Culture of Chicago
The culture of Chicago, Illinois is known for the invention or significant advancement of several performing arts, including improvisational comedy, house music, hip hop, gospel and soul. The city is known for its Chicago Prairie School architecture, it continues to cultivate a strong tradition of classical music, popular music and performing arts, rooted in Western civilization, as well as other traditions carried forward by its African-American, Asian-American, European American, Hispanic American, Native American citizens. The city is additionally known for various popular culinary dishes, including deep-dish pizza, the Chicago-style hot dog and the Italian beef sandwich. Chicago lays claim to a large number of regional specialties that reflect the city's ethnic and working-class roots. Included among these are its nationally renowned deep-dish pizza; the Chicago-style thin crust is popular in the city. A number of well-known chefs have had restaurants in Chicago, including Charlie Trotter, Rick Tramonto, Grant Achatz, Rick Bayless.
In 2003, Robb Report named Chicago the country's "most exceptional dining destination" and in 2008, Maxim awarded Chicago the title of "Tastiest City." The most popular Chicago-style foods are: The Chicago-style hot dog, traditionally a steamed or boiled, natural-casing all-beef wiener on a poppy-seed bun, topped with yellow mustard, chopped onion, sliced tomato, neon-green sweet-pickle relish, sport peppers, a dill pickle spear, a sprinkling of celery salt—but never ketchup. Chicago-style pizza is deep-dish pizza with a tall outer crust and large amounts of cheese, with chunky tomato sauce on top of the cheese instead of underneath it. Similar to this is stuffed pizza, with more cheese, topped with a second, thinner crust. Thin-crust pizza is very popular in Chicago with it cut in squares; the Italian beef, a sandwich featuring thinly sliced roast beef simmered in a broth containing Italian-style seasonings and served on an Italian roll soaked in the meat juices. Most beef stands offer a "cheesy beef" option, the addition of a slice of provolone or mozzarella.
A "combo" is a beef sandwich with the addition of grilled Italian sausage. Italian beef sandwiches are traditionally topped with spicy giardiniera. Other Chicago-style dishes include: Chicken Vesuvio, an Italian-American dish made from chicken on the bone and wedges of potato and carrots. Shrimp DeJonghe, a casserole of whole peeled shrimp blanketed in soft, sherry-laced bread crumbs. Maxwell Street Polish, named after Maxwell Street where it was first sold. It's a Polish sausage made with beef and pork, with garlic and other spices, served on a bun with grilled onions. A francheezie is a variation of the Chicago-style hot dog; the hot dog is wrapped in bacon and deep-fried, either stuffed or topped with cheese. The jibarito is a specialty sandwich that originated in the heart of Chicago's Puerto Rican community. Invented by Borinquen Restaurant in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, a jibarito is made with meat or chicken, condiments, placed between two pieces of fried and flattened plantain instead of bread.
The mother-in-law is a tamale on a hot dog bun, topped with chili. Chicago has its own unique style of tamale, machine-extruded from cornmeal and wrapped in paper, sold at hot dog stands. Gyros is popular in Chicago. While some restaurants still make their own gyros cones, Chicago is the hometown of mass-produced gyros. Flaming saganaki was popularized by restaurants in the Greektown neighborhood. A square piece of kasseri, kefalotyri, or a similar cheese is fried in a small, two-handled pan, topped with a splash of brandy, served flambé-style, traditionally with a cry of "Opa!" from the waiter. A pizza puff is a deep-fried dough pocket filled with cheese, tomato sauce, other pizza ingredients such as sausage. Indigenous to Chicago, pizza puffs can be found at some hot dog restaurants. A pepper and egg sandwich combines scrambled grilled bell peppers, served on French bread. Eaten during Lent by Italian immigrants in Chicago, it now can be found in some casual dining restaurants. Less well known are: The more provincial South Side specialties such as the big baby, a style of double cheeseburger with the cheese in between the hamburger patties, ketchup and pickle slices underneath them, grilled onions on top.
