Still Gotta Come Through Chicago

A Trip to the Alderman's Office

Good morning Chicago!

Next week: Cubs and White Sox one-year outlooks and an NBA free agency recap.

We are in the thick of the Chicago summer, a time for all the beauty and promise of the city we live in to come to fruition. June and July are Chicago’s own version of retailers’ Black Friday, the period of the year that finally yields returns and makes up for the yearlong losses elsewhere.

And I think it’s time for me to pick up golf.

I frankly can’t stand people my age who golf, which is likely half a defensive mechanism because I don’t know how to play and half because 20-something golfers always say they’ll be ready to go out later, and inevitably (and understandably) go radio silent later on after eight beers in the sun over the course of six hours after a 6 a.m wake up.

But I need a hobby, bad.

That’s about the only thought that you can have as a 26-year-old with no kids on the walk back from your alderman’s office.

I was the president of a fraternity; I flexed in someone else’s Instagram story the other week while a bit tipsy thinking it was funny, but obviously just looked like an unironic douche bag flexing for no reason with armpit stains once it was posted; and I went to my alderman’s office to complain about, well, noise, on a Tuesday during my lunch break.

I wish I was playing three truths and a lie there — at least one of those would be anything other than indisputably true — but alas, all of them are truths. Three truths that I will write about here today and then hopefully will never say aloud or in print again.

Yes, I live in the Lakeview neighborhood of my beloved city that this newsletter is named after. And if you’ve read or watch the news the last few days, you’re probably aware that there has been absolute chaos commencing over here — specifically by the Belmont “L” stop — which is specifically where I live.

Three were stabbed and a few were shot, both within a few blocks of my place, on Sunday. It’s horrifying, but at the same time, like anything else in this world, you get quite desensitized to these things. These goings-on don’t stop me from walking around like a moron with my headphones in late at night listening to a podcast about the world’s most brutal dictators with my head up my ass.

Sunday was also the pride parade, which usually is co-opted and devolves into pure insanity later at night. This was not a fact I was aware of until Sunday, but was acutely aware of the following morning.

The kid who works at the corner grocery store told me he was seeing “women twerking every time he closed his eyes” on Monday, which out of context sounds like the words of a dangerously horny teenager, but in reality was just a Lakeview store worker who was experiencing a light form of PTSD.

I found the police helicopters flying above and incessant sirens somewhat fascinating from the vantage point of my balcony Sunday night. But, as opportunists are wont to do, these youths — mixed with likely some non-youths who act like youths — returned on Monday night to do the same thing all over again.

And that consists of twerking on cars, blasting music, and standing in front of moving vehicles trying to get down the street. The problem was that this time they came to engage in their shenanigans — after dispersing from Belmont Street — right next to my bedroom window. And I mean, right next to it.

The party begins to gather a stone’s throw away from my bed, about 12:30 am. The woman on the right is in the process of doing some sort of dance move.

From midnight to about 3:30 am I was subject to a full-blown party approximately 50 feet from my bed.

I waited for it to calm down. And I waited. The twerking, though slightly impressive I may add, did not stop.

The sheer stamina that it must take to shake your ass for four straight hours… it’s just out of this world. If it were anywhere but outside my bedroom, I may even be enchanted by it.

Listen, we all like to dance and shake our asses here and there. (This should have been my opener to the alderman, but we’ll get there). But you can’t shake your ass so much that a hard-working journalist can’t write a good story the next day due to sleep deprivation.

Shaking your ass, paired with yelling, screaming, and music playing music from what sounded like the same speakers they use at Lollapalooza — that drove this bystander to his breaking point.

I called the cops for the first time in my life on Monday, which was somewhat exhilarating, but sort of a letdown, similar to your first time having sex. The operator simply said hello, asked what was going on, and told me the issue should be resolved shortly. But no one ever came.

