BOOKENDING THE PANDEMIC IN ILLINOIS.

A modified version of the Chicago Auto Show, which ordinarily comes in February a few weeks after the lusting-after-cars season begins in Detroit, will take place in and around McCormick Place in July.

That's fitting, as the February 2020 Auto Show might have been the final major event at McCormick Place before the Illinois corona tyranny began.

Below the jump is a look at that show.

If I recall correctly, the show had already gone to one-way traffic flow in and out of the exhibit halls, with people free to roam about once in those halls, and hand sanitizing stations were available.

Not surprisingly, there's nostalgia about past eras of the automobile.

Assorted experimental projects are around, if you know where to look.  Some of them are of the hobbyist sort.

There are also projects of a more academic sort.

There are also projects to separate people from their money.

If not a Lamborghini, perhaps an electric Mustang will get you over your corona blahs.

Or, perhaps the latest enlargement of the Volkswagen Rabbit (is that really a half-century-old design now?) is interesting.

If being subtly bigger isn't your thing, perhaps you can green-wash your motoring habits.  The conjuring trick Subaru use is splendid: rather than use car and truck names redolent of the frontier or of ranching, call your four-wheel-drive sport-utes names like "Forester" or "Outback" and put virtue signals all over your display.

Around the perimeter of the show you'll find the concessions, as well as vendor booths primarily selling automotive accessories, although the only thing that seems to be missing is the arcade with a fool-the-guesser or ring-the-bottles game.  The L car had to be narrowed to become a portable tavern.

The Auto Show's neighborhood outside has changed, as well.  Once upon a time, the White Castle near the L station catered to ink-stained workers changing shifts at R. R. Donnelly.

Now that's a Harold's Chicken.  Part of the Donnelly complex still exists, for some other use.

This basketball arena, primarily for collegiate games, is a long way from DePaul or Loyola.

Naming rights will doubtless be up for bid again in a few years.

In the early days of the corona tyranny, Illinois officialdom envisioned using McCormick Place as an emergency ward of some sort.

Taxpayers spent nearly $66 million fashioning McCormick Place into an emergency coronavirus hospital with 2,750 beds this past spring amid fears that COVID-19 patients would overwhelm hospitals in the Chicago area.

Those fears turned out to be unfounded. Just 38 patients were transferred to the sprawling convention center — meaning taxpayers’ cost for the makeshift hospital turned out to be more than $1.7 million per patient, on average.

But top aides to Mayor Lori Lightfoot say her decision to initiate the project with the federal government and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority was an important “insurance policy” at a time of “immense emergency.”

“It’s something I’m incredibly proud of,” says Samir Mayekar, Lightfoot’s deputy mayor for economic and neighborhood development who says the money was “not spent in vain.”

He also notes that the medical equipment is being stored and can be redeployed if needed.

Somehow residents of those parts of Illinois not called "Chicagoland" managed, although intensive care capacity was squeezed in some places for a while.