This is not a drill! ‘The Art of Banksy’ exhibit is coming to Chicago this July and will be held at an undisclosed location in the West Loop.
Tickets go on sale Thursday, May 6th and the price-point is a steal. Pricing starts at $40 for adults and $30 for children aged 16 and younger. Fortunately, the instillation for the acclaimed anonymous artist will run through November 28th so do not fret if you feel like you might miss out on this unique opportunity. Like the popular “Immersive Van Gogh” experience in Old Town, “The Art of Banksy” is run by Starvox Exhibits. The wildly popular north-side instillation has gotten a ton of buzz since opening this spring. Those looking to attend the exhibit of the world’s most famous street artist can expect a similar experience. The entire thing will last about one hour and will include roughly 80 pieces worth north of $35 million in a walkthrough museum type setting.
It is important to note that Banksy himself isn’t completely on-board with these exhibitions. Via his website he’s stated: “Members of the public should be aware there has been a recent spate of Banksy exhibitions none of which are consensual. They‘ve been organised entirely without the artist’s knowledge or involvement. Please treat them accordingly.”
All art shown at the event has been donated by collectors.
Advertisement
Banksy “Untouchables” Piece in West Loop. Photo Credit: Flickr
This marks the second time Banksy’s work has graced the city of Chicago. Back in 2010, the British artist took to the streets and created a series of murals that have since been painted over or defaced. His most famous from the period was his homage to The Untouchables via a portrait of a baby in a carriage rolling down stairs. That piece iconically sat on Randolph Street in the West Loop where the Nobu Hotel now sits.
You can purchase tickets to “The Art of Banksy” via the exhibits website www.banksyexhibit.com.
An off-duty Lynwood police officer shot and wounded someone at a gas station in the south suburb on Sunday, according to police.
The shooting happened at a Mobil gas station at Glenwood Dyer Road and Torrence Avenue around 6:15 p.m., according to a statement by Lynwood Police Deputy Chief Lawrence Weinbrecht.
Officers responded to a call of gunfire and found a wounded person, who was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn with injuries that weren’t life-threatening, Weinbrecht said.
A gun with an extended magazine was found at the scene, he said. Police released no other details.
Illinois State Police said they were investigating the officer’s use of force.
The name “Midwest” or “Midwestern” is attached to dozens of Chicago institutions. Midwest Tool. Midwest Foods. Midwest Laundries. Midwest Chiropractic Center. That’s because Chicago, as the Encyclopedia of Chicago itself puts it, is the “capital of the Midwest”—the commercial and industrial hub of a region built on commerce and industry.
But is “Midwest” really an accurate description of Chicago’s place in North America? Do we really belong in the same geographic basket as Des Moines, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Sioux Falls, cities with which we have very little in common culturally, linguistically, or politically? And more broadly, aren’t the commonly accepted boundaries of the Midwest—west of the Appalachians, north of the Ohio River, south of the Canadian border, and east of the Rockies—too broad to be tagged with a single rubric?
The answers to those questions, to use Midwestern phraseology, are “nope” and “you bet!” We’re not Midwesterners, because there is no such place as the Midwest. “Midwest” was invented in the 19th Century, to describe the states of the old Northwest Ordinance, a term that became outdated once the nation spread to the Pacific Coast.
“Midwest” is applied to a chunk of America that seems unclassifiable to the rest of the country: neither North, South, East or West. Its borders have shifted historically, making them always good for an argument. (Out of nearly 35,000 Vox readers, 95% agree Iowa is a Midwestern state, followed by Illinois at 91%. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, and Missouri just clear the low 80s.)What we call the Midwest is in fact a set of sub-regions, not all of which are contained in what we’ve traditionally thought of as “the Midwest.”
Here in Chicago, for example, we’re Great Lakers, denizens of a freshwater nation that not only crosses boundaries traditionally applied to the Midwest, but the boundaries of the United States itself. Our compatriots can be found in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland, all traditional “Midwestern” cities, but also in Buffalo, Rochester and Toronto.
In fact, Chicago was first incorporated into Illinois because of its connection to the Great Lakes. The Northwest Ordinance declared that Illinois’s northern border would run along a line defined by the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Had that plan been followed, what we now know as Chicago would’ve been part of Wisconsin. In 1817, as Illinois was preparing to enter the Union, territorial delegate Nathaniel Pope proposed pushing the boundary north 55 miles. Pope wanted to balance our pro-Southern, pro-slavery population by attracting Yankees migrating westward via the Great Lakes, ensuring Illinois remained a free state.
