Get ready for a green river and green beer – Chicago Tribune

Good morning, Chicago.

With the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade and Chicago River dyeing happening Saturday and the actual holiday falling March 17, this year offers an extended celebration.

Heading downtown this weekend for the festivities? Here’s everything you need to know from the weather forecast to start times. Watching from home? Tune to WMAQ-Ch. 5 to see the Chicago River turn green in real time and WLS-Ch. 7′s livestream for the parade.

If your plans are more food-focused, here’s the guide for you: 87 St. Patrick’s Day specials at Chicagoland bars and restaurants, from free corned beef to green beer. And a reminder: Chicago’s Irish Catholics will be walking on thin, green ice if they want to eat corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day. For those abstaining: 29 Chicago restaurants with seafood specials for Lent, from fish fries to lobster tails.

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Three years ago, the world was gripped with fear as a new and mysterious virus spread across continents. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus an international pandemic, urging every nation to take immediate measures to curb the spread of illness and protect the most vulnerable.

The imprint of the pandemic lingers in so many ways, from the people killed by the virus who will never be forgotten to the long-term health and economic consequences that still plague humanity.

As other cities modernize their building inspection systems, Chicago remains locked into a complaint-based process that fails to consistently detect and address life-threatening safety issues.

Chicago’s deeply flawed system for identifying and responding to life-threatening safety issues in residential buildings was exposed in a 2021 investigation by the Better Government Association and the Chicago Tribune. Reporters documented dozens of fire deaths in buildings where city regulators had been warned of potential fire hazards but failed to crack down on property owners in time.

Vallas’ Facebook account liked a series of comments that attacked Democrats, referred to Chicago as a “hell hole” and “S—cago” and labeled Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker “the king of full term abortion,” a Tribune review of his social media found.

The Facebook likes raise new questions about the Chicago mayoral candidate’s social media presence after the Tribune first reported his Twitter account liked a series of tweets that used racist language or insulted Mayor Lori Lightfoot in personal terms.

Have you ever watched two men or two women battle one another in a boxing ring?

I mean in person and up close, where you can smell the sweat and hear the grunts and the cheers and perhaps even sense the pride and the pain? Boxing can be brutal and bloody. It can also be beautiful, writes Rick Kogan.

The Big Ten Coach of the Year brings his Wildcats into the quarterfinals of the conference tournament today as the No. 2 seed after overcoming preseason doubters, a midseason pause because of a COVID-19 outbreak and a three-game losing streak down the stretch that brought more skepticism over their turnaround.

As a child, Sridevi Krothapalli loved to paint with watercolors. Her interests grew to include digital art and drawing. And in 2020, she harnessed that love for art to create Kahani, a student-led nonprofit that distributes a digital arts and literary magazine to children’s hospitals for kindergarten to middle-school-age patients. Kahani means storytelling in Hindi.