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Now that the city of Chicago and state of Illinois are, as of Friday, fully reopened for business, some people are eager to get back out. And some say: Not yet.

With the city of Chicago and all of Illinois now fully reopened for business, we asked whether readers plan to go out to bars and restaurants going forward as much as they did before the pandemic. Some answers have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

“Yes, absolutely. I realized how much I took hanging out with friends for granted and doing more work than play. It’s time for balance.” — Jimmy Vidaurri

“Absolutely. Life is too short to keep on worrying. Enjoy your time with friends and family.” — Kathleen Compton

“Yes — but I also didn’t stop going to restaurants during the pandemic.” — Lisa Stripling

“Nope. I decided I like sobriety. There’s a big world out there to see.” — Guy Williams

“I plan to be out about the same to cultural performance events — theater, shows, concerts, exhibits. For restaurants and bars, I will try to limit the dollars spent to only quality, interesting, experiential food and limit the takeout and casual dining, as I have rediscovered the pleasure, satisfaction and price convenience of cooking your own food.” — Ovidiu George Pristavu

“No. Service blows, and food has been awful lately at many places. The pandemic ruined everything.” — Kathleen Alcantar

“I plan to be out and about probably more because I didn’t realize how much I took it for granted. But will mask up if there are a lot of people in a smaller space. It’s been great not having so much as the sniffles for the past year with the mask/hand sanitizer combo! Vaccinated and ready to go!” — Cheryl Wisniewski

“I plan on going to outdoor cafes this summer. I had a steak-and-egg breakfast at a outdoor cafe last week. It was amazing.” — Brian Anderson

“No, not until I am sure this has gotten to the stage of any other virus. There will be people out carrying the virus unmasked and won’t care. I also don’t believe that it is suddenly safe to rush out into huge crowds all of a sudden just from last month, when it wasn’t supposed to be wise to do so just because the government now gives it the OK.” — Patty Gayden

“Probably not. If it’s something this pandemic and lockdown has truly taught me, it’s that I hate people.” — Ana Argueta

“I plan to go much more than I did before because I’ve been reminded that no restaurant lasts forever. Many bars and restaurants that I always said I’d go to sometime in the future have closed for good due to being, quite understandably, unable to weather this storm.” — Julia Harris

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Freebies such as Lollapalooza passes, gift cards to Chicago restaurants and retailers and a hip-hop version of the “Protect Chicago” music series and more were announced Friday.

After 15 months of suffering and sacrifice, Mayor Lori Lightfoot celebrated Friday’s reopening of the Chicago and Illinois economies as the liberation day that it was.

On a gorgeous summer-like day, Lightfoot held a celebratory news conference, complete with a grab bag of giveaways aimed at luring Chicagoans off their couches and away from their home offices.

One thousand free, one-day passes to Lollapalooza. Hundreds of $250 gift cards redeemable at over 4,000 Chicago restaurants and retailers. A hip-hop version of the “Protect Chicago” music series for vaccinated Chicagoans.

The pep rally of a news conference was held outside Gibson’s Italia, a riverfront restaurant with one of the most picturesque spots in Chicago.

Construction cranes hummed in the background. The sounds of a city coming back to work and to life, thanks to the stay-at-home sacrifices made by so many.

“Residents of Chicago, for the past year and some change, have endured so very much. But at every step of the way, you still made sure to do your part to stop the spread of this deadly disease,” Lightfoot said.

“You masked up. You got vaxxed up. And now, it’s time for you to get up, get out of the house this summer and fully and safely enjoy the events of the best city on the planet, our beloved city. … There’s no better place to be in summertime than the city of Chicago.”

Throughout the pandemic, Lightfoot has not hesitated to play the heavy.

She closed down the lakefront when she determined Chicagoans could no longer be trusted to maintain social distance and avoid gathering in large groups. That inspired a never-ending and hysterical string of memes she was smart enough to embrace.

She cut off citywide liquor sales at 9 p.m. and drove around the city breaking up large groups.

All of that was forgotten Friday.

Lightfoot pointed to “rebounding travel numbers,” rising hotel occupancy and jampacked restaurants.

“We are strong. We are resilient. And we are back. … We are poised to roar back,” she said.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Bob Reiter characterized Friday’s reopening as a “new beginning — a giant step out of the darkness.”

“People are working behind us. They’re building buildings. They’re out there on the street. It feels like the city is humming again,” he said. The CFL has an ownership stake in Sun-Times Media.

The $250 gift cards come courtesy of a partnership between World Business Chicago and Ray’s Marketplace. They will be distributed starting today through July 4.

