Tax Town

Dave Leonard, NBC5 Street Team, (Video)

As much as I love my city and think Chicago is one of the greatest cities in the world, I swear I feel like that Jordin Sparks song…”Tell me how am I supposed to breathe with ‘No Air”???? It feels stifling at times between the lack of parking, one way streets, bad traffic, politics, and most of all, the constant taxes!!!

If putting at least $80 a week in the gas tank of my SUV (what was I thinking right?) wasn’t enough, now I have to be subjected to the highest sales tax in the country. LUCKY ME!

I feel like I’m being held at gunpoint in “Crook County”…excuse me, Cook County, on a daily basis and now I have to pay up to 11.25% in sales tax. Who does that?

So this extra money Chicagoans are going to paying at the register starting today is supposed to be going toward the county’s public healthcare system…Hmmmmmm. I don’t know if I buy that…Oh wait, I can’t afford to!

I’ve already cut back on going out, burning gas travelling here and there, but what’s a brotha to do when it comes to shopping? Many Cook County residents are opting to go to neighboring counties or even Indiana to do their shopping. That sounds like a good idea on paper, but then you’re faced with burning the gas that you can’t afford to put in your car in the first place.

Even tickets at Taste of Chicago were up a dollar this year, so I will most likely be “tasting” the food in my refrigerator. Where does it stop? When does the bleeding of our pocketbooks draw the line? As far as my solution to the increased sales tax??? I think I’ll become a hermit or move to Indiana…there’s my two cents…wait a minute, I might need those!

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Taste Technology

Marcus Riley, NBC5 Street Team (video)

Back in the days when I was a TV reporter, we used to joke about some of the people we’d meet in the field who were obviously oblivious as to how TV technology worked. After the requisite explanation of what the story was about, we’d be about to begin our interview when the subject would say something along the lines of, “Wait a minute, are we live right now?” No satellite truck or a news van with an antenna mast in sight, yet this person believed we actually could have been live at that moment.

The funny thing is, those folks were actually on to something. What seemed impossible at the time, is now surprisingly easy, thanks to the technology made possible by Internet. On Friday, we documented Hungry Z’s quest to eat 65 Taste portions at the Taste of Chicago, and we streamed several hours of roving live coverage on this Web site with nothing more than an laptop connected to the Internet via a broadband card and a firewire cord connected to a video camera. Skype has become a popular way to make free Internet voice and video calls, and we used that technology to send the video feed back to the station, which we then fed through the Web site.

I know I get a little excited about this geeky tech stuff, but it’s things like this that represent a sea change in the media world — how information is gathered and disseminated to the audience at large. You may have already noticed the blurry Internet-style video on cable outlets like CNN and MSNBC.

Check out a video piece I put together this weekend that documents Hungry Z’s journey from the 5:45 a.m. news to the 6 p.m. news 12 hours later.

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Live Taste: Let’s Do This!

Marcus Riley, NBC5 Street Team (video)

Just a quick note before we head over to Taste. Hungry Z just left the station to pick up his wife, Colleen, who will be accompanying him on his quest for 65, and taking pictures along the way that we’ll post here on the blog.

I believe we’ve got our technical stuff together for our live stream, including the all-important wireless mic. It will be crazy enough out there without having to worry about dragging around a cord. Check back for the live link at about 11 a.m. on this page, and hope the electronic gremlins leave us alone.

Me and Hungry Z sat down for a podcast interview about his quest this morning, so check it out here:

We will be going in order, 1 through 65, so click on to this map to track our direction. See you soon!

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