If you`re in Chicago at noon Friday, you can salute the World Champion Chicago Bulls at the Petrillo Music Shell.
Or you can walk a couple blocks west and join the thousands who are expected to watch the annual Philippine Independence Day parade.
Or head a little south and spool pasta at the annual A Touch Of Italy food and music festival at Taylor and Morgan Streets.
Or stroll over to Navy Pier for the start of the In-Water Boat Show.
And the Blues Fest in Grant Park starts at 1 p.m.
Is Chicago a great city or what?
Although the official Bulls celebration is Friday, on Thursday a thousand fans showed up at O`Hare International Airport to greet the players and coaches when they arrived home from Los Angeles. City officials had tried to discourage people from coming to the airport, citing lack of space.
Fans who did go to O`Hare got a treat.
Michael Jordan and other players walked up to a 6-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire, reached through the barbed wire, and gave the fans handshakes, high fives, and autographs.
The players even had to step around horse droppings left along the fence by the city`s mounted police, but the players did not flinch.
”I just want to thank the fans of Chicago for the support they`ve given us all season and all throughout the past years,” said Scottie Pippen, a crowd favorite.
”Ooooh, Michael Jordan shook my hand,” said 6-year-old Christin Burns of Naperville, who stood on her mother Virginia`s shoulders to reach over the fence.
”He could have just got on the bus,” said 6-foot-2-inch David Burns who is only 14. David gave Jordan a high five. ”It shows he cares about the fans. It was . . . a once-in-a-lifetime thing, probably.”
When Jordan got off the plane carrying the championship trophy, the first in the team`s 25-year history, bedlam reigned among the spectators.
In brief speeches to the O`Hare crowd, coach Phil Jackson, referring to the championship win, said with cheerful sarcasm, ”We want to thank the Detroit team and their fans for encouraging us to do this.” The crowd responded with a nasty chant about the Pistons.
Bill Cartwright told the fans: ”I always believe in keeping things brief. . . . I tell you what. Let`s get out of here and have a party.”
When the Bulls finally left after the meeting at the fence, some fans stood stunned.
”I`m beside myself,” said Cindy Fitzgerald of Chicago, who had taken pictures. ”I`m just awestruck.”
Fan Mike Palella, 24, of Schiller Park, will have some explaining to do when he gets home. A banner prominently displayed at the O`Hare ceremony was a bedsheet Palella took off his parents` bed Thursday morning and spray- painted in the garage. It said:
”Welcome Home, General Jackson & Bulls Troops. Operation L.A. Storm Accomplished. We Are Champs.”
”I think if we put it back under the comforter, she`ll never notice,”
said Palella of his mother.
Bulls fandemonium was a boon to business. Star Promotions Inc., of Bensenville, with the employees working overtime, shipped 96 Bulls T-shirts to each of the 154 Osco stores in the Chicago area Thursday.
”It`s crazy. We`re going absolutely nuts. But it`s fun,” said Rexene Carlstron, company president. She said the stores used to order a dozen of each item. ”Now we are getting orders for gross quantities of each item.”
The Holiday Inn, 300 E. Ohio St., has converted a conference room into a store that sells only Bulls championship mementoes. Sales were brisk Thursday. Despite the Bulls mania, Friday will also have the annual Philippine Independence Day Parade downtown.
”When we started planning for this six months ago, who could have guessed that the Bulls would win their first championship ever?” lamented Elsie Sy-Niebar, one of the planners. The Philippine Independence Day Parade will step off at noon sharp from Wacker Drive and Dearborn Street.
At that precise moment, if things go as scheduled, the champion Chicago Bulls will be ending their one-block motorcade from Congress Street to Jackson Boulevard and walking onto the stage of the music shell in Grant Park.
”It`s unfortunate that there will be this conflict, but we got our permits so long ago and made all of our plans that we can`t change them now,” said Sy-Niebar. ”Maybe we can convince Michael Jordan to come over and join our parade when the Grant Park ceremony is over.”
Not likely. The Philippine parade, which normally draws thousands of spectators each year, has only 14 floats and about 500 marchers and should be over in about an hour, just about as long as the official city salute to the Bulls.
”We just have to think positively,” said Sy-Niebar, who said the annual celebration of the Philippine independence from Spain in 1898 already was the victim of Bulls-mania this week.
”We all went to a city reception given by Mayor Richard Daley in City Hall Wednesday evening. Then we were supposed to go to another reception at the Philippine consulate afterwards, but most of us, including me, went home instead to watch the Bulls game. And I`m not even a sports fan,” she laughed. A spokesman for the three-day A Touch of Italy celebration in the Little Italy neighborhood at Taylor and Morgan was less apprehensive about the conflicting festivities. At noon Friday, there will just be food booths opening up, but other events such as bocce ball tournaments, homemade wine contests and live entertainment won`t be getting underway until later in the day.
”Maybe after the Bulls celebration, everybody will come down here for some good Italian food and fun,” said the festival spokesman.
Vendors at the Blues Festival have similar wishes, according to Terry Levin, of the city special events office, who said most of the food dealers are stocking up with extra treats to serve to the thousands of people who will be right in Grant Park for the Bulls salute and can be expected to hang around to sing the blues.
Officials of the Mayor`s Office of Special Events found an ingenious way to resolve the noon hour conflict between the Bulls ceremony and the opening of the annual Chicago Blues Festival.
They announced that the noon opening of the Blues Festival would be delayed for one hour, and then transferred the scheduled opening act, the Sons of the Blues with Billy Branch, over to the band shell to serve as the musical act for the Bulls event.
Also performing at 11:30 a.m., in preparation for the short motorcade, will be the Grant Elementary School musical group, which also had been scheduled to open the blues festival.