The breaded-steak sandwich, a specialty found in the Bridgeport neighborhood, which consists of a flattened inexpensive cut of beef, breaded, fried Milanesa-style and served on an Italian bread roll with marinara sauce, topped with optional mozzarella cheese and/or green peppers. The gym shoe, a submarine sandwich made with a combination of corned beef and either roast beef or Italian beef. Aquarium-smoked barbecue rib tips and hot links; this is barbecue, cooked in a rectangular indoor smoker with glass sides and a large compartment for a wood fire under the grill. Barbecued ribs are very popular in Chicago. Atomic cake, featuring banana and chocolate cake layers alternating with banana and fudge fillings. Chicago mix popcorn, which consists of caramel corn and cheese-flavored popcorn mixed together. Chicago Brick ice cream, a Neapolitan-style three-flavor ice-cream with orange sherbet and caramel flavors. Chicago features many restaurants that highlight the city's various ethnic neighborhoods, in
Music of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois is a major center for music in the midwestern United States where distinctive forms of blues, house music, a genre of electronic dance music, were developed. The "Great Migration" of poor black workers from the South into the industrial cities brought traditional jazz and blues music to the city, resulting in Chicago blues and "Chicago-style" Dixieland jazz. Notable blues artists included Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Howlin' Wolf and both Sonny Boy Williamsons. Chicago is well known for its soul music. In the early 1930s, Gospel music began to gain popularity in Chicago due to Thomas A. Dorsey's contributions at Pilgrim Baptist Church. In the 1980s and 1990s, heavy rock and hip hop became popular in Chicago. Orchestras in Chicago include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Chicago's music scene has been well known for its blues music for many years. "Chicago Blues" uses a variety of instruments in a way which influenced early rock and roll music, including instruments like electrically amplified guitar, piano, bass guitar and sometimes the saxophone or harmonica, which are used in Delta blues, which originated in Mississippi.
Chicago Blues has a more extended palette of notes than the standard six-note blues scale. Chicago blues is known for its heavy rolling bass; the music developed as a result of the "Great Migration" of poor black workers from the South into the industrial cities of the North, such as Chicago in particular, in the first half of the 20th century. Chicago is one of the places; the most renowned early recordings of boogies were made in Chicago with Clarence Pinetop Smith, who might have been influenced by the brothers Hersal Thomas and George W. Thomas from Houston, who were together in Chicago in the 1920s. Chicago blues and boogie music continues to be popular today with the annual Chicago Blues Festival, with appreciation of many musicians such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon. House music originated in a Chicago nightclub called The Warehouse. Chicago house is the earliest style of house music. While the origins of the name "house music" are unclear, the most popular belief is that it can be traced to the name of that club.
DJ Frankie Knuckles popularized house music while working at The Warehouse. House music was developed in the houses and clubs of Chicago, was for local club-goers in the "underground" club scenes, rather than for widespread commercial release; as a result, the recordings were much more conceptual, longer than the music played on commercial radio. House musicians used analog synthesizers and sequencers to create and arrange the electronic elements and samples on their tracks, combining live traditional instruments and percussion and soulful vocals with preprogrammed electronic synthesizers and "beat-boxes". Important musicians in the Chicago house scene include Adonis, Mark Farina, Keith Farley, Felix da Housecat, Fingers Inc. Ron Hardy, Larry Heard, Steve'Silk' Hurley, Marshall Jefferson, Curtis Jones, Paul Johnson, Frankie Knuckles, Lil' Louis, Jesse Saunders, Joe Smooth and Ten City; the distinctive "Chicago style" of jazz originated in southern musicians moving North after 1917, bringing with them the New Orleans "Dixieland" or sometimes called "hot jazz" styles.
King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton became stars of the Chicago jazz scene. Louis Armstrong's recordings with his Chicago-based Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and Hot Seven band came out in the years 1925 to 1928; these recordings marked the transition of original New Orleans jazz to a more sophisticated type of American improvised music with more emphasis on solo choruses instead of just little solo breaks. This style of playing was adopted by white musicians who favored meters of 2 instead of 4. Emphasis on solos, faster tempos, string bass and guitar and saxophones distinguish Chicago-style playing from New Orleans style; when Chicago musicians started playing 4 beat measures, they laid the foundation for the swing era. The Lindy Hop was danced to 4 beat Chicago style jazz and went on to become one of the iconic features of the swing era. Important musicians in the Chicago style include Lovie Austin, Muggsy Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Bix Beiderbecke, Eddie Condon, Bud Freeman, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Frank Teschemacher, Frank Trumbauer.