Those Yankees, mainly from western New York and New England, provided the basis of Chicago’s culture and language. In his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, journalist Colin Woodard places Chicago in a region called “Yankeedom,” which stretches across the northern tier of the nation, from Maine to Minnesota. It’s a bastion of political progressivism. As Woodard wrote, “residents in Northeastern states and the industrial Midwest tend to be more comfortable with government regulation. They value education and the common good more than other regions.” The Inland North dialect, basis of the Classic Chicago Accent, also follows the contours of the lower Great Lakes, from Rochester to Milwaukee.
(When I wrote a dialect book called How to Speak Midwestern, I was accused of stretching the region’s boundaries by including Buffalo and Pittsburgh. My reasoning: accents commonly heard in “the Midwest” originated in those cities, and were spread westward by settlers.)
These political and linguistic tendencies make us very different from “Midwesterners” in Iowa or Kansas, differences magnified by the fact that Chicago is a port city with a deep industrial heritage.
Besides the Great Lakes, the so-called Midwest can also be subdivided into these regions, each with its own distinct speech and folkways.
—The Corn Belt: An agricultural area running through the center of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.
—The North Country: The mining and logging regions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
—Upper Appalachia: The Ohio Valley of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia and Kentucky, originally settled by Southern migrants.
—The Great Plains: The eastern Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska.
Even before Woodard wrote his book, Deborah Miller of the Minnesota Historical Society was on to this complexity when she told Hour Detroit magazine that “I would put Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan into a particular part of the Midwest that I would call the Upper Midwest. They’re also part of a different region that you might call the Great Lakes states, along with their Canadian contemporaries.”
Chicago’s Canadian contemporary is Toronto. I can’t think of any two major cities more alike. They’re similar in size—Toronto 2.9 million, Chicago 2.7 million—and are both multicultural metropolises laid out in a grid system on the shores of a Great Lake. I find it easier to find my way around Toronto than I do any American city. (The biggest difference: Toronto built right up to its waterfront, while we left ours “forever free and clear.”) We’re the improvisational comedy capitals of our respective nations, both having Second City chapters. For ambitious Americans and Canadians, Chicago and Toronto are the last stops before the Big Time of New York and L.A. Naturally, we’re sister cities.
No one would call Toronto a Midwestern city, since it’s not even in the U.S. It’s undeniably a Great Lakes city, though. The next time someone from the East Coast, the West Coast or the South Coast calls you a Midwesterner, tell them that’s too simplistic a label for all the folks in the middle of the country. Say “I’m a Great Laker,” and make them look at a map.
Simeon’s Ben Coupet Jr. (1) drives down the court against Bloomington. | Sun-Times file photo
Coupet entered high school as the top prospect in the state of Illinois way back in 2012. He signed with SIU on Wednesday.
Ben Coupet Jr. has always had the name.
Coupet entered high school as the top prospect in the state of Illinois way back in 2012. He headed to powerhouse Simeon which was coming off its third straight state championship.
Simeon was also where his father, Ben Coupet, Sr., became a Public League star before he went off to play collegiately at Illinois and, eventually, at Bradley.
Coupet, Jr., was expected to be the next big thing at Simeon. As a 6-7 freshman with the type of talent, upside and pedigree that Coupet possessed, the hyperbole surrounding him as a young player was probably too much, even unfair.
Coupet did have his moments –– he shined as a senior in the city semifinals when he scored a career-high 24 points in a win over Morgan Park –– but overall it was an up-and-down career at Simeon.
Coupet signed with UNLV. He played minimal minutes as a freshman, then redshirted as a sophomore. The minutes were even fewer the following year. He scored a total of 35 points in 26 games over two seasons of action. His three years at UNLV, playing so little, was extremely tough on Coupet.
“I’m not going to lie, it was a dark time for me,” said Coupet of his first three years of college. “I went to UNLV with a lot of high hopes. Everything was there for me to succeed –– the weight room, the training, all that you get with college basketball at that level.”
But not playing and sitting out an entire year proved to be a battle he was not ready to deal with.
“The not playing, sitting on the bench for that long just kind of crushed my dreams,” said Coupet. “I really thought about giving up basketball. But I knew in the end I couldn’t do that.”
