Downtown Lockdown

A little bit of breaking new. A proposal for the G8/NATO Summits includes a partial lockdown of a potion of downtown. Borders won't be disclosed until about 4 weeks prior to the summits.


Streets shut down? What kind of mess will that bring. I was planning on a post regarding possible street closures soon too. I'll still do it, but don't take it as a full truth. I'll see if I can't find out sooner for my readers.. This'll mess up everyone...
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Now that I have a bit more time I can cover some other things I wanted to.


With thew lockdown of Downtown, as you know, is NEVER as simple as they claim. For instance, for every day the parts of downtown are closed, each and every parking space will have to be paid for. Most of the meters will be at $5.75 for as long as the locations are timed. Might not seem like that much, but lets do a little math. Let's say 5,000 parking spaces. Let's say the spaces that need to be paid for from 5am, to 9pm. Right there is 16 hours. That's $92 dollars a day for just one spot. $460,000. And that's just one day. We're looking at, including staging, tear down, and the sort, about, let's say 3 weeks. Total would be $9,660,000. Now, they CLAIM it will not cost the taxpayers anything. It's coming from Private and Federal funds. I call bullshit. More they likely we'll get stuck with the bill, we almost always do.


Recently snipers were casing the area around O'Hare, Downtown, and McCormick Place. Now we know what airport everyone will be coming in. Security is going to be tighter then Lake Shore Drive at Rush Hour. People coming into the city around that time would be wise to come in either at Midway or take a train.


A little bit of hard-to-find news about the permits issued. To make up for blowing the new laws out of proportion, the city is offering free portajohns and audio equipment to protesters. What's next, armed escorts, hotels, free pizza? Well, I'll enjoy getting a slice or two. All joking aside, everything I find is making these Summits seem like far too much trouble then what it's worth.