Chicago Weekend Fun!

Oprah Winfrey (and the Chicago Oprah Show Harpo Productions Team) are taping the 23rsd season premier episode Wednesday September 3rd in Millennium Park in the Pritzker Pavilion with all the gold medal winning Olympic athletes. (150 Olympians!!) This is a huge deal in Chicago because the admission to see the show is free because it is in Millennium Park.

So, anyone who wants to see all their favorite Olympians can get tickets there in advance on Monday or Tuesday at Millennium Park so that you can still get in line on Wednesday morning at 6am for first come first served seats in the Pritzker Pavillion. These tickets may be gone by this time but if you are downtown and can look and see at Millennium Park let me know. The show will air on TV one week later on Monday September 8th at 9 am CST. (channel 7 ABC Chicago) They also say this is the first Oprah Winfrey Show to be recorded and broadcast in HD.

Big Name Gold Medalists like Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Dara Torres, Kobe Bryant, Lisa Leslie, Kerri Walsh, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Misty May-Treanor will all be in attendance at the event. Also, some Illinois athletes will be there too: Christine Magnuson from Swimming, Matt Grevers from Swimming, Candance Parker from Basketball, Tom Hoff from Men’s Volleyball, Sylvia Fowles from Basketball and Deron Williams from team USA Basketball.

That said if you don’t have to be at work on September 3rd or can get the day off it might be a fun time to see your favorite Olympic athletes in person. The Pritzker Pavilion is a huge stadium like amphitheater in Millennium Park that can seat thousands of people. So if you want to see the Olympic Athletes and Gold Medal Winners you will have to be up front in the seats and not in the back in the grass seating. The stage is also set really high off the ground so if you do get a seat you will still need a pretty good zoom camera lens to get any good pictures. Also if you come in from the suburbs, take the Metra since parking is way expensive under Millennium park.

As much as I enjoy watching the Olympics on TV I will not be in that early morning line for seats because I have to go to work that day and even though I am a Chicagoan I am not really the biggest fan of Oprah Winfrey. She is cool and all, I just dislike the constant selling of stuff all on her shows. It’s not really fair to the people who are home from work all day to get pitched to buy stuff so heavily when they don’t have the income from work in the first place.

I am also not wild about the idea that this rally will be to support the idea of the Olympics coming to Chicago in 2016. While that may have been my dream as a kid, as an adult I am much wiser about who really benefits from these Olympic Games and who pays for them. As a resident here in Chicago I am not behind the idea at all. Some people are also crying foul because Oprah has not invited the para-Olympians too.

That said I think the athletes are awesome and I hope they enjoy their time in Chicago and I hope that all the people who go out to see the Oprah Show live in Millennium Park enjoy the show. The pictures here are of the taping in Millennium Park yesterday and they are from Flickr courtesy of Dane Brian and T-Shirt Auza. Bookmark this page and check back to the Chicago Weekend Fun Blog for more pictures and video as it becomes available.