The city’s third annual WinterBreak festival started this weekend with little frolic and fanfare from many of its citizens.
“I’ve never heard of WinterBreak. Would you mind telling us what that is?” said one man who had just attended the first official WinterBreak event Friday without knowing it.
“Oh, is it?” said another attendee, Lorraine Meyers, when told the panel discussion that featured blues music producers actually opened the celebration, which city officials tout as a way for locals to “break the winter doldrums.”
On Friday, a step outside the house could have done just that as Chicagoans basked in sunny 47-degree weather.
Nonetheless, the festival carried on with a “Blues Weekend” of lectures and performances right under the noses of many Chicagoans who didn’t know the first thing about the festival.
Tourists, on the other hand, are expected to pour into the city by the thousands for the 50 or so events that fall under the label of WinterBreak, according to city officials.
“I was just really excited” to hear about the festival, said Gloria Ehrler of Algonac, Mich., during a phone interview. “I didn’t realize you had this winter festival.”
She came across an ad for the festival in a travel magazine she saw through her job as a part-time travel agent in Detroit.
Ehrler and eight friends plan to visit the city next weekend and attend WinterBreak events.
“When you live in the Midwest, you get used to the sunless days and the cold and the wind,” she said. “If you have to endure that, at least go to a city that’s alive.”
Peggy Peterson of Rockford said she and her husband switched their vacation destinations when they heard about WinterBreak.
Instead of a weekend getaway to Madison, Wis., the couple plan to visit Chicago because of “the combination of all the neat things going on there” during the festival.
More than 1,000 tourists have called the Mayor’s Office of Special Events to request WinterBreak brochures and discount booklets, said office spokeswoman Elsa Tullos.
“People are calling from Iowa, from Michigan, from all over,” Tullos said. She said the office sent WinterBreak advertising supplements to 50 Midwest newspapers.
Even tourists who don’t know about the event when they arrive here are likely to hear about it if they stop by the visitors’ information booths at the Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph St., and the Water Tower, at Michigan and Chicago Avenues.
“I know Chicagoans are probably like, `Oh, what’s that?’ ” concerning WinterBreak, Tullos said. “We’ve focused on attracting visitors.”
City organizers acknowledge the festival’s target audience is mainly tourists, although they plan to beef up local advertising in the next week. Tullos said 38 hotels, 22 restaurants and 21 retail outlets are offering special deals in connection with the festival. Southwest Airlines is offering discounted air fares to the city.
Tullos said most events tagged with the WinterBreak label, such as the Chicago Auto Show, would surely go on without it. But attaching the festival label to them creates a package to be presented to tourists. Plays, concerts at local bars and events at Sears Skate on State, at State and Randolph Streets, all fall under the logo of WinterBreak.
The festival includes a group wedding on Valentine’s Day at Skate on State for couples who won radio promotional contests across the country. During the festival, which ends Feb. 20, the Nissan WinterBreak trolley will shuttle people between events.
On Friday, several audience members at the Harold Washington Library Center’s “Speakin’ of the Blues” lecture had no idea they were attending the first festival event, despite the large white banner hanging over the panelists’ heads reading “WinterBreak ’96.”
“I’ve never even heard about it,” said Meyers, who said her membership in a local senior citizens group helps her keep tabs on most city-sponsored daytime activities.
Meyers laughed when told the festival was in its third year. When shown the promotional WinterBreak magazine, she expressed shock that she had never seen it while leafing through pamphlets advertising local events.
“They evidently are not getting the word out,” she said. “This is for tourists, that’s what it is.”