And so the twerk party continued outside my window, in such an insanely bizarre fashion that I had to film it multiple times just to assure myself that what was happening was real. The parking sign became a stripper’s pole and the street became a dance floor.

There is nothing worse than being up on a work night past your self-imposed bedtime. Well, there is. And that’s if you’re up past your self-imposed bedtime, and there’s nothing you can do about the disturbance that’s keeping you from sleeping.

Finally, after I woke up from my glorious three-hour sleep, with my headphones still stuck far up my ears from the night before as I tried to podcast listen myself to bed, I was irate.

I checked the videos. It had really happened. No one had done anything about it. Including me.

So I took my lunch break and went over to the ol’ 44th ward’s office. Looking something like this:

I probably couldn’t even tell you what an alderman was with much confidence the last time I had a grievance this severe, so once I walked into the alderman’s office, I just started vomiting words at the receptionist.

Didn’t introduce myself. Put my hands on her desk for some weird reason. Didn’t tell her where I lived.

Just launched into a tirade about the unsanctioned block party that took place outside of my window the night before. She just kept saying “oh, okay” — she may have even been worried I had a gun at some point, based on the look on her face.

Then a gentlemen who identified himself as the head of public safety for my neighborhood came over — the receptionist thanked god for this — and said he ‘couldn’t help’ but overhear me talking. I don’t know if he was being nice and using that as an entrance into the conversation because these are the kind of complaints he covers, or if this was his way of saying, ‘Hey shut the fuck up man, everyone in this entire office can hear you.’

Nonetheless, I don’t know what I was expecting, but he told me they were working on ways to fix this issue, and he listed them off. Then he gave me his card.

But no, I wasn’t done. Still absolutely ripshit stoned from that civic-duty high, I found a news reporter waiting for pedestrians outside to interview.

She asked if I lived around here and I said ‘I certainly do!’, likely with my hands on my hips and I voted! stickers appearing all over my clothes out of thin air.

I gave her an interview on background about the mess that transpired the previous two nights and then started crying about my full-time job that I had to take on that day on such little sleep. The second part is not true but it was much closer to happening than I’d like to admit.

All of this is to say a few things:

— Firstly, ‘a newsletter writer that sporadically wrote about Chicago sports and then became his city’s vigilante to break up loud twerk parties’ is still an on-the-table future storyline. I am literally shaking right now writing this, either because David Bote is batting in this Cubs game or because I’m so worried my sleep will once again be stolen by loud juveniles.

— Secondly, as the pound-his-chest-while-talking-about-Chicago guy, with a publication dubbed ‘Still Gotta Come Through Chicago’, this is a bad place to be in. I want to move to a town right now with only a gas station, a bar, a restaurant, a Blockbuster still standing and a population mostly made up of seniors who both don’t believe COVID-19 existed and spend most of their free time watching television.

— But I won’t give up that easily. This is my city too. I’m talking to Aldermans, reporters, writing angry emails, and hell, even voting in local elections.

— And if they return, I’ll have to go out there tonight and give them an earful:

The concept of summer stops existing when you graduate college. There’s no more sprinklers being set up for you — getting wet purposely sounds awful — there’s no more drinking on Tuesday nights at the only bar that will let you in underaged, there’s no more rushing to the lakefront after the last day of high school with warm bottles of vodka tucked into your waistband.

Instead, there are just loud parties you’re not taking part in, only realizing that the weather is beautiful as you’re on the way to pick up 90-second rice at the store because you realized in a panic you don’t have a sufficient carbohydrate available for dinner that night.

In between, you read an email from an angry Canadian client at work who is furious because you used the phrase “guys” in a webinar you hosted — it’s a fucking gender neutral term!! — with two men and one woman.

And after all of that, you may hit up a festival on the weekend, which is what older adults convince themselves is summer fun.

This is summer as an adult when there’s bad baseball in town. Enjoying the sun briefly on the way to the Alderman’s office or on the way to get some shitty rice to cook for dinner.

