After rain and cold hit Chicago cruelly early in the season, the trio of floating mansion sculptures at the core of what was modestly billed as the Great Chicago Fire Festival failed to properly ignite, leaving the governor of Illinois, the mayor of Chicago, aldermen, city staffers, community leaders, Martin Sheen and muckety-mucks of all kinds — not to mention some 30,000 ordinary Chicagoans without access to the VIP section — all standing on the banks of the Chicago River, waiting for something, anything to happen.
Talk about a slow burn on the Chicago River.
In 1969, the ignition of an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River brought embarrassment to Cleveland. In 2014, Chicago had the opposite problem.
For an event at least six months in the planning and with at least $2 million in production costs, this was not how things were supposed to go. Redmoon came downtown and raised the ante. The Great Chicago Fire Festival needed at least a bonfire that exceeded what any self-respecting former Boy Scout could rustle up in the backwoods of Wisconsin. Granted, this was a tough night to pull off such an event — very tough — but the cold, hard truth of the spectacle business, as any producer of an Olympic opener or a Super Bowl half-time show will tell you, is that you can have all the great ideas in the world, but without stellar execution, they're all about as useful as damp matches. And you have to have a back-up plan.
What was most surprising was not that there were ignition problems — props malfunction, just like wardrobes in the tough world of outdoor spectaculars — but that there seemed to be no contingency, no plan B, other than inaction and delay. Mark Stafford, the host of the evening, went silent for an unforgivably long period as Redmoon struggled to light its centerpieces, eventually returning to the microphone to blame “electrical problems.” Finally, as disgruntled people were starting to leave, they cut straight to the fireworks. Which were great. So was a concluding procession of kayaks, which many people missed.
Actually, this whole thing was a really great idea. Fire easily trumps wind in Chicago mythology, when you really think about it. There's the cow, the TV show, the soccer team, the ethos of rebuilding and renewal that fills our collective hearts. Outdoor spectacles work best of all in dense urban centers, where skyscrapers provide scores of spectacular viewing areas. And the Great Chicago Fire Festival had the benefit of freshness and surprise. Few knew what to expect.
Never had so much life come to the prosaic environs of Lower Michigan, Lower Wacker and Lower Lower Wacker, hitherto a throughway with a lack of self-esteem. And the Billy Goat sold a whole lot of cheezburgers, including a double for me.
It felt like downtown Chicago was teeming with community and excitement in the minutes before the show, offering up a rare coming together of Chicagoans of all stripes. Near Wabash Avenue, you could see kids from a tough 'hood performing as diners at the posh Langham Hotel looked down. Sheen showed up. A giant poodle in booties was being walked outside the Trump Tower as the riverbanks filled with Japanese tourists, residents, bystanders. The setting on the river was glorious. At the start, it felt like a night to remember. Fire rituals are among the most resonant communal events, as the popularity of Burning Man and the like can attest. And Chicago knows fire. This felt like a night inspired, a great embrace of a metaphor for a city's history. For a short while.
Even if the mansions had burned, the spectacle still lacked narrative and storytelling. If you had not read all the pre-show coverage about communities bringing their problems for a ritual burning, not that there was any burning, you would not easily grasped that from what you were watching. And there was a lack of humor — no Queen Elizabeth descending from an Olympics helicopter here, although that certainly would have livened things up. One fun fellow on a boat with a gas jet did his best to keep the crowd warm.
I happened to be standing with Chicago firefighters — real ones, not to be confused with the many cast members of the TV show “Chicago Fire” lurking around Saturday. They offered much unsolicited advice on starting fires, as distinct from putting them out. One suggested dousing the mansions with accelerant. Another suggested calling on some real Chicago pyromaniacs of his professional acquaintance. Still another noted that had Chicago been originally built out of this kind of wood, “the city never would have burned.” So there was a silver lining.
“Pour some gasoline on it,” said their leader, a practical man, shouting at the river. “Otherwise we'll have a riot on our hands.”
There was a lot of laughter among those firefighters on that riverbank. Time outdoors, spent among friends, enjoying a Saturday night on one of the most beautiful spots in the modern urban world is never a total wash-out.
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