Tomorrow is gonna stink on ice.The abominable Oprah Winfrey is taking over Michigan Avenue. The very avenue that I work on. She's filming her season opener in the heart of the city tomorrow and is shutting down roughly three blocks of the Mag Mile because, well....she can. She's Oprah.
They blocked off Michigan between Ohio and Wacker Drive today, and it will remain like that through Wednesday AM. If you're not from Chicago, you have no idea how enormous that is. You can check out the map, here. The street in front of my building will be completely blocked off to traffic, to allow for all the Iowans and housewives who will fill the street all a twitter. And the city says they are going to keep people off the sidewalks, unless of course, there are so many people that the street can't handle it. I have also heard that those of us coming and going on Boul Mich will be subject to security checks. SECURITY CHECKS. While I go get my lunch from Subway I will be subject to search? Nice. All for Ms. O.
Mike Royko couldn't have pulled this off. Hell, Phil Donohue couldn't have pulled this off. For that matter, there's no way in hell Daley would have allowed this for Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, any of the Cusacks and Kanye West combined.
But Oprah, Ms. Winfrey, please feel free to fuck up the city at your will.
I will post pictures of the debacle tomorrow. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of plaid shorts, gaping mouths and fanny packs.
To be continued....
Yeah..so glad that I work on the other side of downtown by the train station. I was no where near the headache. I heard from a friend that works on Michigan and they heard crowd noise all day..very hard to concentrate on anything else.
ReplyDeleteIt was! The crowds were HUGE. The only cool part was that I could hear all the sound checks as clear as a bell while sitting in my office. So I got to hear Jennifer Hudson and the Peas without standing in that sweaty throng.
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