But maybe I could just pick up golf.

Hey, you still gotta come through Chicago. Just know, if you come through the 44th ward past bedtime, you may have an upstanding citizen in your way.

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Oh you thought I wasn’t going to bring up the Blackhawks hiring a new coach?

You thought wrong, buddy! Welcome Luke Richardson! Circle the fucking pucks, take a hit to make a play, and most importantly, SHOOOOOT!

Between the NBA taking 14 days between Finals games and the season ultimately coming to an end, the Cubs sucking, and my inability to watch anything but sports on a weekday night, I’m so back in on hockey.

During the height of the pandemic, when I still was able to convince myself that the Hawks had chance to make some noise — which to be fair, they did — I was up late screaming about my Blackhawks.

Since then, I’ve probably watched two of their games. And I’ll be the first to admit that. It’s why I haven’t tried to write about them here during that period of time, outside of the Kyle Beach case.

I’d love to say it was because of the Beach case to look like a morality steward, but really it’s because the Blackhawks sucked and the Bulls were good and I don’t have a ton of time to devote to a secondary shitty team.

But after watching four weeks of playoff hockey pretty intently, I am diving back in.

What I’m greeted with is a team who has just hired a new coach and almost an entirely new front office — good.

But then there’s bad. I’m also greeted with a team rebuilding that doesn’t have a first-round draft pick because they traded it for Seth Jones. Which means, if they do want to scrap back some of that draft capital, the team’s franchise player may be their best way to do so.

It may get uglier before it gets prettier. But welcome Luke Richardson!

P.S. The new ESPN doc on the Avalance-Red Wings rivalry in the late 90s is fantastic.

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As I was listening to Zach Lowe’s podcast the other day, I was mostly tuning out the Nets, 76ers, Lakers and Kyrie Irving talk that has taken over all of NBA discussion over the past decade — er, couple months — until Lowe said something that made me ears perk up.

“I’m just interested to see if there’s a pivot here that we don’t expect. If you told me a team makes a move that seems to come out of nowhere, or is not in a direction we expected, Chicago would be in my top 5.”

The question is what that pivot could be. We know these two things though: The Bulls have changed course under Arturas Karnisovas and are now one of the most tight-lipped teams in the league. We also know that over the last two years, Karnisovas has been anything but quiet, with the exception being during last year’s trade deadline.

So while some are expecting the Bulls to simply “run things back” with a few moves around the edges, I do not expect that.

Rudy Gobert has obviously been the biggest name floated around. Gobert would immediately make the Bulls defense a top one in the league and completely fix their rim protection issues.

The question is what they’d have to give up, and I just don’t see the Bulls being one of the highest bidders. They don’t have enough draft capital, and frankly, I still don’t think they’re up for giving away Patrick Williams unless it’s for a transcendent star, which Gobert is not, in my opinion.

Williams was also brought up by Lowe, who called his standing around the league “divisive.” Some executives believe the Bulls would be crazy to give him up in any deal, and others believe he’s just another young player that hasn’t shown much.

I tend to believe he has the skillset and potential to take the Bulls ceiling from one height to another, without giving anything up on the way.

Portland has shown they are trying to win now, as they just traded for Jerami Grant from Detroit. They are also likely to extend Damian Lillard this offseason. Why does that matter? The Bulls have a Portland first rounder that it lottery-protected, meaning if the Trail Blazers sneak into the playoffs, the Bulls will have another mid-first round pick to work with.

So the Bulls do have some flexibility, even if they do sign (which they hopefully will) LaVine to a max contract.

(For those of you that think LaVine isn’t “worth” that, he most certainly is. But that’s besides the point. Not signing LaVine would just mean we’re out of a star player with nothing in return. In essence, we’d be back to square one given the free agent options out there.)

We were able to go through the Klutch agency-fueled bullshit of LaVine potentially signing elsewhere without completely losing our minds. I last wrote that it would be idiotic for both LaVine (because of money) and the Bulls (because of basketball) to part ways, and it looks like all is well.

