Daywatch: State lawmakers go into overtime, the Boystown nickname still going strong and a review of Chicago’s most exciting new Greek restaurant

Nicole Stock, Chicago Tribune
·4 min read

Good morning, Chicago. Yesterday, state officials reported 521 new cases of the coronavirus and 33 additional deaths. Those totals were the fewest daily cases recorded since July. As for vaccines, there were 22,255 administered Sunday.

Meanwhile, my colleagues have been working tirelessly to answer readers’ COVID-19 questions all throughout the pandemic. Recently, they talked to experts about whether vaccine booster shots will be needed and where to get inoculated as the city’s mass vaccination sites shut down. Do you have a coronavirus question we haven’t answered? Here’s how you can send it to the Tribune.

And in more coronavirus-related news, you may remember last week I wrote about all the ways companies and organizations are trying to incentivize people to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Well, now even more have announced giveaways — either for getting the shot or showing proof you’ve gotten it. So, we put together a list of all the free things you can get from getting vaccinated in Chicago, Illinois and the rest of the country.

— Nicole Stock, audience editor

Here’s more coronavirus news and other top stories you need to know to start your day.

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Illinois lawmakers go into overtime, approve $42 billion budget, elections changes and an ethics package

Illinois lawmakers went into overtime Tuesday, missing a midnight deadline to adjourn the spring session but approving a $42 billion state budget, a plan shifting next year’s primary to June and an ethics package requiring more financial disclosure of officeholders.

Left unresolved were plans for future energy policy for the state, efforts to strengthen gun laws, an elected school board for Chicago and law-enforcement backed changes to a sweeping police reform law approved just months ago. The House indicated its work for the spring session was largely finished and members headed home. The Senate, however, planned to return to work later Tuesday.

Illinois legislators vote to dramatically limit use of seclusion and facedown restraints in schools

Illinois lawmakers took sweeping action Sunday to limit the use of seclusion and restraint in schools, following through on promises made after a 2019 Tribune-ProPublica investigation revealed that school workers had regularly misused the practices to punish students.

Boystown, the nickname dropped by business leaders in Chicago’s premier gay neighborhood last year, is still going strong: ‘It’s always going to be Boystown to me’

The Northalsted Business Alliance announced last year that it would no longer market the Midwest’s premier LGBTQ neighborhood as Boystown, but instead use the gender-neutral moniker Northalsted. A younger generation of activists concerned about the inclusion of lesbians, people of color, and transgender and nonbinary Chicagoans cheered the move, but up until a few days ago, the banners lining Halsted Street, the main north-south artery, still blared the catchy nickname and the rainbow-colored bike racks on the sidewalk say Boystown.

‘A prince of a man’: After the untimely death of NFL writer Vaughn McClure, a quest has begun to pay his generosity forward

Vaughn McClure, an NFL reporter for ESPN and a former Chicago Tribune sports writer, died at 48 in October from cardiac arrest. His loss was felt across the league. “There’s an emptiness I will never be able to fill,” said Nick Gialamas, who met McClure in college in 1990 and talked to him at least once almost every day since. Now, the Vaughn McClure Foundation is hoping to raise money for causes that meant most to him.

Review: Andros Taverna adds Chicago’s most exciting Greek restaurant to Logan Square

Andros Taverna is the most exciting new Greek restaurant to open in Chicago in the past few years, Tribune food critic Nick Kindelsperger writes. Doug Psaltis, a co-owner of the restaurant and a veteran of a number of high-profile Lettuce Entertain You restaurants downtown such as RPM Steak, calls this his passion project, where he was able to draw from his family’s Greek heritage and his many trips to Greece to create a restaurant focused on “traditional recipes through a contemporary lens.”