The most important priority for the Chicago Bears this offseason is solving the quarterback position, but with the No. 20 overall pick and limited cap space that will be a tall order. Absent one of the top four quarterbacks inexplicably falling that far, general manager Ryan Pace will have to trade up.
Well, if he watches ESPN in the morning, he may have woken up to potentially some very good news. This morning, Adam Schefter made some comments that suggest the No. 2 overall pick is firmly in play. This was further implied with a tweet from NFL insider Benjamin Allbright.
First, we start with Schefter’s somewhat surprising comments. As we know, the New York Jets currently hold the No. 2 overall pick, a result of winning two of their last three games and yielding the top pick to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Many wondered how they could let that happen. It appears the answer may be found in Schefter’s comments.
He indicated that he “would be surprised if Sam Darnold is not the quarterback on opening day.” This is interesting because most assumed the Jets were going to draft a quarterback and trade Darnold.
The ChicagoBears have a shot at the No. 2 overall pick
Allbright then tweeted out that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Jets traded out of the No. 2 pick, as he has been saying for some time now.
Further I wouldn’t be surprised if the Jets trade out of 2 (as I’ve been saying) https://t.co/aFgvEdmELu
This should be music to Pace’s ears. Now fans will certainly have apprehension about Pace trading more future draft assets to move up to potentially get it wrong again. However, George McCaskey indicated on the radio yesterday that he will have the power to do so. Moreover, with the limited quarterbacks available via free agency or trade, the reality is trading up in the draft is his best move. Not only would it give him a shot at a franchise quarterback, but it would likely buy him more time than next season as he persuades McCaskey to give him a few years to develop the young quarterback.
Trading up to No. 2 would put Pace in a position to have his pick of Justin Fields, Zach Wilson, or Trey Lance, though likely the first two would be the only ones in serious contention.
Again, fans may be apprehensive about the idea of Pace rolling the dice again, but consider the amount of hope that selecting a guy like Fields or Wilson would bring to the fans. Heck, they may even be willing to forgive George McCaskey and Ted Phillips. Ok — maybe that’s going too far.
Marcus Addison Cinema, 1555 W. Lake St. in Addison. | Google Maps
The theaters are part of a chain owned by the Milwaukee-based Marcus Theaters, which exhibits movies in 17 states across the country.
Two suburban movie theaters are reopening seemingly in defiance of a state order that closed theaters across Illinois months ago due to the growing number of coronavirus cases in Illinois.
“The wait is finally over! Our doors open back up Friday afternoon!,” Marcus Elgin Cinema, 111 S. Randall Rd., posted on its Facebook page before listing the do’s and don’ts of visiting in person.
Joining Elgin Cinema in reopening is Marcus Addison Cinema, 1555 W. Lake St. in Addison, as well as Marcus’ Bloomington Cinema in downstate Bloomington.
The three theaters are part of a chain owned by the Milwaukee-based Marcus Theaters, which exhibits movies in 17 states across the country.
The move to reopen comes as all of Illinois’ 11 regions are still adhering to its Tier 3 resurgence mitigation plan, which prohibits — among other things — movie theaters from hosting in-person viewings.
Elgin Cinema is located in Kane County and Addison Cinema is in DuPage County, both in Region 8. Bloomington Cinema is located in McLean County and is part of Region 2.
It’s unclear if these movie theaters are in regions that soon will leave Tier 3 for Tier 2, which will allow for movie theaters to reopen.
DuPage, Kane and McLean counties’ health departments and Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
A statement from Mari Randa, a spokeswoman for Marcus Theaters, didn’t address whether the theater chain was rebuffing a state order or if the theaters were located in regions that were set to fall off Tier 3 status.
“We are excited to reopen some of our Illinois locations and welcome guests back to see movies the way they were meant to be seen — on the big screen,” Randa said. “With our updated health and safety protocols and the fact that there has not been a reported case of COVID in theatres, we feel that moviegoing provides a safe escape.”
The reopening will let Chicago area customers see some of the holiday season’s biggest movies — including “Wonder Woman 1984” and “The Croods: A New Age” — on the big screen for the first time. No other Chicago area theaters are known to have opened since the tightening of restrictions in November.
Manny Ramos is a corps member in Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of issues affecting Chicago’s South and West sides.
Firefighters responded to a blaze Jan. 14, 2021, in Evanston. | Evanston Fire Department
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.
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.
A prototype of the preteen protagonist of Diamond’s Dream
“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.
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.”
