Editor’s Note: NIT Stu wrote this earlier today, and we are posting it now. I don’t know why we felt the need to clarify that, but consider it clarified.
I’m in Chicago this weekend for a wedding, sitting on the Brown Line as I type this, heading up to meet a friend of the blog in Roscoe Village.
To my right, there are planes dancing in the sky.
I’m struggling to get a good video, so you’ll have to take my word on this, but there are two of them, and they are dancing. One just did some trust fall-looking thing where it softly paused in the air and then started dropping like a pool toy, slowly pitching and yawing its way towards the earth (it went behind a building so I don’t know how this daring stunt turned out, but if it was a terrible accident and I don’t hear about it before posting this it’s going to be a bad look for me).
I’ve never attended the Chicago Air & Water Show (not even sure that’s the real name), so it didn’t come to mind very quickly as the cause of this aeronautical exuberance until I remembered overhearing something about it on a Cubs broadcast recently. Anyway, I’m assuming that’s the cause, but it’s possible it isn’t. In which case my initial reaction stands. And that reaction is:
Holy Bote, Chicago. What’s happened since I was here last? Four weeks away and you guys have dancing planes now? Have things started going a lot better for Illinois financially? Have things taken such a turn for the worse that pilots are taking their crafts to the sky in some carefree way of dealing with the city’s impending doom? Have you no air traffic controllers??
Again, it’s possible—some would even say it’s likely—this was because of the Air & Magic Show (this would be a cooler name for the Air & Water show and would make me more likely to attend, so keep it in mind—you wouldn’t even have to change the content of the show). But it’s also possible it was that other thing.
Wild times in the nation’s third or fourth-largest city.
