Newlywed bliss turned into a nightmare for one Chicago couple this weekend. Beth and Tim Alberts were married Saturday and were attempting to take pictures of the happy moments after their wedding ceremony when they were interrupted by protests near Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago. Thousands of antiwar protesters filled downtown streets as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gathered for a summit in the area to discuss alliances, international security, and war policies.
Read on.... http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/chicago-newlyweds-caught-nato-protests-175518558.html
Not to dismiss a bride's tender feelings on "her special day", but I recognize the street she's standing on. That's LaSalle, the center of Chicago's financial district, with the Board of Trade near center frame in the video in the first link. This is not and never has been a quiet place to be, and it's a very strange place for a bride to be, up in her high heels, trailing a long dress and not looking too mobile. If the streets were not blocked off in any sense, anybody who has ever been there would be worried about getting run down.
The Board of Trade is on Jackson, and she appears to be about a block north of there, putting her somewhere around Adams or Quincy (these are very short blocks). So we're somewhere around or to the south of 135 S and 172 W, I believe. There are a few churches in the Loop, but the Loop is a big place, and I couldn't remember any that far south on LaSalle. So I looked up downtown churches on Google, and the closest I could find was St. Peter's, at 110 W. Madison - 0 south and 110 W. So, heavily encumbered and tottering on those heels, she walked a few blocks, instead of taking a limo or at least a cab - this in a part of town crawling with cabs, and on a day she had to have planned months in advance, just to get a date in church that far downtown - and then stood in the middle of the street, getting there just in time to be horrified by the site of a collection of demonstrators predictably marching through the financial district.
The whole thing looks staged.
Posted by: The Urban Backpacker's Quarterly / Joseph Dunphy | May 31, 2012 at 03:00 AM