To qualify, walk into a participating business with a sign in the window and say, “Open Chicago.” The cards can be used on Ray’s Marketplace and “more than 4,000 brands,” many of them Chicago-based.

The 1,000 passes to Lollapalooza are courtesy of C3 Presents, organizers of the annual music extravaganza in Grant Park. The freebie is available only to people who have been vaccinated.

“To get yourself the best chance to get one of those passes, go to the website Chicago.gov/covidvax, and on Saturday June 26, we’ll be turning four of our city of Chicago sites into a Lollapalooza experience. Each will be featuring DJs spinning music, custom Lollapalooza giveaways. And each of the sites will offer a pass to a different day of the music festival,” said Chicago Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady.

“We’ll be pairing this with a concert … at the House of Blues. They’ll also be sponsoring one of the Lolla artists.”

Arwady also announced another concert in the “Protect Chicago” music series — on July 1 at Chicago State University. It will feature artists from “Save Money,” a popular hip-hop group based in Chicago.

“If you want to guarantee yourself a ticket to that concert for free on July 1, you can sign up to get a vaccine at Chicago State University this coming Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday,” the commissioner said.

Business Affairs and Consumer Protection Commissioner Rosa Escareno thanked Chicago business owners who are “sick of hearing from me” about the ever-changing regulations and capacity limits they have been forced to endure over the past fifteen months.

She urged Chicagoans to support their local businesses.

“They need you. … There’s been a lot of headache and heartache” as scores of businesses have closed and many of them “staying closed,” she said.

Escareno also pointed to the trouble many hotels and restaurants are having in rehiring enough workers to fully reopen.

“We want workers back. The businesses need you back in order to succeed,” she said.

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Diesel said in an interview that the “Fast and Furious” saga will conclude after two more films following the upcoming ninth installment, “F9,” which releases in theaters June 25.

LOS ANGELES — Vin Diesel made a mark as the street racer patriarch in the “Fast and Furious” franchise, but the storyline starring his longstanding character will soon come to an end.

Diesel said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that the “Fast and Furious” saga will conclude after two more films following the upcoming ninth installment, “F9,” which releases in theaters June 25. He said Universal Pictures wants to close out the saga in two parts.

The actor said the final two films could potentially release in 2023 then 2024.

“Every story deserves its own ending,” said Diesel during a press junket for “F9” when asked about the franchise’s future. Despite the end of the saga, he said the “Fast and Furious” cinematic universe will continue on.

When Diesel told his daughter about the franchise’s conclusion, the actor said she began shedding tears.

“I know people are going to feel like it doesn’t have to end, but I think all good things should,” he said. “There are reasons for a finale. I think this franchise has deserved it.”

Diesel has starred as Dominic Toretto since the franchise’s inaugural film “The Fast and Furious” in 2001. The movies have become big earners at the domestic and international box office, with the past two films each making more than $1 billion.

Along with Diesel, the action films have featured several others including Michelle Rodriguez, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, rapper Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, Jason Statham and the late Paul Walker. In 2019, Johnson and Statham starred in the franchise’s first spin-off film “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” which claimed the No. 1 spot and earned $180.8 million in its worldwide debut.

Last year, Universal pushed back the release of “F9” due to the coronavirus outbreak. The new film not only brings back a fan favorite — Sung Kang’s Han — along with new additions including John Cena, but the story will also literally send a car into space. It’s expected to be one of the season’s biggest hits.

Director Justin Lin said the idea of finishing the saga came during a conversation with Diesel, who has played the leading role in eight “Fast and Furious” films.

“We got together and Vin says ’I think we should think about closing up the saga now,’” said Lin, who has directed five of the franchise’s films. He will direct the final two installments.

“Nine is kind of the first film of the final chapter,” the director said. “We’re kind of reconfiguring everything, so that the next two movies should wrap up this amazing journey for these characters.”

Diesel said the franchise has come a long way, but he finally sees a finish line.

“This franchise was born from the pavement, from the concrete,” he said. “The world just championed this underdog to a place where it has already surpassed all of these other franchises. But the franchise has a soul, and that soul has to rest.”

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The May 8 explosions killed nearly 100 people, all of them members of the Hazara ethnic minority and most of them young girls just leaving class.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the past four years, since she was 14, the notebook was always within her reach. Shukria Ahmadi titled it “Beautiful Sentences” and put everything in it. Poetry that she liked — sometimes a single line, sometimes long verses. Her drawings, like one of a delicate pink rose. Her attempts at calligraphy in swooping Persian letters.

