One alderman’s middle finger to tourism

Millennium Park's Jay Pritzker Pavilion, in downtown Chicago. The Frank Gehry-designed stadium seats 4,000 in seats, and 7,000 more on the accompanying lawn (below).

I love Chicago’s City Council, if for no other reason than the off-the-wall, whack-a-do, logic bending head-scratchers that pass for “politics” here happen to give me a good laugh every now and then. (Okay, maybe every day. I have a dark sense of humor.)

So I couldn’t help but chuckle disconsolately to myself  when I read in today’s Sun-Times that one alderman is proposing to give preferential treatment (first dibs, if you will) to Chicagoans at one of the city’s largest tourist destinations.

Ald. Eugene Schulter of the 47th Ward is apparently sick of suburbanites parking their butts in the prime seats at Millennium Park’s breathtaking Jay Pritzker Pavilion, home to many free cultural events (you know, when it’s still warm enough to walk outside without losing a finger), so Wednesday he tried to propose that Chicagoans be seated first, before the rest of the out-of-town hoi polloi. Because taxpayers’ asses deserve better, apparently.

“You have people from the suburbs who get there earlier and glom onto all the seats. … They’re putting their blankets across rows and rows of chairs,” said Ald. Eugene Schulter (47th).

via Alderman: Preferential seating for Chicago residents at Millennium Park?

Blankets?! Dear God, not blankets! Yet the article goes on:

“I was just wondering if there’s a way that there could be like a 15-minute time period where the people from our city have the opportunity to be seated first. Then after that, anybody” could be seated [Schulter said].

…

“It’s just a question of fairness. If you go to other cities, you’ll see city residents are given discounts to go to their museums. It’s a fair thing to consider. What we’re trying to do is look at — especially during these hard times — that our city residents are at least given some consideration somehow.”

Lawn seating at the Pritzker Pavillion in Millennium Park

Even setting aside the glaring challenges to implementation (Would you have to flash an ID? I live here but have a CO license–should I bring my lease? Wear a Bears jersey? Fake a Chi-cah-go accent?) such preferential treatment would dissuade tourists from the suburbs and beyond. With the already city millions in debt and scraping the bottom of rainy-day barrels just to make ends meet, pissing off tourists to Chicago’s lakeside gem of a park precisely when we need them most — to spend money in the city during “these hard times” — would be directly counterproductive.

And you can’t really call it “fairness” either. After all, giving discounted museum admission to some doesn’t adversely affect the experience of those paying full price. Reserving seats would. It’d be like Disney World letting all the Orlando natives cut in line at the Magic Kingdom — sure, some people would be delighted, but the impression you leave on the majority of visitors slowly congealing into a bristling, resentful throng as a fortunate few waltz past them is way more trouble than implementing the darn “dibs” are worth. Next time, you’ll go to Universal Studios instead, dammit.

Thankfully, the articles goes on to say that Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg smacked down Shulter’s idea in the “strongest possible terms.” I think that if anything, we Chicagoans should be letting the suburbanites and tourists take the primo seats, and then spend the performance silently rejoicing that the out-of-towners are helping fill the city’s ever-dwindling coffers with the exorbitant list of taxes tacked on to their pre-show dinners and post-show cocktails. And if you’re a self-righteous Chicagoan still desperate for some special treatment — well, then I suggest you go into politics.