Coupet turned to his roots at Simeon to help get out of his personal basketball darkness. He watched his former Simeon teammates and classmates thriving in the sport.
When Coupet was a sophomore he saw Jabari Parker play at Duke and become the No. 3 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. While he was toiling on the bench at UNLV, he watched Zach Norvell become an instant star Gonzaga. And recently he’s watched Kendrick Nunn turn into a bonafide NBA starter with the Miami Heat while averaging 15 points a game.
Sun-Times file photoSimeon’s Ben Coupet Jr. (1) gets a block shoot on Evanston’s Dylan Mulvihill (32).
Coupet plays and competes against the three when they are all in Chicago. And being around that trio helped keep the fuse lit.
“Watching all the success those guys from Simeon have had in front of me –– Kendrick, Zach and Jabari –– kept pushing me,” said Coupet. “I thought it just wasn’t my time yet. Through those struggles of mine, I needed to keep grinding, stay in the gym and keep working. I started to feel like I would find my own success in my own way if I kept doing that.”
But his childhood hero, Derrick Rose, was one who helped him mentally. Watching the former Simeon star return from devastating injuries and put together a great second act in the NBA was a blueprint for Coupet.
“I’ve looked up to Derrick Rose since I was an 8-year-old kid,” said Coupet. “He’s my all-time favorite player, and I just really admire his story –– all of it. To go from being the youngest player ever to become NBA MVP to coming back the way he has after the injuries when so many people said he was done and doubted him? I had that same mindset.”
While the UNLV days were his darkest, Coupet admits even the early years of his basketball career at Simeon weren’t easy. The hoopla surrounding him as the heir apparent to Jabari Parker wasn’t easy to handle.
“I feel like a lot of what Derrick Rose went through with the doubting, saying he was done, all the negativity, it was to some degree what I was going through in high school,” said Coupet. “And I was only 14 or 15 years old. Going through that at that age was difficult. And seeing Derrick Rose prevail the way he has? It just really helped me a lot these last few years.”
Like Rose, Coupet is rewriting –– or at least has altered –– the narrative of his career.
Coupet transferred from UNLV and found his way at Arkansas-Little Rock, producing in a way that showed the talent he possessed. He went from being a no-namer riding the bench to a legit difference-maker.
He started every game for UALR in his two years there, putting up 11.2 points and 4.7 rebounds as a junior and then averaging double-figures again with 10.3 points a game this past season. He’s made 81 three-pointers in two years while shooting 37 percent from beyond the arc.
With everyone in college basketball being granted an extra year of eligibility due to the pandemic, the biggest beneficiary of Coupet’s rise just might be Southern Illinois. Coach Bryan Mullins and the Salukis will be getting the best of Coupet for one year after the long, athletic forward announced he is transferring to SIU.
“I’m super excited,” said Coupet of his commitment to Southern Illinois. “I did have a lot of options this time around, even some bigger ones than Southern. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. It was about comfort and trust. With all that I’ve been through, I’m big on trust. I have that with that entire staff at Southern Illinois.”
The living up to expectations of others are a thing of the past; there is no longer any skepticism surrounding Coupet. He is both physically and mentally mature for the rigors of the Missouri Valley Conference. He is enjoying basketball more than he ever has and the production and consistency has followed.
With the many ups and downs throughout his career, Coupet is anxious to get to work and make one final big splash in college.
“I want to show that SIU is a place in-state kids can go to and have success, especially from the Chicago Public League,” said Coupet. “That’s a goal of mine. I’m hoping to make something truly special in this final year.”
Eleven rounds struck the man’s silver sedan Thursday morning on Congress Parkway, police say.
A driver was in serious condition after he was shot several times by people in another car Thursday morning in the West Garfield Park neighborhood.
At least two shooters opened fire from a maroon car at 6:45 a.m. in the 4100 block of West Congress Parkway, Chicago police said.
Eleven rounds struck the man’s silver sedan, and three of the bullets hit the 52-year-old man in the abdomen, police said. Media reports showed the man’s car crashed into a concrete barrier.
He was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition police said. No arrests have been made.
There is nothing like NFL Training Camp drama, and the ChicagoBears should have themselves plenty of it this year. Changes keep coming for this team as general manager Ryan Pace attempts to re-form the roster in some areas and put his Bears on the best possible path to winning as soon as this year. […]
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22495802/BBKob_CST_022116_12.jpg)
