After a weekend when the city of Chicago saw thousands of partying New Orleans residents move in for the Saints showdown with the Bears, the usually clean streets were left trashed, resembling a week of Mardi Gras celebrations.
Businesses along Michigan Avenue’s famous Magnificent Mile complained of broken beads, smashed bottles and popped blow-up dolls strewn about the streets.
“I came to work Monday morning and the front windows of my store were smashed,” said Derrick Depoir, a manager of one of the eight Gaps on Michigan Avenue. “They must’ve been pretty mad the Saints lost.”
It wasn’t all mêlée and destruction as the New Orleanians’ party goers demonstrated their creative side by replacing the Millennium Park fountain water with a homemade alcoholic concoction called “jungle juice.”
“To their credit, they know how to throw a party,” Chicagoan Lauren Sunkel said. “The Art Museum lions were dressed in jester joker hats, Saints jerseys and had gold and black beads draped around their necks. That’s just crazy.”
