Jocelyn Geboy, NBC5 Street Team
Things are taking a grim turn at Looptopia. For an event billed as the “first-ever all-night celebration of its kind in the U.S.,” it’s quickly turning into a not so all-night party that’s getting shut down.
Foot traffic was shut down on Michigan Avenue north of Washington, and the stragglers left in the Randolph and Wabash areas were being loudly admonished by police officers over loudspeakers to “go home,” and “disperse!”
Bad news for an event hyped to go all night long and a city that so desparately wants to host an event of an exponentially larger magnitude — the big O.
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I hope some people manage to get the word out there: that if the city of chicago expects to make this an annual event, they need to step it up a notch! Don’t get me wrong, until about midnight things were going great! We all had big silly grins on our faces, yelling “this is nuts!” over the music. The party they had set up on the docks was amazing and stacked with people so much that you could hardly move, but the bell tolled at 10:45 and it was over. A quick trip to millenium park was met by security on segways with loudspeakers telling us to get out. Then a trip into Macy’s at 11:30 followed suit. By the time we arrived at the cultural center we were told that the rest of the evening’s events would be cancelled. What a bust! We called the official hotline, where they told us the cultural center would be open again soon, to find something else to do in the mean time, but lo and behold, everywhere we made it to had shut down early, and there was nothing left to eat or drink! We decided to head to wicker park relying on a flyer we grabbed, and were very disappointed to learn that things took such a turn for the worse. I kept hearing stories of people who wanted to make the sunrise party, but by 3:30 when the club closed, without news of anything reopening, why go back? This was a great idea–in the works for years–that could have been so much better than it was. So many people finally took the advice of all the cops telling them to leave, and did. If there is a next year, I hope the Mayor’s office of special events figures out how to avoid masses of unhappy drunk people roaming the loop with nowhere to go! There is no way this city is ready for the olympics.
One reason they shut down that Michigan Avenue sidewalk is because there was graffiti sprayed on the Chicago Cultural Center and the police were taking photos.
It was great to meet you last night Jocelyn!