What are you going to do when the state reopens without restrictions? Readers reveal their plans.
After months of restrictions, the time has come. If new coronavirus deaths, cases and hospitalizations remain low and if vaccinations continue to increase, Illinois will fully reopen with no COVID-19 restrictions Friday.
That’s a lot of ifs, but Chicagoland residents are already making plans, counting on the state lifting remaining capacity limits, social distancing requirements and health screening mandates. Illinois will be fully open for the first time since Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order went into effect March 21, 2020.
The Chicago Tribune asked readers to share the plans they’re making for the state’s reopening. The following interviews have been condensed and edited.
Not comfortable in big crowds, Glen Ellyn resident Ray Campbell plans to travel to Springfield by train this summer to stay in his second home and visit friends. Now vaccinated, Campbell said he feels safe traveling. The places he wants to go to most of all: his favorite restaurants.
“I want to get out to restaurants, especially local places and support them. I felt so bad that they had to be closed down as much as they were,” he said. “As soon as those restrictions are lifted, I’ll get back out to local places eating, indoors and out.”
Margaret Cassidy, of Franklin Park, admits she’ll enjoy simple things like sitting in theaters watching a movie with friends and going to the Oak Park Farmers Market. Recently when she needed to replace covers for her patio furniture, a stop at a Joann Fabrics store made her feel like a kid in the candy store.
“I would like to go anywhere where I can just get my car and go somewhere without seeing nothing’s open,” she said. “I heard that the Art Institute was getting the Monet exhibit. So I signed up for the membership last year, and then the Iron Curtain came down. I was going to hop on the train, go downtown, go see the exhibit, get some Garrett’s popcorn.
“I just want to live life,” she said, “and not look at the person behind you to say, ‘OK, you’re not 6 feet away from me.’”
Jennifer Olson, a Naperville mother of a 10-, 13- and 16-year-old, plans to spend five weeks road-tripping with her family to national parks in the northwestern part of the country, including Yellowstone, Olympic and Glacier. With her youngest not yet vaccinated, she said she feels pretty safe spending time in the outdoors in places where they can socially distance.
“Last summer, we went all the way up to California, and we had eight weeks because everything in our lives got canceled, so we just took the whole summer,” she said. “Last year was a little stressful trying to plan that kind of trip because as we were there, things would change. At one point, restaurants were open inside, and then they closed again, and you could only do outside or takeout. So we just went with the flow.
“I feel like this summer, it’ll be a little bit more open,” she said, “and we kind of know now where we can go.”
Yes, Chicago resident Mark Dawson misses the camaraderie and the crowds prepandemic, but it’s the normalcy of life that he misses most of all. He wants the spontaneity of life to return; he wants to show up at venues without scheduling it.
“I want ordinary life to return,” he said. “That’s been the hardest part ... the sense of steady, ongoing panic. I want us to relax and be confident in ourselves again and not worry so much and also to make responsible decisions as a culture.
“I look forward to the music and concerts to come with the Yuletide in December,” he said. “For me, the last 12 months have been a time not to camp out at home, but to find ways to pursue and grab on to life. My motto from the start has never been ‘be safe,’ but rather ‘be alive.’”
“Our summer plan is to hit up different state parks and camp all around the state because I feel safe in Illinois,” said Chicago resident Sarah Velinsky, mother of a 3-year-old and a 7-year-old. “The typical things we would do during the summer — go downtown, go to Maggie Daley Park and go to the museums — but with two kids under 12, we still need to be careful.”
“I’m most interested in things that have to do with nature,” she said. “There’s so many beautiful things within a couple hours drive of our city. We explored before the pandemic, too, but this has really pushed us to enjoy things more locally, and it has been wonderful.”
A fan of the local theater scene, Palatine resident Katherine Vazquez said it was a “bummer” when theaters and cultural spaces closed because of the coronavirus. Another production that was postponed due to the pandemic: her wedding. This fall, she will get married and go to the Maldives for her honeymoon.
“Both of us have (never) been out of the country,” she said. “We’re just hoping that everything stays OK. We originally wanted to go to Italy, but we ultimately thought that this is a better choice — more laid-back, all in one place; there’s tons of exploring to do in the water. We also like bird-watching. And the food is important, and they’ll definitely have some really good Asian cuisine over there.”
Judy Jacobson-Rogin, a 55-year-old mother of four, is “taking the reopening very cautiously.” After staying home for the better part of the past year, she has started going to some stores again, though she is wary of nonvaccinated people who aren’t masked.
She is most excited about being able to do her own shopping again and attending in-person concerts when venues reopen. As an avid concertgoer, she tried to cram in as many concerts as she could before venues shut down.
“I had a feeling things would stop, so I saw my favorite singer-songwriters as many times as I could. Garnet Rogers was the last concert I went to. It was his last concert too,” she said. “One concert I have tickets to has been rescheduled four times.”
For Phil Aiello, of Arlington Heights, the state’s full reopening is arriving as he and his fiancee are planning an October wedding. Given the recently loosened restrictions on capacity, the couple might now be allowed to celebrate their big day with 300 guests at an indoor wedding reception.
But Aiello, 30, a director of marketing for an IT firm, said he is also excited about being able to once again enjoy the simple things in life, like gathering with friends and family for dinner at a local restaurant.
And since he’s fully vaccinated, he is thrilled to no longer be required to wear a mask when he’s grocery shopping at his neighborhood Mariano’s.
“We did a lot of takeout during the pandemic, but once the shutdown was over, there was still a limit of six people per table, and there are seven members of my family, so we couldn’t even go out to dinner together,” Aiello said.
The easing of restrictions in Europe has also been a welcome development, Aiello said, as the couple hope to visit France and Greece on their honeymoon this fall.
“We were fortunate to get engaged at Disney World on Valentine’s Day in February of 2020, right before everything shut down,” Aiello said, adding, “We’d love to go back there soon, so now it’s just a matter of fitting it into our budget.”
Now that Ross Kooperman is fully vaccinated, he said he can’t wait to get back out in the world and see his friends. The 64-year-old, of Logan Square, recently attended a friend’s engagement party at Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap, a restaurant in Little Italy, something he said he definitely wouldn’t have done a year ago.
“What would be nice is to actually go back to see more live performances without this social distancing and be able to interact with people,” he said. “I’m interested to go out and do stuff. I’m pretty much retired, and that’s what I enjoy doing. I would like to go to New York and see a Broadway show or go to museums.”
Before Chicago theaters and Broadway reopen later this year, Kooperman said he has engaged with other arts and culture events during the pandemic and attended the “Immersive Van Gogh” experience in February.
