Skyline Newspaper

Taco Bell has had some wacky promotions over the years. First there was the Dorito-shell taco, and soon after, the fast food chain offered a breakfast menu, featuring items such as a breakfast burrito and a waffle taco.

Now, the fast food taco joint’s Chicago locations are expanding their drink menu, and will be offering beer, wine, frozen mixed drinks, and sangria as a more refined means to wash down that cheesy gordita crunch.

Prior to this shift, the restaurant only offered soft drinks, a beverage that is consumed at a rate of 500 cans per year by the average American.

According to NPR, Taco Bell’s decision to offer alcoholic beverages is an attempt to attract more millennials to the fast food restaurant. Taco Bell hopes that this concept “redefines fast food experience,” facilitating more of a luxury dining experience rather than the typical grab-and-go style.

The new Taco Bell restaurants will instead be called “Cantinas” and will no longer have a drive-through. Unlike old models of the chain restaurant, these cantinas will have open kitchens as well as digital menu boards and mobile applications that will allow patrons to pay and order easily — merging the convenience of a typical fast-food restaurant with a slightly more upscale dining option.

This marketing attempt is fairly new for Taco Bell. For years, the fast-food restaurant relied heavily on a Spanish-speaking Chihuahua to bring customers in via their commercials — making “Me quiero Taco Bell” a household phrase that paid off. But now, Taco Bell is amping up their strategies, bringing in a promotion that is not only attractive to Milennials, but is an act of rebranding that will easily pad that $4 burrito purchase.

Currently, Chicago is the only area where customers making a “run for the border” can sip alcoholic beverages. However, San Francisco will be the next location to pair sangria and Crunch Wrap Supremes.

For about a decade, boaters have gotten together in Bath, Illinois, to participate in the Redneck Fishing Tournament. This year, the event ran from August 7 to the 8, but it did a lot more than provide ample fishing opportunities for local enthusiasts.

The main goal of the tournament is to collect the largest amount of carp in the two hour time limit given.

However, there is a catch (pun intended): boaters are not able to use fishing poles. Instead, participants must catch the fish as they jump in the air.

According to Peoria Public Radio, creator Betty DeFord started the tournament in 2005 in an attempt to rid the river running along to town from an invasive species of Asian carp.

“We started this as a little fishing event to rid these rivers of the Asian carp so we could take our grandkids fishing,” says DeFord. “We had 1,000 people show up that first event that we had, and it’s just grown every year since.”

The invasive Asian carp species has been killing off large numbers of native fish that are the most desirable to those who fish for work or sport. The carp also pose a threat to boaters, as the 40-pound fish are known to leap out of the water when startled by boat engines.

And it is that same leaping that makes catching them so easy. The carp are able to feel the vibrations of the boat engine, which can cause them to jump out of the water. Once in the air, the fish can be caught with a net.

Freshwater fishing is the most popular type of fishing, with more than 28 million fishermen and women devoting nearly 467 million days to the sport. This is how DeFord knew the tournament would work.

“We look forward to doing it ever year,” said Albert Johnson, a regular competitor. “The whole family: wife, grandkids, daughters, all of that’s here. The sites, the excitement, the fish flying in the air, it’s just lots of fun.”

During the last tournament, participants cleared nearly 10,000 Asian carp out of the river.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is asking local councilmen to vote on a series of drastic tax increases that have left many residents in a debate over what the city should be prioritizing.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Emanuel has asked his aldermen to approve a property tax increase as a part of his “capital tax improvement” plan, which is intended to create a new source of revenue to reinvest into the city’s school district.

The Emanuel administration proposed the tax increase in an effort to raise the funds needed for new school construction projects throughout the city, as well as to eliminate some of the school district’s heavy debt payments.

The announcement of the “capital tax improvement” plan comes on the heels of other tax increases proposed by Emanuel just a few days earlier. These plans include both a property tax on homes as well as a garbage pickup fee.