The gangsters of Chicago engaged profiled musicians like Earl Hines, whose benefit was to lead an orchestra in one of the city's top locations. Hines and Benny Goodman emancipated from Chicago style when they became two of the most famous band leaders of the swing era. Two decades original Chicago-style pianist Art Hodes presented the classic jazz style in a TV show series. From the mid 1960s to the present day the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians has nurtured "Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future." In the 21st century, Chicago continues to have a vibrant and innovative jazz scene, featuring the annual Chicago Jazz Festival. Famous festival performers include Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Benny Carter, El
Climate of Chicago
The climate of Chicago is classified as hot-summer humid continental, with all four seasons distinctly represented: wet, cool springs. Annual precipitation in Chicago is moderate and evenly distributed, the driest months being January and February and the wettest May and June. Chicago's weather is influenced during all four seasons by the nearby presence of Lake Michigan; the National Weather Service office in Chicago has one of the longest periods of official weather records, dating back to 1870, though all the 1870 and 1871 weather records taken at 181 West Washington Street were lost in the Great Chicago Fire. Of the two major airports located in Chicago, Midway Airport began observations in 1928, O'Hare Airport began them in 1958. Both sites have served in the past as the official observation location, the latter being the current official station. Weather data from Midway Airport before July 1, 1942, after January 16, 1980, data from O'Hare Airport before January 17, 1980, are not part of the official climate record of Chicago.
Here is a list of official weather observation locations for the Chicago office: Note: Some of the addresses prior to 1909 are different than the post-1909 addresses Winter in Chicago proves quite variable: Seasonal snowfall in the city has ranged from 9.8 inches up to 89.7 in, the average annual snowfall in Chicago is 36 inches. Most winters produce. Cities on the other side of Lake Michigan receive more snow than Chicago because of the lake-effect snow that falls on these communities though northeasterly winds can sometimes bring lake-effect snow to Chicago area too. However, every three years or so during the winter Chicago experiences a heavier snowstorm that can produce over 10 in of snow over a 1- to 3-day period, a level of snowfall often seen in cities on the "snowbelt" on other side of the lake such as Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and South Bend, Indiana. Winter temperatures can vary tremendously within the span of one week; the daily average high temperature in January at O'Hare is 31.0 °F with the average daily low of 16.5 °F and the daily mean of 23.6 °F.
Temperatures drop to or below 0 °F on 5.5 nights annually at Midway and 8.2 nights at O'Hare and up to 10–14 nights in some far western and northern suburbs, although subzero readings in the absence of snow cover are rare. There have been streaks of multiple winter seasons without a single subzero reading, yet there have been winters with 20 or more subzero readings; the highest temperature recorded during the meteorological winter months of December and February is 75 °F, set on February 27, 1976. The lowest temperature recorded during meteorological winter is −27 °F, set on January 20, 1985. In addition, the all time record low maximum temperature of −11 °F was set on December 24, 1983, tied on January 18, 1994; however in late January 2019, a violent polar vortex drifted southward, enveloping the city in new record-breaking temperatures as low as −23 °F on January 30. Wind speeds reached at least 20 miles per hour; the warming effect of Lake Michigan during the winter makes subzero temperatures somewhat less common on the lakefront than in the more inland parts of the city.
Highs reach 50 °F an average of 8.8 days each winter from December to February at Midway. Based on 30-year averages obtained from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center for the months of December and February, Weather Channel ranked Chicago the sixth-coldest major U. S. city as of 2014. Although it is rare, temperatures during late winter can reach up to and well over 80 °F. In 2012, there were eight days in the month of March with temperatures 80 °F + during the record-breaking March 2012 North American heat wave; the last couple of 80 °F days in this record-breaking stretch of warmth occurred after the vernal equinox. Spring in Chicago is the city's wettest season: Winter conditions can persist well into April and occasionally into May. Thunderstorms can occur anytime of the year, but are most prevalent in the spring time as the city's lakeside location makes it a center of conflicts between large volumes of warm and cold air, which can trigger a wide variety of severe weather; the most severe storms can contain large hail, damaging straight-line winds and tornadoes.
