Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Your date is late -- way late -- and she's costing you far more than you intended. You're cranky, just waiting for her to show up so you can give her a piece of your mind -- and then she walks in, drop-dead gorgeous, and all you can do is stare.
That was very much like the feeling Saturday in Millennium Park, which was crammed with thousands of formerly skeptical Chicagoans going gaga over downtown's new arts showcase.
"Wow," said Sharon Hicks, standing saucer-eyed on the Pritzker Pavilion's Great Lawn, taking in the expanse of the vast trellis framing the Michigan Avenue skyline overhead. "I walked in, and all I could say is 'wow.' It's incredible -- definitely worth all of the heartache they put Mayor Daley through."
The heartache in question was the chorus of criticism over the cost of the park -- whose original $150 million price tag grew to $475 million, almost half of it raised privately -- and its having opened four years late.
None of that mattered to Hicks. "Absolutely not," she said firmly. "This park is going to be a tourist draw for centuries to come."
SUNDAY SCHEDULE
10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me," a live taping of the public radio news quiz featuring author Roy Blount Jr., "Air America" host Sue Ellicott and writer-performer Adam Felber.
Noon-3 p.m.: A three-ring circus on the Bank One Promenade will feature the Bumblinni Brothers, Chicago Youth Circus and the Actors Gymnasium.
Noon-3:30 p.m.: Performances on the North Balcony by singers from the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, soprano Kim Jones and tenor Cornelius Johnson, as well as highlights of the Chicago Cultural Center's summer opera program and the Gallery 37 Operatics Vocal Ensemble. At the Wrigley Square Peristyle, there'll be music for kids, featuring Ella Jenkins, Ralph's World and the Near North Montessori School's kid rock band, the Blisters.
3-3:25 p.m.: The Chicago Children's Choir performs at the Pritzker, followed by the Chicago Immigrant Orchestra, featuring 22 musicians representing Chicago's ethnic communities.
5-6:30 p.m.: An improvisational jazz performance by Crepuscule.
6:30-8:30 p.m.: The Grant Park Orchestra at the Pritzker.