The free agency period opens up this evening. When it does, we’ll have many more answers.

Here are some options for the Bulls in free agency, without trades even being considered.

— Mo Bamba. Bamba was a coveted prospect before he was drafted to the Magic and struggled to catch on. He’s talented, capable of defending the rim, but has also only shown only flashes of competent play.

— Isaiah Hartenstein, who played for the Clippers last year, is a great center option. He’s going to be pursued by a lot of teams with cap space, but the Bulls can (probably) offer the best situation.

— Thaddeus Young

Outside of those easy sign-and-fill-in players, there are other more complex options out there, such as Deandre Ayton and the aforementioned Gobert. I regret to tell you that I don’t think Kevin Durant is on the table.

Both Gobert and Ayton would cost a lot and both would be massive risks. They would also each make the Bulls championship window at least a bit more realistic.

The Bulls currently have a $10M+ mid-level exception to work with, meaning they could sign a pretty decent caliber player quite seamlessly.

There are also some wing options out there, but it’s possible that Karnisovas will continue to build out that position in the draft for now. The Bulls selected Dalen Terry in the first round last week, a pick I love: a 6’7 guard with a 7-foot wing span that was all-defense in college in the Pac 12. He also has shown promises of being a good outside shooter, and I think he could get to the point where he’s productive from outside of the arc in the NBA. But there’s some work to do. For Terry, think Ayo last year, but bigger.

None of this matters, of course, unless LaVine signs (85% chance) and if Lonzo Ball’s knee is okay (60% chance). We’ve finally got some positive news on Ball. Marc Eversley said that all things are “going well” and that Bulls trainers are overseeing his rehab process in L.A.

Tonight is an exciting night for the Bulls. Prepare for fireworks.

P.S. Tony Bradley, who is not good, picked up his $2 million option with the Bulls Tuesday. Imagine being not great at your job, but just rolling out of bed and picking up 2 millys after breakfast. What a life.

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You’ll notice the baseball teams didn’t kick off the newsletter today. That’s a purposeful punishment.

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The White Sox sent down prospect Lenyn Sosa to Charlotte the other day, using one of his options after only being up on the big league team for a few days.

That’s awful process, as is knocking up another girl when you’re married with kids, but I won’t throw out alleged accusations against other Sox players until we get full proof.

What we do have full proof of, though, is the Sox postgame show saying “this one felt like it could turn around the season” after every win for the past month, and them proceeding to lose three games immediately after.

The Sox are six games back in the worst division in the American league on the brink of July.

What we have to stop saying is that Tony La Russa should be fired. While it may be true, it’s not happening.

La Russa is a problem, and his obsession with Leury Garcia and Gavin Sheets in particular could cost the Sox the division. Garcia is one of the worst players in baseball statistically, and he plays seemingly everyday for a team that was supposed to be one of the best in baseball.

At the same time, the aspects of the team that were supposed to “come around” just aren’t coming. Moncada stinks and gets hurt every time he runs, as most White Sox players seem to do. Eloy has been awful for a year straight. Andrew Vaughn looks like the future of the Sox all of a sudden and yet gets benched for rest more than Garcia does.

The only thing the Sox can bank on now is it all — or almost all of it — coming together at the right time. Another good start from Giolito. Lance Lynn figuring it out. Someone outside of Jose Abreu and Vaughn putting together good at bats on a consistent basis.

From the 4th of July to the 24th, the Sox play the Twins six times and the Guardians six times. That will, more likely than not, make or break this season.

Well folks, as you can see, I’ve literally run out of room to write on today’s newsletter. Sorry for the delay, and THANK YOU for coming back. I guess I can’t write about the Cubs and pathetically talk about Ian Happ’s and Willson Contreras’ All-Star cases.

Enjoy the holiday weekend. I’ll see you next week. Comment below.