During thunderstorms lightning strikes are seen to hit Chicago's skyscrapers. On the other hand, large snowfalls can occur in late March and in early April. For example, in 1970, over 10 in of snow fell in a storm that occurred on April 1–2. Twelve years Opening Day for the Chicago White Sox was postponed due to another 9-inch snowfall that had occurred on April 5. More extraordinary, over 18 in of snow fell on March 25–26, 1930, which remains one of the city's five biggest recorded snowstorms despite it occurring past the vernal equinox; the average date for last measurable snowfall is April 1. Temperatures vary tremendously in the springtime. At O'Hare, temperatures as low as 7 °F and 3
Chicago literature
Chicago literature is writing by writers born or living in Chicago, that reflects the culture of the city. James Atlas, in his biography of Chicago writer Saul Bellow, suggests that "the city's reputation for nurturing literary and intellectual talent can be traced to the same geographical centrality that made it a great industrial power." When Chicago was incorporated in 1837, it was a frontier outpost with about 4,000 people. The population rose to 100,000 in 1860. By 1890, the city had over 1 million people. Chicago's dynamic growth, as well as the manufacturing and politics that fueled this growth, can be seen in the works of writers like Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber. Due to these rapid changes, Chicago writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced the challenge of how to depict this disorienting new urban reality. Narrative fiction of that time, much of it in the style of "high-flown romance" and "genteel realism", needed a new approach to describe Chicago's social and economic conditions.
Chicagoans worked hard to create a literary tradition that would stand the test of time, create a "city of feeling" out of concrete, vast lake, open prairie. Among the new techniques and styles embraced by Chicago writers were "naturalism," "imagism," and "free verse." Themes centered on an exciting but dirty urbanism, as well as the quaint but dark and sometimes stultifying small town. Chicago's early twentieth-century writers and publishers were seen as producing innovative work that broke with the literary traditions of Europe and the Eastern United States. In 1920, the critic H. L. Mencken wrote in a London magazine, the Nation, that Chicago was the "Literary Capital of the United States." Expressing the attitude that Chicago writers were creating a distinctive and far from genteel literary idiom, he wrote, "Find a writer, indubitably an American in every pulse-beat and adenoid, an American who has something new and peculiarly American to say and who says it in an unmistakable American way, nine times out of ten you will find that he has some sort of connection with the gargantuan and inordinate abattoir by Lake Michigan."
While Chicago produced much realist and naturalist fiction, its literary institutions played a crucial role in promoting international modernism. The avant-garde Little Review began in Chicago, though it moved elsewhere; the Little Review provided an important platform for experimental literature, famously it was the first to publish James Joyce's novel Ulysses, in serial form until the magazine was forced to discontinue the novel due to obscenity charges. The publication that became Poetry magazine was instrumental in launching the Imagist and Objectivist poetic movements. T. S. Eliot's first professionally published poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," appeared in Poetry. Contributors have included Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes and Carl Sandburg, among others; the magazine discovered such poets as Gwendolyn Brooks, James Merrill, John Ashbery. Poetry and the Little Review were "daring" in their editorial championship of the modernist movement.
Editors made substantial contributions in poetry, as did Chicago's university and performance venues. Chicago's universities have a strong reputation for developing literary talent. In the second half of the 20th century, the University of Chicago served as a hub for many emerging postmodern writers such as Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Robert Coover. Bellow received his Bachelor's from nearby Northwestern University, which has produced acclaimed authors such as George R. R. Martin, Tina Rosenberg and Kate Walbert. According to Bill Savage in The Encyclopedia of Chicago, today's Chicago writers are still interested in the same social themes and urban landscapes that compelled earlier Chicago writers: "the fundamental dilemmas presented by city life in general and by the specifics of Chicago's urban spaces and relentless change." The Encyclopedia of Chicago identifies three periods of works from Chicago which had a major influence on American Literature: A period around the turn of the 20th Century, which featured "Midland realism" of authors such as Henry Blake Fuller, Theodore Dreiser and Eugene Field.
Sometimes called the "Chicago Renaissance" which includes the works of Dreiser and the work of authors such as Sherwood Anderson, Floyd Dell, Carl Sandburg, Harriet Monroe, Margaret Anderson. Authors in this period include Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks and Saul Bellow. Literature scholar Robert Bone argues for the existence of a fourth period: A second "Chicago Renaissance," this time lasting 1935 to 1950 and referring to a wave of creativity from Chicago's African-American writers. Bone suggests that this Chicago Renaissance was comparable in influence and importance to the earlier Harlem Renaissance. Bone's list of Chicago Renaissance writers includes fiction writers like Richard Wright, William Attaway, Willard Motley along with poets like Frank Marshall Davis and Margaret Walker, it is worth noting that the term "Chicago Black Renaissance" is used to denote creativity in all the arts, not just in literature, during the 1930s-50s. Much notable Chicago writing focuses on the city itself, with social criticism keeping exultation in check.