Now the notebook is torn and scorched. It was with Shukria the day that three bombings in quick succession hit her school in the Afghan capital Kabul. The May 8 explosions killed nearly 100 people, all of them members of the Hazara ethnic minority and most of them young girls just leaving class.

Shukria has been missing since the blast. “She took this notebook everywhere with her,” her father Abdullah Ahmadi said. “I don’t remember seeing her without it. She would even use it to shield her eyes from the sun. Everything she loved is in here.”

The attack on the Syed Al-Shahada School was gut-wrenching for Afghanistan’s Hazaras, even after so many attacks against them over the years. It showed yet again how Islamic State group militants who hate them for their ethnicity or their religion — they are Shiite Muslim — were willing to kill the most vulnerable among them.

The school, which covers grades 1-12, has boys’ classes in the morning and girls in the afternoon. The attackers waited until the girls were all crowding out the exits as their day ended.

Zahra Hassani, 13, recounted how she was thrown off her feet by the first explosion.

“I saw bodies burning, everyone was screaming,” she said. She saw another student raising her hand calling for help. “I was going to help her, and then the second explosion happened, and I ran and ran,” Zahra said.

Speaking in the mostly empty school, Zahra choked back tears and clutched the hand of a friend, Maryam Ahmadi. “What is our sin? That we are Hazara? That we are Shiites?” said Maryam, who is not related to Shukriya. “Is our sin that we are studying?”

Dasht-e-Barchi, the Kabul neighborhood where the school is located, was built by Hazaras’ hopes. It had long been the main Hazara district in the capital, and after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, impoverished Hazaras poured in from their strongholds in central Afghanistan in search of jobs. Dasht-e-Barchi swelled into a giant sprawl.

Murals at Syed Al-Shahada school promise students that education and hard work will unlock the future. “Your dreams are limited only by your imagination,” proclaims one slogan emblazoned large and bright across a wall.

But the explosions erased the dreams of dozens of Hazara children there. Here are a few of them:

Nekbakht Alizada, 17, dreamed of being a doctor. “I want to help my family and I want to help poor people, like us,” her father Abdul Aziz said she told him.

Noria Yousufi, 14, wanted to become an engineer, her father Mehdi said. The best word to describe her, he said: “Kind.”

Ameena Razawi, 17, always had a smile on her face, said her father, Naseem Razawi. She hoped to become a surgeon.

Arefa Hussaini, 14, had a slogan she lived by: ’Where there is a will there is a way.” She vowed that one day she would be a lawyer, but even as she studied, she worked as a tailor to help support her family, her uncle Mohammad Salim said.

Freshta Alizada, 15, shone in her classes and twice had skipped a grade, her Aunt Sabera boasted. Freshta was always telling her family that one day she would become a journalist.

Hadisa Ahmadi, 16, was a math genius and dreamed of becoming a mathematician, her older sister Fatima said. She would always solve Fatima’s math problems and tease her that even though she was older, she just didn’t get it. Hadisa wove carpets to earn money for her poor family and to pay for additional math tutoring.

Farzana Fazili, 13, was the jokester in her family, said her brother Hamidullah. She too wove carpets in her spare time to earn money for her family. When she wasn’t teasing her younger brother, she would help him with his homework.

Safia Sajadi, 14, made clothes to earn money to pay for her English-language lessons, said her father Ali. Weeping, he boasted how his daughter always had the highest marks.

Hassina Haideri, 13, was forever in the kitchen helping her mother, says her father, Alidad. She loved to cook, but she dreamed of becoming a doctor. She sold clothes she made in a nearby shop to earn extra money for her family.

Mohammad Amin Hussaini said his 16-year-old daughter Aquila loved him better than anyone. She would read him poetry and hoped to become a doctor.

At the Syed-Al-Sahada School, students who survived cried and held each other. Some were angry.

Maryam said Hazaras have no hope in the government, which she said has done nothing to prevent attacks.

“Only God can have mercy on us,” she said. “From others, we expect nothing.”

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Tyrese Taylor is the 11th child aged 15 and younger to be gunned down in Chicago this year.

As his family packed to move to a safer place in the suburbs, a 14-year-old boy was shot and killed in Lawndale on the West Side Thursday afternoon.

Tyrese Taylor was shot several times around 1:45 p.m. on a sidewalk in the 1100 block of South Karlov Avenue, not far from a U-Haul van the family had been loading, authorities and family said.

Officers were flagged down by a witness who directed them to a rear porch, where officers found Tyrese facedown on the porch stairs, police said. He had gunshot wounds to his head, body and legs.

Paramedics took the child to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Police taped off the U-Haul moving truck, next to Frazier International Magnet Elementary School, as they worked the scene late into the afternoon. Detectives were reviewing police and CPS surveillance video.

