Attendance (And Arrests) Down At This Year's Taste

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jul 5, 2010 6:00PM

For the second straight year, attendance at the Taste of Chicago dropped, but this year was more dramatic than last year. In 2009, attendance was down just a hair, from 3.5 million in 2008 to 3.35 million. According to a report in the Sun-Times this morning, attendance for 2010 was down a pretty hefty 21 percent, to 2.65 million people. Cindy Gatziolis, of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, blamed the drop on the absence of the annual July 3rd fireworks this year.

Also down at this year's Taste? Arrests. As we pointed out earlier, violence overall was down a bit this holiday weekend, and that trend extended to the Taste. According to CPD Supt. Jody Weis, there were only 55 arrests at this year's Taste, most stemming from the chaos that surround Thursday night (those stabbings and the beating of a family). Weis also credits the presence of over 1,000 officers along the lakefront last night as helping keeping violence down. The problem? Over 600 officers were called in on their off day to help out. There's no word on how much that overtime will cost, but it might offset a large chunk of the $1 million the City hoped to save by rescheduling the aforementioned traditional July 3 fireworks to three shows last night. Said Weis, "It all depends a lot on the officers. Some officers will take comp time as compared to overtime. That will actually be down the road we'll come up with those costs."