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In the early hours of Friday, November 6, 26-year-old Chicago rapper Dayvon Bennett, better known as King Von, was shot and killed outside an Atlanta nightclub. Von emerged a couple years ago as part of a newer generation of locals refashioning drill’s austere, hard-edged aesthetic in their own image.…Read More

Our favorite turkey holiday might look a little different this year, thanks to COVID-19. Health officials recommend celebrating only with people in your household or taking precautions like keeping your distance and wearing a mask if you get together with others. So if you’re staying home and don’t feel like cooking, here’s a roundup of top Chicago restaurants offering Thanksgiving Specials to go. 

The Gage

24 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60603

Bring home a Thanksgiving feast for any size gathering. Start by choosing a Free Range Minnesota Turkey for $450 (feeds 4 to 6) or $550 (feeds 8 to 10). Or a Heritage Bred Brune Landaise Chicken for $270 (feeds 2 to 4). Then select your starters, salads, sides, and dessert. Delicious!

Frontier

1072 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL 60642

Get a real deal Thanksgiving meal! Enjoy smoked, carved Turkey Breast with gravy, Mashed Potatoes, String Beans, Cornbread Stuffing, Buttered Rolls, and Sweet Potato Pie Pieces. For 4 to 6 people, you’ll be dishing out $150. Just want the bird? Get a 15-pound turkey for $77. 

Girl & The Goat

809 W Randolph St, Chicago, IL 60607

Save time and hassle with chef Stephanie Izard’s Everything But The Turkey kit. Indulge in Thanksgiving classics with a twist like Belize-Spiced Cranberries, Hong Kong Gravy, Roasted Hong Kong Sweet Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole, Southeast Asia Sausage, Apple & Mushroom Stuffing, and Southeast Asia Mashed Potatoes! Serves 6 for $249.

Bub City

435 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654

Let the folks at Bub City do the cooking this year with their Thanksgiving Feast for $175 (serves 4). Featuring a Half Smoked Turkey with all the fixings, mashed potatoes and country gravy, autumn salad, and cranberry sauce. Place your order by Wednesday, November 25th for pickup on Thanksgiving Day between 9 AM and 1 PM. 

Bayan Ko

1810 W Montrose Ave, Chicago Il, Il 60640

Gobble down your turkey day dinner, Bayan Ko style! The main dishes include Mojo Marinated Turkey Roulade, Adobo Pork Belly, Shrimp Al Ajillo. And sides: shaved Brussel Sprouts & Mushroom Pancit, Chorizo Cornbread Stuffing, Garlic Fried Rice, and Black Beans & Maduros. Still have room? Top it off with a Salted Caramel Flan. Cue the drool emojis. Feeds 4 to 6 for $195. Order by November 18th!

Brass Heart

4662 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640

Spending the day with your sweetheart? Brass Heart’s got you covered. Here’s what you’ll get for $175 (serves 2): Poussin Chickens stuffed with brioche dressing, Green Bean and Wild Mushroom Casserole, 50/50 Duchess Whipped Potatoes, Cranberry Sauce, Roasted Chicken Pan Gravy, Brussels Sprouts, Sweet Potato Pie, and a bottle of Rose! 

View the Best Used Bike Shops in Chicago

Chicago restaurants doing Thanksgiving specials? Work off the meal on your bike from one of the city’s best used bike shops.

Best Used Bike Shops Chicago

Virtue

1462 E 53rd St, Chicago, IL 60615

Get a taste of southern cooking without leaving your couch. Virtue is offering a complete Thanksgiving Meal (feeds 4 to 6) for $189. Feast your eyes on a whole brined & roasted turkey, collard greens, giblet gravy, candied yams, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and pecan pie. Wowza.

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Tulsa runs a play against Oklahoma State with fans spread out due to COVID-19 precautions on Sept. 19 in Stillwater, Okla. | Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images

We’re heading into a very dark time, a time that experts warned months ago was coming.

Sports, or at least the idea of sports, are good for a nation’s soul during a pandemic. They bring us together. They divert our attention. They make us hopeful, unless the franchise one follows hasn’t gotten the quarterback position right in what feels like centuries.

You know what’s better for a nation’s soul? Watching COVID-19 cases and deaths drop. Knowing that someday, you’ll be able to hug your grandchild, no matter how difficult it might be to be deprived of that joy right now. Staying alive.

The Ivy League understands this. On Thursday, it canceled winter sports. It already had canceled fall sports, including football, and was the first conference to cancel its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments in March, when the pandemic was in its infancy. The health of its athletes, coaches, students, students’ relatives and faculty appears to be paramount.

Coronavirus cases are skyrocketing across the country, and experts have warned that we are in for a painful winter. Thanksgiving is looming. Until this year, has anyone ever described Thanksgiving as looming, as if it were a hooded specter? That alone should tell us we need to reassess everything, including sports. We shouldn’t be getting together in groups in confined spaces for the holidays.

Maybe we shouldn’t be huddling on football fields, either.

College football is a mess, with 57 FBS games having been canceled or postponed so far because of the virus. A limited number of fans are still allowed in many stadiums, which seems risky, but not to Florida coach Dan Mullen. He pushed for 90,000 people filling the Gators’ stadium last month for a game against LSU. The game was postponed because of a COVID-19 breakout on Florida’s team. Mullen contracted the virus, because that’s how the universe works.

