Chicagoist: Friday Flashback: The 1995 Heat Wave

VideoCity

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:17:09 -0600

My summer camp made us play outside that year...but I guess that's what you get from YMCA camp.

Chuck Sudo

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:31:27 -0600

All I remember of that summer was a bathtub full of ice from 7-Eleven, a bottle of wine, some Bob Marley on the stereo and some other medicines to get through. spook: the "Partay" is in the fourth-most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the city. You live in a lily-white neighborhood.

cookie66

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:51:35 -0600

logan square = overrated

Ward Up

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:42:40 -0600

I drove past the medical examiner's building that week. Bodies were being wheeled to the overflow storage area in the parking lot, where several LaGrou meat trucks were parked and used for body storage. LaGrou claimed that they wouldn't use those particular trucks at the Taste or elsewhere. Hmmm, I wonder if they kept that pledge!

Spook

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:48:25 -0600

sure dosent feel that hot downtown. Can't wait to get back to the square where its warmer with out the lake breez. Oh and how cool is it to be able to call your hood, the square! Funny I never thought I would end up being a home owner in the hipest hood in Chicago! F*cking Par tay man, Par F*cking Tay!

Albanyparkour

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:15:16 -0600

That was a truly scary summer. My family had an air conditioner in the front room window and we taped up sheets to keep the room extra cool. At one point my aunt and mother kept my cousins and I in that room (almost by force of arms) because of how intense the heat got. The elderly woman above us got picked up by family and taken out of town. I remember how weird it was when all the deaths came to light, this nice old woman had joked "If you don't hear me up there, don't worry, I didn't kick the bucket or anything" Eric Klinenberg book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago is really compelling reading on the topic.