. It sold more than four million copies worldwide. L.A. Woman was their biggest selling album since their self-titled debut record four years earlier.
Less than three months afterward, Jim Morrison died at age twenty-seven. When the voice and the face of a band is no longer there, it’s almost impossible to continue.
Like so many other rock and roll stories, when a musician dies at an early age, you’re left wondering what might have been? Jimi, Janis, Jim and Duane…all gone within a thirteen month period.
Occasionally you’ll hear a rock band mentioned as the or among the greatest American bands. Among the contenders mentioned most often for that title include The Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, Eagles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Allman Brothers Band and Aerosmith.
What about The Doors? Do they rate? If so, where?
When trying to rate a band, what standards do you use? The amount of records made? The quality of those records? Sales? Awards? Live performances? A combination of all of the above?
The Doors were definitely a quality over quantity band. Morrison’s death limited them to those six albums as a foursome. However, all six received good to excellent reviews. You’ll find “The Doors” and “L.A. Woman” on many lists of the greatest all-time albums.
The sales of The Doors albums were excellent. All six of them received at least platinum album certification for selling a minimum of one million records in the United States.
Awards? Not many and what they did receive many years after the breakup of the band. None of their albums or singles received a Grammy, however the band itself was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001 and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2006. Their songs “Light My Fire” and “Riders on the Storm” also received Grammy Hall of Fame awards. The Doors were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
When it came to their live shows, The Doors prided themselves on their concerts. Not a lot of gimmicks except for the night in Miami when Morrison was charged with indecency, but three musicians who were outstanding on their instruments and the raw vocals of Jim Morrison. Morrison himself said, “We’re much better in person. Our record albums are only a map of our work.” Keyboardist Ray Manzarek added, “People become familiar with us through the album, but it’s when they see us that it all happens.”
So when you add it all up, where does that leave The Doors? It’s certainly subjective but, while they don’t rate at the top of the greatest American bands, they are in the top ten. Not band for a short lived group that ended half a century ago.
My so called friends think it’s time to edit this section. After four years, they may be right, but don’t tell them that. I’ll deny it until they die!
I can’t believe I’ve been writing this blog for four years.
It started as a health/wellness thing and over the years has morphed to include so many things that I don’t know how to describe it anymore.
I really thought this was going to be the final year of the blog but then Donald Trump came along. It looks like we’re good for four more years..God help us all!
Oh yeah…the biographical stuff. I’m not 60 anymore. The rest you can read about in the blog.
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. — Swashbuckling entrepreneur Richard Branson hurtled into space aboard his own winged rocket ship Sunday in his boldest adventure yet, beating out fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The nearly 71-year-old Branson and five crewmates from his Virgin Galactic space tourism company reached an altitude of about 53 miles (88 kilometers) over the New Mexico desert — enough to experience three to four minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the Earth — and then safely glided back home to a runway landing.
“Seventeen years of hard work to get us this far,” a jubilant Branson said as he congratulated his team on the trip back.
Branson became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Bezos by nine days. He also became only the second septuagenarian to depart for space. (John Glenn flew on the shuttle at age 77 in 1998.)
With about 500 people watching, including Branson’s wife, children and grandchildren, a twin-fuselage aircraft with his space plane attached underneath took off in the first stage of the flight.
The space plane then detached from the mother ship at an altitude of about 8 1/2 miles (13 kilometers) and fired its engine, reaching the edge of space. The entire flight up and back aboard the sleek white ship, named Unity, took just under 15 minutes.
Virgin Galactic conducted three previous test flights into space with crews of just two or three.
The flamboyant, London-born founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways wasn’t supposed to fly until later this summer. But he assigned himself to an earlier flight after Bezos announced plans to ride his own rocket into space from Texas on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Branson, who has kite-surfed the English Channel and attempted to circle the world in a hot-air balloon, denied he was trying to beat Bezos.
Another one of Branson’s chief rivals in the space-tourism race among the world’s richest men, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, arrived in New Mexico to witness the flight, wishing Branson via Twitter, “Godspeed!”
Bezos likewise sent his wishes for a safe and successful flight, though he also took to Twitter to enumerate the ways in which be believes his company’s rides will be better.
Bezos’ Blue Origin company intends to send tourists past the so-called Karman line 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, which is is recognized by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold of space.
But NASA, the Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration and some astrophysicists consider the boundary between the atmosphere and space to begin 50 miles (80 kilometers) up.
The risks to Branson and his crew were underscored in 2007, when a rocket motor test in California’s Mojave Desert left three workers dead, and in 2014, when a Virgin Galactic rocket plane broke apart during a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.
Ever the showman, Branson insisted on a global livestream of the Sunday morning flight and invited celebrities and former space station astronauts to the company’s Spaceport America base in New Mexico.