Here is a selectio
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land, surrounded by water. Small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, such as the Philippines. An island may be described despite the presence of an artificial land bridge; some places may retain "island" in their names for historical reasons after being connected to a larger landmass by a land bridge or landfill, such as Coney Island and Coronado Island, though these are speaking, tied islands. Conversely, when a piece of land is separated from the mainland by a man-made canal, for example the Peloponnese by the Corinth Canal or Marble Hill in northern Manhattan during the time between the building of the United States Ship Canal and the filling-in of the Harlem River which surrounded the area, it is not considered an island.
There are two main types of islands in the sea: oceanic. There are artificial islands; the word island derives from Middle English iland, from Old English igland. However, the spelling of the word was modified in the 15th century because of a false etymology caused by an incorrect association with the etymologically unrelated Old French loanword isle, which itself comes from the Latin word insula. Old English ieg is a cognate of Swedish ö and German Aue, related to Latin aqua. Greenland is the world's largest island, with an area of over 2.1 million km2, while Australia, the world's smallest continent, has an area of 7.6 million km2, but there is no standard of size that distinguishes islands from continents, or from islets. There is a difference between continents in terms of geology. Continents are the largest landmass of a particular continental plate. By contrast, islands are either extensions of the oceanic crust, or belong to a continental plate containing a larger landmass. Continental islands are bodies of land.
Examples are Borneo, Sumatra, Sakhalin and Hainan off Asia. A special type of continental island is the microcontinental island, created when a continent is rifted. Examples are Madagascar and Socotra off Africa, New Caledonia, New Zealand, some of the Seychelles. Another subtype is an island or bar formed by deposition of tiny rocks where water current loses some of its carrying capacity; this includes: barrier islands, which are accumulations of sand deposited by sea currents on the continental shelves fluvial or alluvial islands formed in river deltas or midstream within large rivers. While some are transitory and may disappear if the volume or speed of the current changes, others are stable and long-lived. Islets are small islands. Oceanic islands are islands; the vast majority are volcanic in origin, such as Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. The few oceanic islands that are not volcanic are tectonic in origin and arise where plate movements have lifted up the ocean floor above the surface.
Examples are Saint Paul Rocks in the Atlantic Ocean and Macquarie Island in the Pacific. One type of volcanic oceanic island is found in a volcanic island arc; these islands arise from volcanoes. Examples are the Aleutian Islands, the Mariana Islands, most of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean; the only examples in the Atlantic Ocean are some of the Lesser Antilles and the South Sandwich Islands. Another type of volcanic oceanic island occurs. There are two examples: Iceland, the world's second largest volcanic island, Jan Mayen. Both are in the Atlantic. A third type of volcanic oceanic island is formed over volcanic hotspots. A hotspot is more or less stationary relative to the moving tectonic plate above it, so a chain of islands results as the plate drifts. Over long periods of time, this type of island is "drowned" by isostatic adjustment and eroded, becoming a seamount. Plate movement across a hot-spot produces a line of islands oriented in the direction of the plate movement. An example is the Hawaiian Islands, from Hawaii to Kure, which continue beneath the sea surface in a more northerly direction as the Emperor Seamounts.
Another chain with similar orientation is the Tuamotu Archipelago. The southernmost chain is the Austral Islands, with its northerly trending part the atolls in the nation of Tuvalu. Tristan da Cunha is an example of a hotspot volcano in the Atlantic Ocean. Another hotspot in the Atlantic is the island of Surtsey, formed in 1963. An atoll is an island formed from a coral reef that has grown on an eroded and submerged volcanic island; the reef forms a new island. Atolls are ring-shaped with a central lagoon. Examples are the Line Islands
Crime in Chicago
Crime in Chicago has been tracked by the Chicago Police Department's Bureau of Records since the beginning of the 20th century. The city's overall crime rate the violent crime rate, is higher than the US average. Chicago was responsible for nearly half of 2016's increase in homicides in the US, though the nation's crime rates remain near historic lows; the reasons for the higher numbers in Chicago remain unclear. An article in The Atlantic detailed how researchers and analysts had come to no real consensus on the cause for the violence. Chicago saw a major rise in violent crime starting in the late 1960s. Murders in the city peaked in 1974, with 970 murders when the city's population was over three million, resulting in a murder rate of around 29 per 100,000, again in 1992, with 943 murders when the city had fewer than three million people, resulting in a murder rate of 34 murders per 100,000 citizens. After 1992, the murder count decreased to 415 murders by the mid 2000s, a reduction of over 50 percent.
