This month's issue of Chicago Magazine is it's 50th anniversary issue, and to celebrate this, the feature article lists the 50 moments that shaped Chicago from 1970 through 2020. A lot of these events happened after I left Chicago back in 1981, but a lot of them happened while I was still living there. These momentous events included the death of longtime mayor Richard J. Daley in 1976, and the January 1979 blizzard that shut down Chicago and doomed the reelection of Mayor Michael Blandic, after the city failed to plow the streets for a week and decided to run "L" trains from the suburbs non-stop into the Loop, bypassing all the inner city neighborhoods. The people in those inner city neighborhoods were Chicago residents and voters, unlike the passengers on those trains. Pope John Paul II's visit to Chicago (and whose mass my sister Susan and I attended in Grant Park) was also included. Curiously, Disco Demolition Night, where a local radio station hosted the burning of disco records in the middle of center field at Comiskey Park between games of a doubleheader - and resulted in thousands of fans storming the field and causing the White Sox to forfeit the second game - also made the list of moments that shaped Chicago. Really? It shaped Chicago? I am a diehard White Sox fan, and even I don't understand that one.
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