Americans already pay about $140 billion a year in taxes, and several Chicago councilmen are strongly opposed to the tax hikes for a number of reasons.

City council members representing the South and West Sides of Chicago are more upset with the proposed garbage pickup fee than the property tax. Most homes in these areas are worth $250,000 or less, so the effect of an increased property tax would be minimal. However, the proposal would take $11 a month from each family in the area for garbage pickup, which is much more consequential for middle- to low-income residents.

In the affluent downtown neighborhoods of the North Side, an increased property tax would be substantial, based on the value of the homes, while an $11 garbage pickup fee is much easier to dismiss.

Emanuel intends to use the revenue from these tax hikes to make massive increases in police and firefighter pension payments, as well as to help meet the city’s tight annual budget.

South Side Alderman Roderick Sawyer says that he believes the property tax can be “evenly distributed,” and claims that “from talking to most of my colleagues, the consensus is that they’d rather live with a fair-sized property tax increase.”

Downtown Alderman Brendan Reilly believes that people are being far too dismissive of his constituents’ ability to afford the steep property tax hike.

“A lot of people assume that downtown residents are multimillionaires who are taking baths in nickels and dimes, and that’s just not the case,” said Reilly.

“There’s certainly some very wealthy people who live downtown, but I’d argue there’s at least as many or more who made an investment here decades ago, have since retired and are now living on fixed income.”

As Emanuel struggles to find a balance in the opinions of his aldermen, his administration is hoping to have a vote on the tax hikes by the start of winter. If the state doesn’t come up with a solution in the next few months, the school district has said that layoffs will be forthcoming.

Talk about a wild ride from start to finish: A female passenger’s bad behavior on a plane from Miami to Chicago caused the plane to make an emergency stop in Indianapolis on Monday afternoon.

According to ABC7 in Chicago, the woman’s unruly behavior aboard American Airlines Flight 1284 led to her arrest.

Marian Frendt, a passenger on the flight, told ABC7 that the woman seemed “disoriented” during the flight, “not being able to find her seat, walking back and forth… And when she came to the back, she was sweating profusely.”

From there, things only got weirder. Another passenger, Jim Saviano, told ABC7 that the woman was repeatedly screaming expletives at the back of the plane.

Frendt then witnessed the woman’s interaction with another passenger. “She started kicking the seat of the passenger in front of her,” Frendt said, “and he apparently turned around to complain. And she hit him.”

After that, a flight attendant took the woman to the back of the plane.

“She was trying to talk the girl down,” Saviano explained. He said that the woman “seemed really calm” and talked to the flight attendant about her boyfriend.

Yet apparently the passenger’s rampage hadn’t yet ended.

“And then, all of a sudden, she grabbed [the flight attendant] by the face, kissed her, and then punched her in the face,” Saviano said.

According to other passengers, the pilot used the intercom to ask “large passengers” to restrain the woman. One of those passengers was Darnell Wilson of Chicago.

“She was on the ground,” Wilson said, who assisted three others in restraining the woman. “She wouldn’t stand up. She kept hollering that she was going to mess herself, like she was cursing people out. It was really absurd.”

Each day around eight million people board commercial jets like this one, but public safety incidents are rare. Because the woman became erratic while the plane was flying over the Indiana/Kentucky border, the Indianapolis Airport Authority authorized the emergency landing at 5:44 p.m.

Unfortunately, the madwoman still hadn’t given up. When the authorities from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office met the woman on the plane, she kicked one of the officers as he was attempting to arrest her.

As the woman was finally escorted away in flexi-cuffs, several passengers filmed the arrest.

In the end, the anonymous passenger was charged with battery with injury, battery without injury, battery of a public safety officer, criminal recklessness, disorderly conduct, and disruption of the operation of an aircraft.

She was taken to Marion County Jail. Her name has not yet been released.

As for the rest of the 150 or so passengers, they finally arrived at O’Hare International Airport about 90 minutes late. The flight attendant needed an ice pack for her face but was otherwise unharmed.