R&B singer Khalid was on hand to perform his new single “New Normal” — a nod to the dawning of space tourism — while CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert served as the event’s master of ceremonies.
Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations from would-be space tourists, with tickets initially costing $250,000 apiece. Blue Origin is waiting for Bezos’ flight before announcing its ticket prices.
Musk’s SpaceX, which is already launching astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA and is building moon and Mars ships, is also competing for space tourism dollars. But its capsules will do more than make brief, up-and-down forays; they will go into orbit around the Earth, with seats costing well into the millions. Its first private flight is set for September.
Musk himself has not committed to going into space anytime soon.
“It’s a whole new horizon out there, new opportunities, new destinations,” said former NASA astronaut Chris Ferguson, who commanded the last shuttle flight 10 years ago. He now works for Boeing, which is test-flying its own space capsule.
“This is really sort of like the advent of commercial air travel, only 100 years later,” Ferguson added. “There’s a lot waiting in the wings.”
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Though many of Chicago’s favorite street and music festivals are primed to return to the city this summer, not all of them will look the same. Perhaps no more evident of that is the reimagined Taste of Chicago festival that began this week in a pop-up or to-go type rendition of the most iconic food festival in the world.
Each day we’ll deliver the events around-the-city schedule so you know what you need to do in order to experience this new-look version of the Taste of Chicago! Day one was a massive success by all accounts! To take advantage of Sunday’s festivities, check out the round up below.
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12–3pm, Let’s Talk Women Picnic in White, an epic picnic at Millennium Park (201 E. Randolph St.), will serve as the closing event for Taste of Chicago To-Go — presented by DCASE and Let’s Talk Womxn. This celebration of Chicago features women-power music, women performers and interviews of Chicago’s leading women restaurateurs with pre-ordered picnic fare and beverages.
The $45 picnic box lunch features five surprise items from Chicago’s top women-owned restaurants and will be picked up onsite upon arrival (vegetarian or non-vegetarian). Signature cocktails and beverages may also be pre-ordered. Limited food and beverages will be offered for purchase onsite. Guests are encouraged to dress in white in solidarity with women across Chicago and across the world and to bring friends and family to this celebration. For details, visit LetsTalkWomxn.com.
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For more information on the Taste of Chicago, visit the city’s website at chicago.gov. For more information on the entirety of Chicago’s festival schedule this month, check out our round up of both festivals and concerts going on throughout the city this month.
As Chicagoans gathered at the lakefront to celebrate the Fourth of July, the Park District sent up a firecracker of its own: a holiday hike in lakefront parking fees to a whopping $30 a day for the whole three-day weekend.
The flat rate was about five times higher than what a lakefront visitor normally would pay to park at the beach for, say, four hours.
A holiday hike in parking rates, especially a hike of that size, places an unfair burden on Chicagoans — especially families — who live in neighborhoods so far from the lakefront that a car is their most reasonable way of getting there.
We urge the Chicago Park District to rethink this holiday pricing policy.
Park District ‘holiday rate’
Now here’s the spot in the editorial where we might normally shake our fists again at the city’s infamous 2008 parking meter agreement, that 75-year curse that raises rates, enriches the deal’s private investors and contributes nothing to the municipal coffers beyond the initial $1.15 billion the city received and spent more than a decade ago.
But the price hike on the lakefront is a reminder that the Park District has had its own parking deal since 2018 with Standard Parking Corporation, a deal that is separate from the One We All Hate.
The Park District’s arrangement with Standard is far less onerous than the city’s contract with Chicago Parking Meters LLC. The majority of the money collected goes to the district, rather than into the pockets of investors. And, best of all, the Park District, unlike the city, has control over key components of the deal — such as any price spikes.
This is what a Park District spokesperson told the Sun-Times’ Mitchell Armentrout in an email: “Similar to other parking lots across the city, the Chicago Park District imposes a holiday rate along the lakefront over the Fourth of July weekend. The $30 flat parking rate is consistent at all lakefront locations.”
Which just means the Park District can also scale back those price hikes or not impose them at all.
At the very least, the Park District might want to add some rhyme or reason to its holiday pricing. The district charged the $30 parking rate at Big Marsh Park on the Far Southeast Side. But Big Marsh, at 115th Street and Stony Island Avenue, has no lake of its own and is five miles away from the nearest beach.
No more free parking, but…
We understand the days of free lakefront parking are a thing of the past. The district needs an income stream to maintain 32 lakefront parking lots that serve beaches and boat launch areas.
But the lakefront is Chicago’s treasure. Charging exorbitantly higher prices on busy holiday weekends threatens equal and equitable access for all.
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Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
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