Happy Fourth, Chicago.
Fireworks may be the main attraction for some today while the holiday offers others a reason to gather, barbecue and eat. However you celebrate, we can help.
Our Arts + Entertainment editors complied a list of fireworks shows around Chicagoland. Tribune environmental reporter Adriana Pérez explored an alternative to traditional fireworks – drone shows – and the reasons why behind the switch for some communities.
In need of some last-minute recipe inspiration? Here is a rib rub which calls for only five ingredients, a bean side dish bound to be a hit and two no-bake desserts: chocolate peanut butter bars and caramel apple eclair cake.
If you’d like an excuse to go out, here are 30 restaurants and bars offering Fourth of July specials through the weekend.
And here are the top stories you need to know to start your day.
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‘Dream big and find ways to serve your country’: Judge urges new citizens to make communities better on the eve of the Fourth of July
Tatiana Mendez came to the United States 10 years ago from El Salvador to escape violence.
On Wednesday, she was one of 50 people to take the oath and be naturalized as U.S. citizens during a ceremony at Wolf Lake Pavilion in Hammond. The ceremony included immigrants from 23 countries, including Vietnam, Mexico, Germany and Sri Lanka.
The Highland Park parade shooting paralyzed a boy. His life remains shattered 2 years later, mom says
Keely Roberts counts the days, not years, since the Highland Park parade shooting injured her and left one of her twin boys paralyzed from the waist down.
It has been 730 days since her now-10-year-old son Cooper could chase his brother Luke in their backyard, play soccer or jump on his bed.
Roberts was shot in the leg, while her son Cooper — the youngest of the injured victims — was shot in the back, severing his spinal cord. His twin brother was hit by shrapnel.
Democratic governors, including J.B. Pritzker, meet with Biden, who insists he’s in the race to stay
Even before Joe Biden entered a critical meeting with the nation’s Democratic governors Wednesday, among them a loyal surrogate and potential replacement in Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the besieged Democratic president declared to supporters he was in the presidential race to stay.
Despite Biden’s outreach attempt to the governors, some Democrats said privately it was too little, too late as questions continued to swirl as to whether the president’s reelection campaign would survive.
Chicago pension debt climbs to $37.2 billion
Chicago’s pension debt climbed to just over $37 billion last year, but city leaders of the special working group Mayor Brandon Johnson convened more than a year ago to confront the issue will have a limited scope: how to ensure benefits for certain pensioners are at least as robust as Social Security.
The rising debt revealed in the city’s latest comprehensive financial report came despite former Mayor Lori Lightfoot dedicating a total of $2.6 billion in her final budget to meet rising required pension payments, including an advance payment to help the city’s four funds continue to tread water.
Judith Stofer Block, first woman to lead Field Museum board, dies at 83
In 1997, Judith Stofer Block succeeded Leo Mullin as the chairperson of the Field’s board, becoming the first woman to head the venerable institution’s governing board in what then was its 103-year history.
During her three years as board chair, the museum made headlines for paying $8 million at a hotly contested auction to acquire “Sue,” the dinosaur fossil that stands as one of the best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found. Sue remains a prominent and popular feature at the museum. Other events during her time as the Field’s chair included hosting a visit by the Dalai Lama and presenting exhibitions on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on motorcycles.
Fossils show huge salamanderlike predator with sharp fangs existed before the dinosaurs
Scientists have revealed fossils of a giant salamanderlike beast with sharp fangs that ruled waters before the first dinosaurs arrived.
The predator, which was larger than a person, likely used its wide, flat head and front teeth to suck in and chomp unsuspecting prey, researchers said. Its skull was about 2 feet long.
Column: Kyle Schwarber has thrived since being let go by Jed Hoyer. The Cubs? Not so much
The 2016 Cubs were supposed to be a team that would stick around for a decade or so, winning a few more pennants and perhaps a couple more championships with a young core that was just starting to blossom together, writes Paul Sullivan.
With the video boards and added signage and a new TV network on the horizon, the wheelbarrow full of cash would keep the Cubs a contender through the 2020s.
That didn’t happen, of course, and the beginning of the end came on Dec. 2, 2020, when Schwarber was non-tendered to save a few million dollars.
Jessica Campbell will be the 1st woman on an NHL bench
Jessica Campbell will become the first woman to work on the bench of an NHL franchise after the Seattle Kraken hired her as an assistant coach Wednesday.
Campbell has spent the past two seasons working as an assistant coach for Seattle’s AHL affiliate in Coachella Valley alongside head coach Dan Bylsma, who was hired in late May to take over the head job with the Kraken. There were immediate questions about whether Campbell would be making the move with Bylsma to Seattle.
‘Chicago Bound: The Great Migration of the Blues’ heads to Chicago’s parks to tell the story behind the music
The free concert series is an amalgamation of song and story behind the musical genre that traveled with those fleeing the South in the early 1900s for more opportunities in the North. The 90-minute program is a collaboration between friends Lucy Smith of the Lucy Smith Quintet and journalist Cheryl Corley — the former, a longtime jazzer, singing songs of notable musicians like Otis Rush (“Double Trouble”), Koko Taylor, Memphis Minnie (“In My Girlish Days”) and Lillian “Lil” Green (“Why Don’t You Do Right”), while Corley shares and narrates the stories behind the songs and artists.
Column: With the ICON closed, Chicago’s South Loop runs its last picture show, for now
When it opened in 2009, the ICON theaters made news. Here was a sleek attempt to bring some luxe to the South Loop, with impressively deafening sound, bright image quality (usually) and a bar upstairs. The 16 auditoriums at the Roosevelt Collection site featured all-digital projection, making it the first all-digital, no analog Chicago multiplex.
“Yeah,” Tony Kerasotes told the Tribune’s Michael Phillips the other day on Zoom, from his home in Tucson, Arizona. He’s retired now. “It was cutting-edge back then.”
He and his brother, Dean, decided to call it quits some weeks ago. The closing notice went up on the front door June 30, thanking patrons for their “unwavering support, loyalty and enthusiasm over the many years.”
