So it’s Thanksgivukkah+1, meaning that most of you are either sleeping off turkey latke comas or looking for Black Friday deals on smartphone-enabled Furbies. But there might be somebody sitting in an otherwise-empty office today scouring the web for things to read, so what to do? I know — bullet points, to cover some items that slipping through the cracks while we were focused on more urgent (or at least more bizarre) matters:
- Chicago alderman Tom Tunney, the sometimes-nemesis of Cubs owner Tom Ricketts’ Wrigley Field renovation plans, has proposed a new “sports venue plaza liquor license” that would allow any sports stadium with a capacity of 30,000 or more — in other words, the Cubs, White Sox, or Bears — to sell alcohol in adjacent pedestrian plazas. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing or anything — given Wrigley’s small footprint, it wouldn’t hurt to get some of the beer-buying activity out of the baseball-watching part of the building — but it is a concession to the team, just as the Boston Red Sox‘ ability to use Yawkey Way for food sales is — and at the very least something you’d think the city could trade off with Ricketts in exchange for, say, not putting up illuminated ad archways over city streets. It also probably won’t make local bars too happy that Cubs fans will have more places to drink inside the park, but them’s the breaks.
- Brazil’s much-beleaguered World Cup preparations got even more beleaguered on Wednesday when a crane collapsed at a stadium under construction in São Paolo, killing two workers and likely delaying the stadium’s opening until at least February. The World Cup doesn’t start until June, but still, the crane accident is only likely to exacerbate the cost overruns that have many Brazilians wondering why the hell anybody would want to host a World Cup anyway?
- Construction is about to begin on the new $1 billion Minnesota Vikings stadium, and former state representative who Tom Rukavina is upset that the structural steel will be imported from Europe instead of brought in from Minnesota’s Iron Range, as required “to the extent practicable” by a provision that Rukavina inserted in the stadium bill. Only problem: The Iron Range doesn’t actually directly produce structural steel. Anyway, the Gov. Mark Dayton has promised that Minnesota firms will be on the job fabricating parts from the steel, so everyone can rest easy about the project. Except for, you know, all the money it’s costing Minnesota taxpayers to create a few steel-fabricating jobs.
And that’s enough for now — if you really want to read Marcos Breton’s latest puff piece talking about how awesome the Sacramento Kings arena will be for downtown, do it on your own time. See you Monday.