Column: If Lolla is back, for heaven’s sake, all these other COVID precautions make no logical sense
At Ravinia, they’re carefully drawing socially distanced circles on the lawn. At the Goodman Theatre, they’re streaming shows from an empty theater. At Second City, most of the tables have been removed and you have to sip your drink and then restore your mask in seconds, lest you get asked by a house manager to hit the road.
Meanwhile, we learn Tuesday, the music festival known as Lollapalooza is back in July. At full capacity.
The disconnect is nothing short of stunning.
I thought this was going to be a quiet summer of live entertainment in Chicago: thoughtfully chosen outdoor events, focusing on local artists and staged with an eye to a gradual recovery along with some indoor performances with careful but not excessive spacing of audience members. You know, way more than 2020 but not full-on 2019.
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Certainly, all of the local cultural organizations have been proceeding as such. Very few of them are producing anything live, even on a limited scale. For one thing, production funds are low. For another, the unions involved have demanded such extensive safety precautions as to blow budgets out of the water. For a third, institutions also have feared blowback from their progressive constituents and peers, many of whom are not even remotely willing to declare the pandemic over. To open up first meant the risk of a Facebook barrage of criticism.
A few weeks ago, it was considered a radical move around town to be planning a live show with limited capacity for a September opening. A lot of folks seemed more comfortable with January.
Now Lollapalooza is back in July! At full capacity!
It’s fine because it’s outside, you say? Ha!
Like many parents of Chicago-area teens, I have a Lolla story. Mine involves the lodging of a bit of the tooth of a fellow concertgoer inside the cheek of my son a couple of years ago. From a concertgoer he claimed not to have previously known before the ecstatic mosh-pit crush that caused the emergency room-worthy mishap.
Lollapalooza is outside, sure. I also know a great piece of land in swampy Florida I could sell you.
I recognize that July is still two months away, and I have read enough to understand that the risk of infection coming from, or flowing to, the vaccinated is very low — not zero, but comparable to other risks we take on a daily basis. I’d also allow that many arts organizations, and their unions, have been far too slow to anticipate the arrival of the post-vaccine landscape and failed to take the opportunity to maximize an opportunity that big out-of-town money, replete with its lobbyists, is going to grab with both hands right in Chicago’s front yards. That means lost jobs and revenue.
Even now, a lot of groups are very slow to see that the only precaution that is going to be viable with the public a few weeks from now is an insistence on a vaccination record. Few will want to watch something on their laptops this summer, however much digital product is thrown their way. Heck, not when you can go to Lollapalooza. Or if you share a house with those that will.
But let’s get real here. A full-capacity Lolla isn’t a gradual reopening, it’s a go-for-broke, knock-down, roaring-back, defiant declaration of summer normalcy. It will be greeted by its fans with an ecstatic response and hooray for those Lolla kids. They’ve been through a lot. And, in all likelihood, everything will be fine. Let’s hope so.
But let’s at least acknowledge that this hasn’t been fair to Chicago organizations that have been facing an ever-changing menu of city and state regulations and restrictions, often with changes coming with no notice at all. Let’s point out that a more functional way to recover would be gradual, fair, equitable, upbeat and reasoned. Let’s observe that some preference should have been afforded to groups and venues that are here year in, year out, and who just went through about the most difficult 15 months in their collective history.
I say this should have been their summer of reasoned recovery. This should have been their moment.
Sure, there’s some excellent new financial support from the city. And let’s also stipulate that the feds have moved so fast that the city and state really can’t do much else other than go along. If we’re dropping restrictions, then we’re dropping restrictions. For good or ill.
Still. A full-capacity Lollapalooza? We’re really going that far? In July?
On a personal note, I’d just say that I can’t get my overseas mother here for my kid’s high school graduation (no travel insurance available) and that same kid can’t dance close at his own June prom. And due to capacity restrictions, he can’t even take his girlfriend to the big dance.
But he’s hitting me up for tickets to Lolla now; he seemed to know it was happening even before anyone in the media.
He’s learned something about Chicago.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
