I was working on April 13, 1992, and covered the Loop Flood, when the Chicago River poured through a crack into a forgotten freight tunnel and shut down businesses across downtown.
My central memory, besides the phalanx of six mounted Chicago policemen cantering up an otherwise deserted Wabash Avenue, is of the streets around City Hall.
They were jammed with equipment — big pumps, banks of high-powered lights, communications gear and command centers — that was rushed to the scene.
“God bless America,” I thought. We might be as woefully inept as anybody, but when disaster strikes, we’ve got the resources.
Sometimes. Had the crack been fixed in a timely fashion, it might have cost $10,000. Instead, billions were lost, the result of being overly addicted to procedures. Someone could have said, “Screw the bidding process; just get it fixed.” Someone didn’t.
That happens a lot. We gawp at a problem until disaster strikes. I’m still shaking my head over how the city smothered the Friday Morning Swim Club at Montrose Harbor.
You’ve certainly heard of the swim club — a couple of young professionals started jumping into the lake Friday mornings to kick off their busy weekends. Quickly hundreds, then thousands, of young folks joined them.
It wasn’t just innocent fun; it represents something important.
Think about it. What’s the biggest problem facing Chicago? Besides residents being robbed or shot. That’s only a contributing factor to an even larger problem: the hollowing out of downtown. Emptied by COVID and post-George Floyd unrest, ruthlessly mocked across the country as a nest of crime. Employees happy to work in their underwear at home. Tourists staying away.
How to draw people — especially young people — into the city? How to present it as something dynamic and fun? Gee, maybe we could sponsor an event. Something that would draw thousands of happy young people leaping into the lake every Friday in summer. A free event, requiring no advertising, no entrance fees, nothing. A hundred city consultants working for a year couldn’t have pulled it off.
And what scuttled the Friday Morning Swim Club? Lack of a couple of lifeguards? Some park district rule against flotation devices? A need for more ladders? Are you kidding me? If Mayor Brandon Johnson were on his game, he would have been there last Friday in a striped 1890s swimsuit, leaping into the lake as a city fireboat spouted its approval.
This is a perfect example of one of the more odious qualities of bad management — opposition to ideas not one’s own. Had the city cooked up the club, every possible resource would have been lavished on it, every rule bent. Look at NASCAR — somehow that happened, unfortunately. Meanwhile, spontaneity gets smothered in the cradle.
Sure, someone could get hurt in the scrum. If a 24-year-old Groupon intern jumps in the lake and never comes out, we’ll demand to know why something wasn’t done. The same question we’ll ask if an Air Force Thunderbird clips one of the masts of the Hancock — whoops ... checking my notes ... I mean, the building now officially “875 N. Michigan.”
The mayor had no problem rushing over to the Logan Square Farmers Market, another victim of its own success, and clearing up their paperwork. I could speculate on the difference, but instead will point out his most dynamic mayoral action for the swim club was to delete an enthusiastic tweet, which smacks of cowardice.
“It is simply not safe to swim there,” said Michele Lemons, director of communications for the park district, adding that the city does manage to pull off aquatic events like the last weekend’s Chicago Triathlon (though the swimming portion was canceled this year out of safety concerns, due to high waves).
Summer is about to end, anyway. When spring returns, the city should help the swim club — which bears some responsibility for not trying harder to leap through official hoops — make it happen and address the real-world risks. So far this year, 11 people have drowned in Lake Michigan off Chicago.
It’ll take work to make the thing safe. But it’s work worth doing.
“We just weren’t feeling like it was a good place to be,” one participant told the Sun-Times after the club’s last gathering, when roving cops and park district employees put a damper on things.
If Chicago wants to keep being “a good place to be,” city officials should stop waving rulebooks around and start helping make the City that Works, you know, work.