In 2018, there were 561 murders. Chicago experienced a major rise in violent crime starting in the late 1960s, a decline in overall crime in the 2000s, a rise in murders in 2016. Murder and robbery are common violent crimes in the city, the occurrences of such incidents are documented by the Chicago Police Department and indexed in annual crime reports. After adopting crime-fighting techniques in 2004 that were recommended by the Los Angeles Police Department and the New York City Police Department, Chicago recorded 448 homicides, the lowest total since 1965; this murder rate of 15.65 per 100,000 population is still above the U. S. average, an average which takes in many small towns and suburbs. Chicago's homicide rate had surpassed that of Los Angeles by 2010, was more than twice that of New York City in the same year. By the end of 2015, Chicago's homicide rate would rise to 18.6 per 100,000. By 2016, Chicago had recorded more homicides and shooting victims than New York City and Los Angeles combined.
Chicago's biggest criminal justice challenges have changed little over the last 50 years, statistically reside with homicide, armed robbery, gang violence, aggravated battery. According to the 2011 Homicide Report released by the Chicago Police Department, the murder clearance rate has dropped from over 70% for 1991 to under 34% for 2011. Former Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said a pervasive "no-snitch code" on the street remains the biggest reason more murders aren't being solved in Chicago, adding, "We're not doing well because we're not getting cooperation". By 2016, Chicago's murder clearance rate had dropped to only 21%, its detective force had dwindled from 1,151 in 2009 to 863 as of July 2016. Warmer months have higher murder rates, over 70% of murders take place between 7PM and 5AM. In 2011, 83% of murders involved a firearm, 6.4% were the result of a stabbing. 10% of murders in 2011 were the result of an armed robbery and at least 60% were gang or gang narcotics altercations. Over 40% of victims and 60% of offenders were between the ages of 17 and 25.
90.1% of victims were male. 75.3% of victims and 70.5% of offenders were African American, 18.9% were Hispanic, whites were 5.6% of victims. Murder rates in Chicago vary depending on the neighborhood in question. Many neighborhoods on the South Side are impoverished, lack educational resources, predominantly African American, infested with street gangs; the neighborhoods of Englewood on the South Side, Austin on the West side, for example, have homicide rates that are ten times higher than other parts of the city. Violence in these neighborhoods has had a detrimental impact on the academic performance of children in schools, as well as a higher financial burden for school districts in need of counselors, social workers, psychiatrists to help children cope with the violence. In 2014, Chicago Public Schools adopted the "Safe Passage Route" program to place unarmed volunteers, police officers and firefighters along designated walking routes to provide security for children en route to school. From 2010-2014, 114 school children were murdered in Chicago.
Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was terminated by Emanuel following the fall out from the shooting of Laquan McDonald. A gunshot wound to center mass can prove fatal without immediate medical attention due to blood loss and internal injuries. In September 2015, University of Chicago Medicine and Sinai Health Systems announced a joint 40-million-dollar venture to convert Holy Cross Hospital into a Level 1 trauma center on the South side, making some of Chicago's most violent neighborhoods less than five miles from high-quality care. Non-fatal gunshot victims in Chicago had an overall rate of occurrence of 46.5 per 100,000 from 2006-2012, with a demographic breakdown of 1.62 per 100,000 for whites. It is estimated that the medical expenses associated with gun violence costs the city of Chicago 2.5 billion dollars a year. Chicago has been criticized for comparatively light sentencing guidelines for those found illegally in possession of a firearm. Most people convicted of illegal gun possession receive the minimum sentence, one year, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis found, serve less than half of the sentence because of time for good behavior and pre-trial confinement.
