Sara’s Diary: Day 9 without baseball

If you’ve been following this diary you know I’ve been clinging to my daily ritual of walking to the Wrigleyville Starbucks for my coffee. As of this morning that Starbucks is closed and one more ritual in this thing I call life is on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I sort of anticipated this would happen when Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker issued his “stay at home” Executive Order on Friday afternoon, but it was still a bit of a shock to see this morning:

Sara Sanchez

As an aside, that note about giving away milk free with no questions asked solidified the Wrigleyville location as my go-to Starbucks for the foreseeable future. That hand-written note brought tears to my eyes and I can’t wait to support them when they reopen.

Back to what I didn’t realize would be my final coffee walk for a while, though. Yesterday morning on my way to Starbucks I walked past a man landing a drone on Waveland. I kept my six feet of distance, but even in these strange times it stood out. I just sort of logged it as an oddity and kept walking. However, after I got my coffee and was headed back home on Waveland I saw the same man (who I was calling “Drone Dude” in my head) taking footage of the Harry Caray statue at the corner of Waveland and Sheffield. I was intrigued enough to ask what he was up to:

Sara Sanchez

From six feet away I learned that the man with the camera and the drone was Troy Walsh, an independent film maker in Chicago who owns Drone Media Chicago. He’s been wandering all over Chicago filming the city’s landmarks during this historic shutdown of America’s third largest city. I just happened to stumble upon him as he was shooting Wrigley Field.

The project sounded inspired and awesome. It was not lost on me that there was also a little bit of the spirit of this diary in it - not really knowing what you are going to capture but knowing that we are living history and it needs to be documented. Troy and I chatted for a few minutes and I asked if he’d share his video when it was complete so I could include it in this diary.

You can see the stunningly beautiful and haunted finished project, Silent City [VIDEO], below. It captures the empty CTA, the Bean, and more, however, I imagine readers of this blog will gravitate to the stark figure of Wrigley Field in an almost entirely empty neighborhood. I encourage you to share it widely and follow Drone Media Chicago on Instagram for similar pieces.