It’s unclear how many shooters there were. At least 10 gunshots were detected by police’s ShotSpotter system. Police recovered four .40-cal shell casings and two 9mm casings.

No one was in custody.

The boy’s mother was moving the family to the suburbs to let him live in a calmer environment, according to a neighbor who said he knew the teen well.

“He was a good kid. Sometimes he got mixed up with the wrong crowd, but he was a good kid,” said the man, who asked not to be named.

Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times

The man said he saw a white car drive up and someone fire shots at the boy.

The boy’s aunt, Dorothy Taylor, said the boy “loved to game” on his XBox. She said he was smart and went to Webster Elementary, a block north of where the shooting happened.

The boy had three sisters and five brothers, she said. “He was the baby.”

Ten other children aged 15 or younger have been shot dead so far this year, according to Sun-Times records. That’s more than the number killed in all of 2019.

The most recent fatal shooting of a child happened June 2 in Back of the Yards on the South Side. Savanah Quintero, 14, was shot in the head after three young gang members asked which gang she was affiliated with. After she said she wasn’t, the attackers chased her and opened fire.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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A way-too-early preseason list to get us started.

There is always unpredictability when forecasting a season before it starts, especially six months out.

But with all that high school basketball fans, players and coaches went through over the past year, it’s a little refreshing to know we should have a better feel heading into the 2021-22 season than the one that just passed.

While we will watch the summer play out with transfers and what transpires in shootouts and player development, this look at what is still a way-too-early preseason list to get us started. Here is an early Elite Eight in the Chicago area, listed alphabetically.

Glenbard West

The Hilltoppers are loaded, starting with 6-9 Braden Huff, a high-major prospect and one of the top players in the state.

Versatile 6-5 senior Cade Pierce, another Division I prospect, returns, along with improving 6-7 Ryan Renfro and hard-nosed guard Paxton Warden.

When you add the arrival of 6-5 Hinsdale South transfer Bobby Durkin, who is among the elite shooters in the state, this is one of the top teams in the state.

Glenbrook South

The 1-2 punch of 6-7 Nick Martinelli and guard Cooper Noard did a ton of damage as juniors, combining to average 40 points between them. That talented tandem, along with Rodell Davis, Jr. and Brandon Ballarini, will keep the Titans ranked all year.

Kenwood

Mike Irvin has a stable of talented young players returning in his second year as head coach.

The exciting 6-7 JJ Taylor put up huge numbers as a sophomore last season and is among the top 25 prospects in the country. Taylor, 6-7 Davious Loury and scoring guard Darrin Ames form a dynamic trio.

The return of former Fenwick star guard Trey Pettigrew to Kenwood, via Eduprize in Arizona for one year, adds experienced talent to a loaded, young Broncos roster. Pettigrew is among Hoops Report’s top five prospects in Illinois in next year’s senior class.

New Trier

This may have been the best team no one talked about this past season, and the Trevians will be even better next year after going 13-2.

There is size, shooting and experience with the emerging 6-8 Jackson Munro, 6-3 guard Jake Fiegan, who will be one of the breakout players in the junior class, guard Josh Kirkpatrick and 6-10 Tyler Van Gorp.

Simeon

The Wolverines lose a lot, but we’ve all heard that a time or two over the past 20 years.

Coach Robert Smith’s program will be a state title contender again, this time in Class 3A, with the backcourt trio of Jaylen Drane, Avyion Morris and Jalen Griffin.

St. Ignatius

The expectations for the Wolfpack are sky high with so much experience returning from a team that went 13-5.

Seniors AJ Redd and Kolby Gilles and junior Richard Barron will all be double-figure scorers for a team that should be among the best in the Chicago area. Keep an eye on the development of 6-8 junior Jackson Kotecki.

St. Rita

The Mustangs are brimming with talent and potential.

The heralded Class of 2024, featuring 6-9 James Brown, 6-8 Morez Johnson and point guard Jaiden Reyna, all got their feet wet a year ago as freshmen. Promising transfer Bryce Coleman has grown to 6-6 after being a double-figure scorer at St. Joseph, while guard Kaiden Space also returns.

Young

Starting with AJ Casey, the state’s top-ranked prospect in next year’s senior class, the Dolphins will be primed and ready for a run at a Class 4A state championship.

Xavier Amos, a 6-7 forward, had a breakout junior year this past season, while point guard Dalen Davis is one of the state’s top talents in the Class of 2023.

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From a graystone to a starter loft apartment to a nicely renovated old worker’s cottage, you can find homes that reflect the city’s history by the homes of two teams that define it.Read More

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