Daywatch special edition: Look back at our most-read stories of 2023
Good morning, Chicago.
We’re looking back at the most-read Tribune stories of 2023. It’s been a year of weather extremes, a changing of the guard in City Hall and Chicago’s first NASCAR Street Race.
Chicago’s air quality during the Canadian wildfires this summer and the ongoing migrant crisis were top of mind for readers. Readers also followed our live election results by the hundreds of thousands, especially for Chicago’s mayoral election. From our archives, a KFC “recipe” and a Chicago police union vaccine controversy were popular picks.
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Here are some of the most-read stories of the year.
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Chicago’s air quality: ‘We’re in the crosshairs.’ Wildfires and wind push region’s air to worst in the world, global pollution index shows.
As thick smoke from the Canadian wildfires blanketed the United States last summer, a team of Tribune journalists reported on its effect in the Chicago area. According to the monitoring site IQAir, Chicago had the worst air quality out of 95 cities worldwide on one day in June.
“We’ll be looking at this event for a long time to figure out, you know, what the particular dynamics and chemistry were that caused the smoke to come down to the surface here,” said Zac Adelman, executive director of the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium.
3 severed heads from donor bodies left at employee’s desk after complaints raised about alleged misconduct
Dale Wheatley, who performs deliveries for the Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois, came into work in late May and found sage burning and three severed heads lying on a plastic container by his desk.
Wheatley, who has worked for AGA for nearly five years, said he’s never seen anything like the horror movie-like scene he stumbled upon that Wednesday morning.
Wheatley said the heads from AGA donors were placed next to his desk after he reported concerns about the mishandling and poor conditions of donated bodies to his supervisors.
Excited fans brave downpours to witness NASCAR Chicago Street Race: ‘I’ve got to see it; might not be back next year’
Downtown Chicago turned into a slick, speed-drenched racetrack in July after the NASCAR street race started late following rain delays.
The cars flew through tight turns around Grant Park on roads like DuSable Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue, kicking up mist from the wet course’s puddles. Above the zooming cars, the city’s picturesque skyscrapers pierced fog clouds still lingering from the afternoon’s storms.
The stands slowly filled up after the delays. Drivers deftly passed one another in front of the hundreds of fans who braved the showers to watch the spectacle.
First cannabis store with a bar and a bakery under the same roof opens in Illinois
The first store in Illinois to combine marijuana and alcohol sales opened in February in Wheeling, with its owners hoping to make it a place for customers to hang out and relax. Okay Cannabis hosts licensed cannabis sales under the same roof with West Town Bakery, which serves beer, wine and liquor as well as bakery goods and other food.
Migrant family journeys back to Venezuela, more leaving Chicago as winter looms: ‘The American Dream doesn’t exist anymore’
Since arriving in Chicago, Andrea Carolina Sevilla’s parents were unable to enroll her in school even though the reason they left everything behind in their native Venezuela was for her to have access to better education. In Venezuela, she said, she was lucky she could even attend school. Many other teenagers start working at an early age to help out their families, who often face extreme poverty.
But she did not have the same luck in the city that she once dreamed of visiting. The family went from sleeping on the floor of a police station, to a crowded shelter, to a house on the Far South Side, and then back to the floor of the police station after her stepfather Michael Castejon, 39, couldn’t afford the rent. He could not find a job that paid enough without a work permit, he said.
On Nov. 3, they set out to go back to Texas. And from there, they would go to Venezuela, the country they fled to seek asylum in the United States.
‘He was Chicago’s son’: Dick Butkus, the Hall of Fame Bears linebacker known for his toughness, dies at 80
Perhaps no player in the Chicago Bears’ 104-year history better epitomized the team’s tough and determined identity than Dick Butkus.
Butkus, 80, died “peacefully in his sleep overnight” at his home in Malibu, California, the Butkus family said. In 2019, the Tribune ranked Butkus No. 2 in a list of the 100 greatest Bears.
