Summer lingers, languorous and sultry, but I am nostalgic as I watch the passing of my favorite season.
I am a hot weather lover who treasures those three, desperately short summer months in Chicago. It is my nirvana. It is the time to be outdoors, all the time. In sandals and shorts, lounging at a sidewalk cafe, strolling the lakefront. “The Hawk,” begone. Earmuffs are not required.
As always, this summer began to disappear as soon as it started, nearly two months ago, on June 21. The summer solstice, when the days wane, shorter and shorter by the moment, into July, to August, to the end.
Since I have reached adulthood, I have fantasized about getting a summer off from work and responsibilities, to relive my childhood days, when I was free to chase butterflies, grasshoppers and lightning bugs. When I stayed out to play until Mama beckoned, “When the streetlights come on.”
I never got that summer off.
Now here we are, deep in the waning time when the cicadas rattle at top decibels. In that mid-August time when it may be 90 degrees, but you can smell and feel the brown leafy autumn air descending. This summer is especially nostalgic, as I mourn lost festival joys.
Anyone who has been around Chicago for the last 20 years, anyone who loves Chicago’s summer street life, knows that our much-ballyhooed festivals have declined. Their individuality and creativity have disappeared in the pursuit of commerce and convenience. I still have treasured clothing, jewelry and fond memories found at the funky street parties and neighborhood festivals of long ago.
Take Market Days. When that fest launched in 1982 on North Halsted Street in Lakeview, it was a singular, neighborhood-y street fair that celebrated diversity. The crowd in Boystown (now known as Northalsted) was predominantly gay, but people of all persuasions and colors gathered to eat, drink and be merry on a hot mid-August weekend. There was a Champagne bar at the Chicago Diner, rows of booths with offerings from local artisans, clothing, jewelry, paintings, pottery and other unique crafts.
For more than 10 years, my mother and I hosted a booth at Market Days, where we sold her Afrocentric jewelry creations to festivalgoers. Then one year, we sold nothing.
Today, Market Days boasts that it is the largest street festival in the Midwest, attracting 300,000 visitors annually. At Market Days and many other neighborhood fests, handcrafted creations by independent artisans have been replaced by massive quantities of schlock, from made-in-Taiwan sunglasses to silver toe rings. Instead of tasty ethnic food treats, the fairs offer fried dough sticks. Instead of Champagne, you get watered-down, overpriced Budweiser.
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The festival business became highly commercialized, the booth fees too high, stifling the creativity and fun. Dozens of neighborhood associations and chambers of commerce that host the fests have turned their management over to staging companies.
Last week, I ran into a friend who owns a business that, for decades, hosted a booth at one of the city’s biggest festivals. This year, he did not participate.
“One management company does all the festivals. One beer company handles all the beer,” he lamented. “They’re homogenous.”
There is little room for creativity. Not enough space for the old summer delights. Or am I just getting old and cranky?
There are the die-hards that have refused to succumb to the commercialization of the fest; for example, the Lakeview East Festival of the Arts, the Old Town Art Festival and the Printers Row Lit Fest.
On Labor Day weekend, I will make a solemn sojourn to the sprawling African Festival of the Arts in Washington Park. For the first time, without my recently departed mother at my side.
This season, I discovered The Dock, a restaurant at Montrose Beach. It’s a gritty haven for young people, oldsters and families alike, soccer games, live rock music, sand castles.
As summer pulls away, I hold tight to those fleeting experiences, but the intruders have arrived. Last Thursday, on the hottest day of the year, Starbucks introduced the 2023 version of its pumpkin spice latte.
“The coffee giant’s popular lineup of fall drinks debuted in stores Thursday, the same day the temperature in the city is expected to hit 100 degrees with a heat index of 110 to 115 degrees,” Block Club Chicago reported. “While Starbucks’ signature fall drink, with a suggested serving temperature of 120 degrees for the hot version, traditionally launches on the last Tuesday of August, the coffee chain released its seasonal menu about a week early — much to the joy of pumpkin fans.”
That brings me no joy. Leave me to what’s left of my beloved summer.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at [email protected].
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