You can’t go a day without an NFL team announcing positive tests for some of its players or staff. This is a league with some of the best testing and the best information available. If you think it’s hard to block a 300-pound defensive tackle, try blocking COVID-19. It figures to get much worse.

This is all about TV money, of course. It’s why sports leagues have tried, with varying amounts of success, to carry on amid a nasty, highly contagious virus. In one hand was health and in the other was additional wealth, billions of dollars of it. You didn’t have to be an economist to understand which was which. If you were an ethicist, you were encouraged to take a hike. Even though Ivy League presidents did the responsible thing by canceling football and basketball, they didn’t have truckloads of TV money influencing their noble thoughts.

We’re heading into a very dark time, a time that experts warned months ago was coming. When summer arrived and society started opening up a bit more because of good behavior, questions kept dogging me: What really has changed? The virus is still around, right? And no vaccine has been produced yet, correct? Wouldn’t the easing of restrictions send a message to the populace that somehow the coast was clear? Was there not going to be a reckoning?

It felt like a decision had been made to enjoy now, pay later. And here we are, paying with a ridiculously high interest rate.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has ordered a 30-day stay-at-home advisory, starting Monday. It’s in anticipation of Thanksgiving and the tradition of gathering in large groups to celebrate the holiday. Wisconsin’s governor is also urging the public to stay home because the state’s hospitals are running out of beds, thanks to the virus.

Will people listen? Some will, some won’t. But the advisories are the right move. The right move for college and pro football would be a similar pause during and after the holidays.

If I know one thing in life right now, it’s that a pause will never happen. Money talks.

This has not been our finest hour as a country. Too many people still refuse to wear masks, claiming it’s a matter of personal freedom. It’s a far cry from World War II, when Americans dropped everything to fight a common enemy. If a similar global crisis arose today, I can only assume that there would be plenty of patriots who would refuse to wear a military uniform. The shirts are too constricting, they’d say. A violation of their rights, they’d cry.

We’re at war with a terrible virus. It’s hard to understand why we’re still asking whether playing games during a pandemic is a good idea. The soaring number of COVID-19 cases would seem to argue convincingly that games are not a good idea at all.

Yet here we are. It doesn’t make much sense, like a lot of behavior during the pandemic.

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Just past the midway point in the 2020 NFL season, Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy and general manager Ryan Pace look the fool. The Chicago Bears are reeling, folks. They are bleeding out the side and appear to be headed for disaster. No, it’s not as bad as let’s say, the New York Jets’ […]

Chicago Bears: Several teams making Matt Nagy, Ryan Pace look foolish – Da Windy City – Da Windy City – A Chicago Sports Site – Bears, Bulls, Cubs, White Sox, Blackhawks, Fighting Illini & More

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Chicago Cubs: Three trade packages for Francisco Lindor by Vincent Parise

What would a Chicago Blackhawks rebuild look like if they did it right?

The Chicago Blackhawks claim that they are rebuilding their roster. It isn’t a very good roster anymore and their record over the past three seasons shows why. They won the Stanley Cup in 2015 and haven’t won a playoff series since. They haven’t even been to the playoffs (the normal playoffs) since 2017. They made it to the bubble in the NHL’s “Return to Play” but they would have not even sniffed the playoffs in a normal year.

So, if they were to actually rebuild the way they’re supposed to (which is unlikely), it would be really painful. Fans would see some of the players that they have come to love over the years go if the rebuild was done the right way. They did a good job building from the ground up in the mid-2000s and that is what they need to do again.

Already have

The Chicago Blackhawks already have some nice young pieces in place to build around. They have Kirby Dach, Ian Mitchell, Adam Boqvist, and Alex DeBrincat who are all pretty good young players to build around. We will see who emerges as the game-breakers but that is a good place to start. They need a lot more young players but those guys are pretty nice to have to lead the way.

Legends

Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, and Duncan Keith are three of the five greatest players who ever played for the Chicago Blackhawks. They have won numerous individual awards and have come together to lead the way to three Stanley Cups. All three of them were named to be NHL Top 100 players of all time which basically locks them in as Hall of Famers.

Unfortunately, the Hawks would get the best rebuild done if they traded those guys. Kane and Toews are each top of the line NHL forwards, especially Kane. Keith is still a good top-four defenseman that would help any team win. Each player would return valuable assets that would certainly help them build a good future.

Draft

If they were smart enough to do a rebuild the right way, they would probably have a couple of high draft picks coming up. With those picks, it would be nice to win the lottery but you can’t bank on that. What they can hope for, is using those picks wisely. Scouting and developing is key to getting the most out of young prospects.

Realistically

Realistically, Stan Bowman probably won’t trade any of the players that will return the best assets. This already feels like a rebuild that they won’t do right because of the moves they have already made. They made a few trades that made it seem like they are trying to win but it came after letting Corey Crawford walk so they can “look at the young guys they have to play goal”.

Hot: Patrick Kane wouldn’t be that hard to trade

Not much Stan Bowman has done over the past few years has made much sense so it really isn’t that much of a surprise. We just have to hope that they have learned a few lessons and are able to start turning the page into something good. If they did a real rebuild, things would get ugly before they got better but if they don’t, they will just stay ugly. The former is probably the best course of action and trading some popular players would be key.

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