The minimum sentence for felons found in possession of a firearm is two years. Those charged with simple gun possession had an average of four prior arrests; those charged with gun possession by a felon had an average of ten prior arrests. In October 2015, Chicago was named "America's mass shooting capital", citing 18 occasions in 2015 in which at least four people were shot in a
Theater in Chicago
Theater in Chicago describes not only theater performed in Chicago, Illinois but to the movement in Chicago that saw a number of small, meagerly funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for tours sent out from New York managements, as well as an origins of many shows sent to appear worldwide. According to Variety editor Gordon Cox, beside New York City, Chicago has one of the most lively theater scenes in the United States; the young settlement of Chicago in 1834 saw its first commercial production by the fire eater and ventriloquist, Mr. Brown. In 1837, the first resident theater company, the short-lived Chicago Theater opened in the Sauganash Hotel. One of the players was a boy named Joseph Jefferson, who grew to become a successful comedic actor. Chicago's main theater prize, the Joseph Jefferson award is named after this pioneer. New theaters, including Rice's Theater, owned by an empresario and future mayor, McVicker's Theater began booking nationally prominent acts beginning in the late 1840s.
After the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Scottish-American producer, David Henderson, gave Chicago a national theater reputation at his Opera House and other theaters. Lively foreign language theaters patronised by new immigrants sprang up. Hull House, the social settlement house of Chicago, had from the 1890s a theatre program under Laura Dainty Pelham which performed the Chicago premiers of numerous of the new plays of Galsworthy and George Bernard Shaw. In 1912 Maurice Browne founded the Little Theater in Chicago, crediting Pelham's Hull House influence. This, along with the founding of the Toy Theatre in Boston the same year, is credited with starting the American Little Theatre Movement; the troupes that are regarded as having started the postwar stage renaissance were The Second City, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, St. Nicholas Theatre Company and The Goodman Theatre; the Second City, founded in 1959, by Paul Sills and Bernie Sahlins is the country's premiere improvisational theater, its method of developing material has influenced such playwrights as David Mamet, Jules Feiffer, Lanford Wilson, Jeffrey Sweet, James Sherman, David Auburn, Mark Hollmann, Greg Kotis and Alan Gross.
In 1968 Paul Sills left Second City to open The Body Politic Theater. The Kingston Mines Theater, where the musical "Grease" premiered, began shortly afterwards, the two theaters across the street from each other on Lincoln Avenue. In 1970 Sills invited Stuart Gordon and his Organic Theater Company to move to Chicago and begin what he termed "a scene." The success of these three theaters inspired the creation of other small troupes that grew, notably the Steppenwolf Theatre and the Victory Gardens Theater, both of which, along with the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and Lookingglass Theatre Company, were honored with regional theater Tony Awards, the only city in the country to have five theaters so honored. The Goodman Theatre had existed for a number of years with a reputation as a home for revivals, but the arrival of artistic director William Woodman and his assistant Gregory Mosher changed its profile; when Mosher took over as artistic director he enhanced the Goodman's reputation due to the work of David Mamet whose play "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" had been Mamet's first success at the Organic Theater Company in 1974.
Mosher produced and directed American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross at the Goodman. The Goodman Theatre was where Hurlyburly by David Rabe premiered under the direction of Chicago improvisational theater alum Mike Nichols. After Mosher moved to New York, the artistic directorship went to Robert Falls, former director of the Wisdom Bridge Theatre. Falls is known for his ongoing collaboration with actor Brian Dennehy, including productions of Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey Into Night that went to Broadway and won Tony Awards for both of them; the Goodman Theatre is known as the house of directors. Several leading directors associated with these troupes -- Dennis Zacek, Mary Zimmerman and Frank Galati—are alumni of Northwestern University in Evanston, just north of Chicago. In addition, writers such as Richard Christiansen of the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, Newcity's senior editor Nate Lee and Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times helped encourage Chicagoans to come out and appreciate live theater.
Since 1990, Performink has been an industry newspaper for Chicago theater, including show openings and reviews, audition listings, industry and union news for Chicago actors, dancers and other theater professionals. The Drury Lane Theatres were a group of six theaters in the Chicago suburbs founded by Tony DeSantis, he began producing plays in 1949 in a tent adjacent to his Martinique Restaurant to attract customers built his first theater in 1958. Chicago is home to more than 200 small theatre companies such as A Red Orchid Theatre, Lifeline Theatre, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, Redtwist Theater, Trap Door Theatre, The Conspirators and TUTA Theatre; some have their own performance venues, while many perform in untraditional theatre spaces such as storefronts or bars, or any number of studio or black box theatres around Chicago. Touring productions visit the city mainly playing at the big theaters in the Chicago Th
.jpg)
